House of Ill Repute

In 1887, Lord John Emerich Edward Acton coined the famous phrase: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." This quote is centrally important to a radio program I heard recently. It was in the form of a "PodCast", 59:40 in total length, titled Houses of Ill Repute. It begins with 2 human interest-type stories, but if you move to 42:30 of the cast and begin listening, you will hear a very interesting piece by Alex Bloomberg on our "House of Ill Repute", the US Congress. (The cast originates from This American Life.) Although it shows through that Bloomberg is a somewhat sympathetic Democrat, he attempts a non-partisan analysis of the goings-on that occur inside of Congressional negotiation. There are some things explained here that I didn't know, such as Holding the Vote Open (See Section IV - Voting by Electronic Device: Section 8 contains the 17 minute "limit" referenced in the broadcast, for example). The interesting part of this is the obvious observation that both parties engage in essentially the same practice while in power, and complain about the practice when not. Although this is not particularly surprising, it is almost comical to listen the the justification of Patrick McHenry in particular (some of this points to the Democratic bias I spoke of earlier, but it is still an interesting case study). McHenry hypothesizes that Democrats carry more blame than Republicans over majority-type abuses because Democrats campaigned for fairness and equality, and therefore are hypocrites. The fact that the Republicans never even pretended they would play fairly is somehow more acceptable. I didn't realize some of the ancillary benefits of being the House majority party; it is obvious that the vote can be pre-determined due to greater representation, but I didn't know that such sweeping power was granted to the majority party. It (obviously) wasn't supposed to be that way. Some interesting history on the position of Speaker of the House, and its growth from the initial concept: The office of Speaker of the House is specifically created by the Constitution (Article I, Section 2). The position of Speaker was not very powerful, however, until Henry Clay. Clay participated in many debates, and used his influence to ensure the passage of measures he supported. The office of Speaker began to develop into a very powerful one late in the 19th century. This was because of the Speaker's power was his position as Chairman of the Committee on Rules, which became one of the most powerful standing committees of the House after the reorganization of the committee system in 1880. The station of Speaker was at its most powerful during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon. Cannon determined the agenda of the House, appointed the members of all committees, chose committee chairmen, headed the Rules Committee, and determined which committee heard each bill. He vigorously used his powers to ensure that the proposals of the Republican Party were passed by the House. Colleagues and opponents alike finally bonded together to temper Cannon's zeal, as well as his power. During the 1970, the Committee on Rules began once again to be seen as the station of party leadership. In 1975, the Speaker was granted the authority to appoint a majority of the members of the Rules Committee. At the same time, the power of committee chairmen was actively diminished, increasing the relative influence of the Speaker. We can see from all of this that the power and influence of the Speaker of the House has grown significantly over the years. This leads to the very real possibility that this influence could corrupt the wielder in the way Lord Acton predicted in 1887. We see this occurring as the PodCast continues. My favorite part of the audio broadcast is when Bloomberg begins to ask the Democrats how things would change now that they were in charge. They dance around the question; Peter Defazio says, "That will remain - you know - to be seen" (53:40 on the cast). He may as well have said 'they screwed us, now we're gonna screw them.' Big surprise. Once again, Lord Acton seems horribly prophetic.