Capitol Kvetch

Can bad or mediocre people make good laws? The American system has wagered for 200 years that they can. But it has always been sorely tested by those who do its work. “A Golgotha of numb skulls” is how Congressman Isaiah Green, who represented Massachusetts at the beginning of the 19th century, referred to Capitol Hill. Joseph Quincy, Green’s contemporary, lamented that “it is impossible to conceive the comfortlessness and desolation of feeling, the solitariness and depression of spirits . . . the constant tension . . . in which two years were passed” in Washington. John Randolph, a representative from Virginia in America’s early days, snorted that congressmen were “a degraded caste.” Carping about Congress, even by congressmen, is an American tradition. Since Congress’ move in 1800 from Philadelphia to Washington, then a malodorous swamp, the city and its institutions have been steadily reviled as seething with “vice and intemperance” and “extravagance in manners and habits.”

Ronald Kessler is a late entry into these annals of complaint, though you wouldn’t know it from his wide-eyed and breathless descriptions of life in Congress. Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of several “insider” books, attempts to show that all manner of misbehavior is happening behind the cool marble of Capitol Hill. His indictment comes in two parts: the sins of the individuals and the sins of the system. The former include senators, representatives, congressional aides, police officers, janitors: just about everyone who works on the Hill. They are guilty of sex in lavish hideaways, excessive drinking and expensive tastes supported by public funds. Kessler believes that these stories of human weakness are quite serious (and quite salacious). What seems more serious are the sins of a legislative system that has been corrupted by money. Not only do lobbyists and corporations buy influence, access and cooperation, but members also spend so much time on fund-raising that they neglect the essential work of governing, skipping committee hearings and attending receptions instead of mastering the arcana of legislation.

With prudish horror, Kessler recites example after example of (rumored) moral decay and bad manners, thinking, apparently, that readers need a slick coating of sex to swallow a dry argument for campaign finance reform. But the sex isn’t very good. The problem is not that Kessler can’t find any lusty romps. It’s that he can’t find any new or credible ones. The book opens with a Capitol police officer remembering the night he caught the Senate majority leader having sex with his secretary in his private Capitol rooms. The senator in question was Lyndon Johnson. Kessler also resurrects the unfortunate Texas Sen. John Tower and his reputation for roving eyes and hands. Then there are those anonymous but “well-known” staffers who (ex-Capitol police officers swear) tried to bed every Capitol policeman, or the teenage congressional pages who “put on a show” for Capitol policemen who gathered outside their bedroom windows. Former cops are Kessler’s main sources, and they seem to enjoy their work.

Kessler establishes his insider credentials in a number of ways. There is the trivia:”While most senators order sandwiches on rye or whole wheat, Sen. Wendell H. Ford, the Kentucky Democrat, likes open-faced bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread.” Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl prefers peanut butter and eats alone. A Congressional Research Service employee thinks Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell is “mean”--can we be a tad more vigorous here?--and Speaker Newt Gingrich “ignored the help” in the Senate restaurant.

He rehashes the old, cold stories of the House post office and bank abuses and adds that most members of the House leadership have expensive furniture in their offices, specifically, “$20,000 silk-covered chairs.” Many of his complaints about the way the House of Representatives was sloppily administered are now irrelevant because, as Kessler himself notes, Republicans revamped the House’s internal affairs (with mixed success) in 1995 when they took control of the chamber.

Kessler’s insider conceit is ridiculous. The dirt that he dishes, based on hundreds of interviews with retired Capitol policemen, staffers, elevator operators and even House members, is what fuels every reporter who covers Congress (with the difference that most newspapers have higher standards of credibility). C-SPAN has given viewers unmassaged views of Congress for years. When ex-Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) was accused of having sex with a teenage campaign worker, it was widely reported. When Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) had to whack staff salaries at the end of last year because he had overspent his office account, it appeared in the Detroit News and in Capitol Hill papers. One new charge that Kessler does make, that Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Palm Springs) sexually harassed an intern (Bono denies it), was immediately recycled by Newsweek. We are all insiders now.

Such congressional sleaziness is nobody’s idea of a great deliberative body at work. But because there are 535 people in the legislative branch of the American government, miscreancy of one sort or another is a statistical probability. And the bad behavior of a few senators or representatives is one of the unfortunate costs that Americans pay for weak political parties and wide-open elections. Kessler approvingly quotes the anything-but-slick Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) saying, “I know very few instances today when a congressman is one of the 50 most superior people in a district.” But democracy--especially a system with an almost unrestricted franchise and almost no qualification hurdles for officeholders--is not exactly a fail-safe way to bring 535 “superior” men and women to Washington. Ours is a defensive system: It allows for fools, but it disperses power to limit the damage that fools can do.

Kessler’s nit-picking also ignores the obvious: Members, no matter how powerfully entrenched, who abuse women, steal public money or otherwise misbehave are usually voted out of office once they’re exposed. Ex-Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) was defeated by a Republican no-name after charges of years of corruption, including a stamps-for-cash scheme at the House post office, came to light. The unrestrainable Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) resigned following charges of sexual abuse by former office workers. The system is maddening, but it’s also self-correcting.

The strongest part of Kessler’s book is his argument for campaign finance reform. His accumulation of facts, figures and anecdotes about the influence of money makes an impression on the reader. As if he knows that this material explains itself, Kessler changes his tone in the sections of his book that deal with campaign money. He sounds more like a reporter and less like a 19th century anti-vice campaigner. His examples are from last year and include how in 1996 Federal Express fought for, and received, an exemption from a labor law with the result that FedEx employees will have a harder time joining a labor union. The company spent $1.2 million in lobbying and gave $816,600 through its political action committee to candidates in 1994 elections, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission and the Almanac of Federal Political Action Committees. Kessler reminds readers that the Federal Election Commission, which tracks how candidates raise and spend campaign money, is a pitifully under-resourced, politically deadlocked body and that the fines it levies on campaigns, often years after the election, are now calculated as the cost of political business. His explanations of soft money and the time and energy spent on endless fund-raising are not original, but they’re not wrong, either.

Campaign laws affect current and future members of Congress, not just the incontinent and indiscreet handful that will always manage to win at least a few elections. Unlike the problem of individual misbehavior, the problem of political money has a legislative fix. Campaign finance reform is an urgent, legitimate cause and could supplant the push for a balanced budget as the next political crusade: something that a candidate simply must support and actually vote for to get elected. Moreover, a member of Congress can be judged by his or her commitment to changing the role of money in politics. Elected officials can keep their peccadilloes quiet (for a while), but their fund-raising reports and voting records are easy to find.

Kessler, in fact, makes his case about the corrupting influence of money better than he may realize. After wading through 300 pages, you wonder why a taut argument about campaign finance reform was larded with so much irrelevant tackiness, so many old stories sneeringly retold. I suspect it’s because taut arguments about campaign finance don’t sell. So, with “Inside Congress,” Kessler has packaged the legislative branch for the tabloid market. He disparages members of Congress, greedy for reelection cash (and for reelection, period) for pandering, but he panders himself. He’s right, of course. Hunger for money makes people do some pretty smelly things.