Congress II

 For Monday:

• Lowi, ch. 6 
• Hamilton, Federalist # 70, 71, 73 
• Tocqueville, pp. 121-138.

"Air Midterm"

About last night...

Hill leadership

• House
• Senate

Edmund Burke:

 In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

Leadership Activities

• Legislation
• Whips and for real (Scalise is now majority leader)
• Communication:  Johnson v. Thune
• Campaign Activity; Hill Committees 
• Literally "paying your dues"

Bill becomes law  -- an example

C-SPAN

Markup

Bicameralism

Tocqueville (p. 200):  "When one enters the House of Representatives at Washington, one is struck by the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly...A couple of paces away is the entrance to the Senate, whose narrow precincts contain a large proportion of the famous men of America."

Federalist 63: As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.

Separation of Powers

Federalist 47: "From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates,'' or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers,'' he did not mean that these departments ought to have no PARTIAL AGENCY in, or no CONTROL over, the acts of each other."

Federalist 48: The conclusion which I am warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.

BUT DOES THE SYSTEM WORK WITH POLARIZED AND NATIONALIZED  PARTIES? 

Boehner & Bachmann

There are bipartisan bills:  Franken and service dogs

BESIDES PASSING BILLS, MEMBERS OF CONGRESS:

• SERVE AS CONSTITUENT CONCIERGES
• MAKE APPEARANCES IN THE CONSTITUENCY
• MAKE SPEECHES
• DO MEDIA INTERVIEWS
• ISSUE PRESS RELEASES AND SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS
• HOLD HEARINGS:  FRANKEN REFLECTIONS
• CONDUCT OVERSIGHT