You might think that somebody who has endured the number of filibusters your faithful observer has endured would join those who think they should be banned or in some way limited.
You’d be wrong.
Those who favor limits of some kind appear to miss a point. A limited filibuster is not a filibuster.
Filibusters are not intended to be entertaining although there were some of those that your observer endured that had their moments—the night then-state senator Sam Graves started reading the names of the high school graduates from his district and started over every time he was interrupted.
Or when Senator Marie Chappelle-Nadal decided to make a filibuster an audience-participation event and invited people listening to the Senate’s internet feed to send her text messages suggesting topics, or asking questions she could answer.
Then there was Senator Matt Bartle’s one-man version of Jimmy Stewart’s imitation of one in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.” He lasted something like 17 hours, taking advantage of quorum calls to dash off to the bathroom while the Senate was idle and waiting for enough Senators to get off their office couches and sleepily go into the chamber just long enough to be counted “present.”
I can recall several of them that lasted so long I had to leave the Senate press table to go to the Missourinet newsroom to do the morning newscasts. At least a couple of times I listened to the internet feed while I was putting the newscasts together. I think there might even have been a couple of times when I returned to the Capitol and the senators were still burning legislative time off the clock.
They’re most effective in the final weeks when time is running short and the debate calendars are running long with bills that are ready for final votes. The House limits the amount of time someone can hold the floor so the Missouri House doesn’t have much chance of having all that fun. But the Senate has no such limits.
And it never should. Nor should Congress.
The filibuster can be a futile time of railing against the inevitable—as can happen when one party has a two-thirds majority and therefore doesn’t need to compromise on anything and can just wait until the minority, or part of the minority, chews up precious hours of debate time and finally runs out of energy.
They’re most effective when the numbers are closer. Many filibusters are resolved when opposing sides finally decide to find some compromises that previously had been rejected and start talking about lessening the most objectionable parts of the legislation. But when one party is so dominant that it doesn’t need to compromise on anything, compromise is hard to see
When that happens, the participants in a filibuster hope some members of the other party will start seeing the time their bills needed to gain passage is disappearing, and they start pressuring their majority colleagues to stop this thing so there will be a chance for passage of other bills before the final adjournment.
As unpleasant as most of them are, as many times as this veteran observer of them realized hours of his life were disappearing in the ocean of blather and boredom (the same hours would disappear more pleasantly at home and in bed), they are an important part of government, a protection against steamrolling the minority or a faction of the majority. When you have no other weapons; when you are heavily outnumbered even by members of your own party; when you want to kill an abhorrent idea or even one that could be better if the overbearing sponsor doesn’t want anybody tampering with his precious idea—-talk becomes the only weapon.
Filibusters are awful things. But today’s pest is tomorrow’s ally. The tables might turn and those who are forced to listen today might be the talkers tomorrow and it’s important to recognize that possible reciprocity. Respecting in others the tool you might need to use someday yourself is important.
They work better when the competing parties respect each other enough to be willing to work out their differences. But when the two sides are so antagonistic that talk is impossible, extensive talk becomes even more essential.
Filibusters are part of our democratic-republic form of government. They might not be nice but they’re essential.
Sometimes they result in talking a bill to death. Other times they talk a bill into a better life.
Tools, after all, often have dual purposes. And the filibuster is an important tool in our political system.