Category Archives: legislature

The Hypocrisy of Term Limits

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Sometimes we write stuff here that won’t move the public needle but we do it to get something off our chest and into whatever public discussion flows from these pieces.  Truth be told, these columns have limited readership and since I don’t mess with Facebook or other social media platforms (I have a life and it is not lived between my thumbs), this wisdom reaches only a few feet from the mountaintop from which it is dispensed.

But today, we need to expose term limits for the hypocritical entity that they are. And the hypocrisy that voters showed in approving them thirty years ago this year.

We related some of the problems a few days ago.  There are two major points today, one that can be made in just a few words and the second one that will take a little more. The point, however, is the same—term limits are voter apathy and voter hypocrisy at their worst:

The first point is one we’ve made before—that voters gave up their right to vote for the people who represent them in the legislative chambers when they adopted a law saying they did not want the right to vote their state representative a fifth term or their state senator a third term.

They just threw away their votes.

Voters said we must have term limits to get new, fresh blood into our governments—-and then immediately contradicted themselves.

The same voters who approved limiting Missouri House members to only four two-year terms voted in the same election to return 53 members to the House of Representatives for a fifth term.

Of that 53, four were returned for their ninth term, one for a tenth term, two for their eleventh term and one for his SEVENTEENTH term.

Two years later, Missourians voted for 36 of these same people for still another term and gave fourteen others a fifth term or more.

And in 1996 voters sent 22 of them back again! And they gave 13 representatives fifth terms.

The last person affected by term limits to serve in the House of Representatives, as far as we have been able to determine, was Chris Kelly of Columbia, who was elected to his ninth and last term in 2012 after having been away from the House for several years.  He could have run for a tenth term but did not.

In all, Missouri voters who think term limits are good public policy have voted 263 times to elect state representatives to a fifth term (one was elected to a 19th during this time).

The Missouri Senate, a much smaller body, has seen voters send its members back for more than two terms 32 times.

That’s almost 300 times for both chambers of our legislature. .

And what does that say?

It says that if voters have a chance to vote for someone they like, they’ll do it.  But those voters of 1992 decided you and I won’t have that opportunity.

The second point is that term limits miss the target.  The real issue is POWER.  Instead, term limits cripples SERVICE.  The most dangerous people in our political system are the people in power.  They set the agendas.  They decide what legislation will be heard in committees or debated on the floors of the House and the Senate. They are in positions that attract financial support that hey might wish to share with a favored few.

Terms limits can be, should be, applied to those who can manipulate the system.  Speakers and Presidents Pro Tem have the power. The Governor and the Treasurer have policy and financial power in state government and limiting that power is a safeguard as would be limiting the years a person can lead a legislative body.

There is no doubt that incumbency has its advantages at campaign times.  But the answer to that advantage is not in taking away the right to vote for that person again instead of for an opponent. It is in making challengers more equal in presenting their cases.  Reforming the way campaigns are financed is an answer. The challenge is in finding a constitutional way to do it.

One way to start is to change term limits laws to apply to those in power and to restore the citizens’ right to pick their public servants.

Will voters reclaim their right?  In today’s political climate, it’s extremely doubtful regardless of how much we owe it to ourselves as voters and our system to do it.

There are people who are dying today to keep their version of democracy alive.  We smug Americans who too readily wrap ourselves in our flag and use it to justify all kinds of dubious remarks and actions cannot fully appreciate  how desperately millions of others want to hang on to something we regard so casually and irresponsibly and are willing to give away with so little thought.

But term limits are what we have and that’s what we are thirty years after Missourians gave away their right to vote for those speaking for them in the chambers where our laws are made.

PQ 

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The PQ is more formally known in parliamentary circles as the Previous Question.  Moving the previous question forces an immediate vote on whether debate should continue.  If the motion passes, a vote is immediately taken on the issue.

It’s a maneuver intended to stop endless debate that is leading to nothing productive. It has never been used, in your observer’s experience, by the party in power against a member of its own party.

But when endless debate within the majority party impedes productivity, the PQ against a member or members of the majority can become a matter of enforcing discipline.

The filibuster was rare and so was the previous question for most of the legislature’s history.  Both are internal disciplinary matters that have lost their value because of their abuse, one by excessive and unchecked use and the other by partisan practice.

Both are tools for advancement of the governmental process if they are respected as such.  Clearly, the filibuster has become a punitive tool abused by those who believe their actions will not be challenged by their own majority party.

In recent years the previous question has been used as a punitive step by the majority to avoid reconciliation and compromise with minority concerns.

The disrespect of the legitimate purposes of both has weakened respect for equals in the Senate chamber and has impeded progress in public policy.

Given conditions in the Senate this year, this seems to be the time for the majority party to use the previous question on some of its own members.

Such a departure from custom will send a strong message that there will be discipline in the Senate that allows the lawmaking process to progress.

Filibusters have had one of two results:

First, the majority side realized that time is exceedingly valuable and the only way to preserve it for important work is to reach sufficient compromise on an issue that the disagreeing parties will agree on a half-loaf that is better than no loaf at all. The lawmaking process advances, leaving continuation of a disagreement for another day—and another compromise.

Second, the minority party is able to either achieve enough of their points to step back from the confrontation, or no compromise is possible but the minority position will have a chance to be heard before other business can be brought up, eliminating the need to use the previous question.

In both cases, the purpose of the filibuster is respected.  The dignity of the Senate as a great deliberative body is protected.  And the concept that “everybody is a senator” is honored.

Allowing the filibuster to be abused creates a climate of disrespect that impedes public policy progress.  So does overzealous use of the previous question.  But judicious use of both retains a balance of discipline within the system.

And using it, even on a member of the controlling party, to restore Senate discipline seems to be a worthwhile step to take, especially if the purpose behind the motion is made abundantly clear to both sides.  It is likely there will be heated criticism from those who have locked down the Senate repeatedly for the first two months of this session but it is possible that most of the Senate membership will appreciate the message that our system of government is supported by a discipline of common respect among members.

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Jurassic government

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How many times will we hear the cheap, vague, promise to “fight big government” in this campaign year.  Candidates pressed by their voters—and the voters need to do this is great intensity—might come up with a statement that equally cheap and vague.

We’ve run into someone who actually thinks about that. He’s also realistic about what needs to happen—and what realistically can NOT happen,

Maybe he’s just whistling in the wind, but Professor Donald Kettl is suggesting the push toward smaller government is counterproductive.  He’s not arguing for bigger government but he does argue that there is an alternative to the philosophy that cutting “the size” of government is the silver bullet that will solve government’s problems.

Kettl is a former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the most prominent think tanks in Washington.  It calls itself non-partisan although media reports put it barely on the left side of the liberal-conservative scale (53 on a scale of 100).  Regardless of where you fall on that scale, his observations are worth evaluating.

Unlike many who rail against “big government” or proclaim government is “too big,” Kettl puts some serious thought behind what his contentions.

Kettle begins his 2016 book, Escaping Jurassic Government, with an observation partisans on both side of the government aisle seem to agree on: “There is a large and growing gap in American government, between what people expect government to do and what government can actually accomplish.”   Government, he offers, comes out poorly when the public compares what it can do with what the private sector does, an image worsened by the cynical “and sometimes nasty view” expressed through social media.

But he points to the contradictory nature of the public’s attitude toward government when he speaks of “citizens’ rising—and sometimes impossible—expectations about what government ought to do for them,” and continues, “No matter the issue, the first instinct when problems arise, even among the biggest advocates for smaller government, is to see government as the cavalry and wonder why it doesn’t arrive faster to help save the day….Almost no one likes big government, but no one expects to have to cope with problems alone.”

The result is what he calls Jurassic government.  “Like the dinosaurs, government is strong and powerful. But like the forces that led the dinosaurs to extinction, government is failing to adapt to the challenges it faces. American government struggles with its most important and fundamental decisions. Even worse, it too often fails to deliver on the decisions it makes. That wastes scarce public money and leaves citizens disappointed,” he writes.

How did we get here?   It’s simple, he says.  This country has lost its commitment to competence in government.  And he argues that competence cannot be restored simply by cutting funding for programs and agencies.

His book focuses on the federal government.  But the points it makes apply, too, to state government.  The goal, he says, is competence, not necessarily size.  “We need to restore government’s capacity to deliver on what we decide as a country we ought to accomplish…We do have it within our grasp to restore confidence that what the government seeks to do it will do well.”   But it won’t be easy.

Kettl notes that the growth of government has been a bipartisan affair—Democrats creating three and turning one into two.  Republicans have created three new departments and have reduced one (Nixon kicked the Post Office out of the cabinet).  But in terms of the thirty-two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has has fewer government employees as a share of the national workforce than the average among the OECD countries).  It might be surprising to realize that only one in eight federal bureaucrats work for the federal government.  Government spending as a share of the economy  is less than the average spending of those 32 nations.  Kettl says government employment has been flat at the state and local levels since the days of Ronald Reagan. The number of local government workers  has increased, however, as population has increased.

Is privatization the answer to reducing government costs? Kettl maintains it is not and, in fact, reduces accountability.  He cites several instances in which government has been criticized for failing to do its job—but it is the private contractor to whom that job has been outsourced that has failed—and accountability has suffered.

He notes the greatest increases in government costs is in entitlement programs while total government spending has stayed pretty flat.

He thinks liberals who want to increase government spending won’t get far because slow long-term economic growth will not provide much new money to pay for many initiatives.  And while conservatives want to cut government spending, most of the federal budget is consumed by payments on the national debt, entitlements, and defense spending.

At the state level, he says, the outlook is not good.  “The U. S. Government Accountability Office forecasts that state and local governments could face structural deficits for the next fifty years,” he writes.  Aging populations will put pressures on state governments while public opposition to higher taxes “make it unlikely” that state spending will grow.

The upshot of all of this, he suggests, is-–as he puts it in one of his chapter titles—“Government’s Size Can’t Change (Much),” and to condense much of the book into a line or two: cutting government’s ability to pay its bills only reduces government’s ability to do the things it is supposed to do well.

There is much, much more in Kettl’s book, a lot of it challenging traditional political rhetoric.  He thinks today’s efforts to “cut” government size actually is cutting government’s competence and it is the declining competence of government that creates a distrustful public that criticizes the government for not meeting its obligations. It seems to this reader that he is pleading for those in government as well as those who pay government’s bills and want government services to throw away the bumper stickers and to put on their thinking caps.

If you’re in government, his study is worth reading.  If you are one of those paying the taxes and taking the services, it’s worth reading, too.

The dinosaurs, he says, didn’t think about the changing world around them and move realistically to adapt.  And we know what happened to them.

We think that his thoughts are worth serious consideration whether you’re the 53 or the 47 on the liberal/conservative scale.

Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America’s Lost Commitment to Competence,  by Donald F. Kettl, published by Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2016.

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Two Worlds

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The General Assembly is spending this week on its annual spring break, a few days to relax, unwind and reload. And to do a little campaigning or campaign planning perhaps.

They’re back in the real world this week.  For those who haven’t seen their other world, the differences are hard to understand.

When a member of the Missouri General Assembly steps through an entrance of the Missouri Capitol, that person is stepping into a small, confined, hot world with little respite that tends to consume even the best of people for most of the first five months of the year before it spits them back out into the world from which they came.

And they’re glad to come back seven months later to step out of their comfortable home world through those doors and back into the collision of wills, the competition of ideas, and the fight over the words yes and no.

They move from a world of service to others into a world of demands from others. And the demands are unrelenting, sometimes with consequences implied if the demands are not met.

They might be active at home on issues of poverty, food shortages, spouse and child abuse, veterans needs, church work, homelessness, and other social issues that can’t afford high-powered influence in the hot little world that is the Missouri Capitol. And as they deal in the capitol with pressures from those that can afford to apply them, it might be hard to think of their gentler work at home.

Imagine lives lived in fifteen-minute segments, each segment featuring someone who wants something, or a world of one or two-hour meetings to listen to proposals pleasing to those in the Capitol hallways, and days of increasingly long sessions arguing about the propriety of answering demands and which ones to answer.

Imagine all of this far from the comfort of home, family, friends, and co-workers with whom they share their streets, or coffee, or church pews.

It is hard to remember in those eighteen weeks or so who is more important—the people they meet on the street back home or the people they meet in the hallways of the State Capitol.

Seldom is there time or opportunity to think about things in depth, to study issues in depth, to look for pitfalls in legislation in depth. The pressure to take what they are given, often not knowing all that is within the proposition, is enormous. Sometimes the pressure squeezes out reason, leads to action counter to what is best to those back home, and demands action without burden of thought.

This is the world of unrelenting movement, of unrelenting asks and demands, a world far detached from the freedoms enjoyed where they live.

Furthermore, it’s more than consuming. It’s addictive.

Plaques on the office wall from those whose bidding they have done. Checks in the campaign account to encourage or reward a vote.  Intense seeming friendships today that disappear when the last vote is cast that can benefit a person, a group, a cause.

This is the other world of the people we send to represent us in Jefferson City. As individuals, they return home the same people.  As a group, however, in the capitol they become “government,” an enemy to many.

Is there is a way to improve this system?

Ideally, yes.  Sometimes it’s a matter of those sent to Jefferson City to show courage in the face of pressures, to question more closely the things asked of them. But sometimes it’s the case of those who vote to send others to represent them in this small stone world we call the Missouri Capitol meeting a citizen’s responsibility to pay attention to issues that are not always “my backyard” issues.

Government does not take place only in the Capitols of our country.  Its roots are in the home towns of those who are sent forth. And the folks at home need to care, to pay attention, and to hold accountable those who are to speak for them in that hot little world.

 

The Whirlwind

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This year is the thirtieth anniversary of two major decisions made by Missouri voters.  One has proven itself to be a disaster for Missouri’s political system and the other has led to proof of the fallibility of the first.

Missouri voters hypocritically approved legislative term limits with a 75 percent favorable vote on November 3, 1992.

On the same day, Missourians went 62 percent in favor of what was then called “riverboat gambling.”

These two events have become a toxic political brew in our system of government.

In today’s discussion we are going to look at term limits.  Later we will discuss casino gambling.

The Old Testament minor prophet Hosea, a contemporary of more important prophets Isaiah and Micah, warned metaphorically of the downfall of Israel for its various sins—lying, murder, idolatry, and covetousness, along with spiritual and physical adultery, these latter two characteristics personally experienced by Hosea and his wife Gomer.  Gomer carried on with another man.  The faithful Hosea accused Israel of spiritual adultery.

He warned that Israel and Judah would fall:

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

Term limits was the wind.  We are reaping the whirlwind in the Missouri General Assembly—most particularly in the Missouri Senate.  But the term limits whirlwind is not just blowing in the Senate which heads towards its spring break at the end of this week with only one bill approved in weeks of division, derision and disrespect. It is felt less in the House where its impact is less visible because it is more controlled.

It rages in the Senate where unlimited debate among the 34 members is still considered a virtue—as it should be if members respected it more than they abuse it.  The House has rules that are necessary in a chamber of 163 members to limit the time a member may speak on an issue.

The public, which has little interest in the more subtle or arcane factors of lawmaking, bought the idea that politicians should be limited to a maximum of eight years in the House and eight in the Senate because politicians are basically—

Crooked.

—Except for their own representative or senator.  While voting to limit House members to four terms and Senate members to two terms, many of those 1992 voters were electing their Representatives and Senators to terms five or three in many districts.

The voters voted to restrict their own right to vote when they for term limits.  This year, voters in will be prohibited from considering whether five of their Senators deserve a third term. In most of those cases, those Senators will never again have the privilege of representing their citizens on the floors of the House or the Senate.  Voters in 1992, most of whom do not live in those senatorial districts, decided these five are no longer fit to serve regardless of how distinguished their work might have been.

But terms limits is more dangerous than that.

Those of us who voted in that election were warned that term limits would destroy the institutional memory that is vital to lawmaking. Senior lawmakers who knew the value of respecting the other side of the aisle, of knowing that today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend, who understood that collegiality benefitted the people of Missouri more than hostility, disappeared.  With no one to teach newcomers the importance of legislative control of the lawmaking process, that control passed to outsiders.

I watched the first crumbling of the legislative process.  The first piece fell the first time I heard the sponsor of a bill ask a colleague offering an amendment, “Have you run this past so-and-so in the hall?,”  clearly an indication that a blessing from a lobbyist (lobbyists are not allowed within the floor of the chambers during debate) was necessary for acceptance of the amendment.

Later as cell phones became more ubiquitous, I watched debaters with their cellphone in their hands checking for text messages that influenced the debate.  Technology has put the lobbyists in the chambers.

There also have been other indications that much of the power of lawmaking has shifted from the bests interests of constituents being argued on the floors of the House and Senate to the best interests of those in the hallways being transmitted into the discussion from outside.

I watched the disappearance of lawmakers capable of amendments written by hand during the debate, replaced by pauses in debate so a legislative staff member could write what he or she was asked to write—the origin of the amendment sometimes in a text message from outside.

In the entire first half of this legislative session, only one bill has been approved by both chambers and sent to the governor. Just one.

The wind the voters sowed in 1992 is the whirlwind of 2022 and in the splintered and often dedlocked Missouri Senate, at least, (and in the Congress as well) “The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

And legislative bodies—Congress and state assemblies alike—seem unwilling to prove they serve above the low regard the public has for them.

 

“We should look for common honesty”

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He signed his letter, “A Voter,” which many newspaper editors would not allow today and rightfully so. Whether you let off steam or offer calm advice, the writers of letters to the editor should have the courtesy and courage to sign their names.

But hear the voice of “A Voter” from a time when our state was but three years old and the first presidential election since Missouri joined the Union was only weeks away.  He wrote to the editor of the Missouri Intelligencer, our first outstate newspaper—published in Franklin. The words in the June 5, 1824 issue are valid today.

It is…common, in all governments, for those who seek for offices, to woo the power that can bestow them; and, in our government, the man who cannot, or who will not, flatter the people, may content himself in private life…

To facilitate his design, the first object of a candidate is to discover our hobby; and when found, mount it and ride without mercy…My heart misgives me every time a new circular is announced, or whenever a fresh candidate mounts a stump, lest the poor jade should not be able to hold out to the end. It is thought, however, if a candidate rides gracefully, he will do…I cannot suppose that this is a general belief—but some, we know, have more confidence in vicarious power than others.

The time is approaching when we shall be called on to exercise that inestimable franchise of free men, the right of suffrage, to its full extent. And, as all power is primarily in the people, the right of suffrage is not only a privilege, but a duty obligatory on all; and to him that is remiss in this duty, the sin of omission may be fairly imputed.

In performing this duty, then, it is incumbent on us to deliberate before we act; and before we give our voices to any man to perform any of the functions of our government, if he has not passed the ordeal of a public trial, let us first, if possible, ascertain if he is the man he professes to be. 

I am aware of the impracticability of personally knowing every man who offers his services. But every man who is constitutionally eligible to important trusts under our state government is known by some in whose probity and impartiality others may justly confide. And, where we cannot obtain personal knowledge, the information of men of integrity and who have had opportunity to possess that knowledge, may be relied on.

I admit that it is vain to look for perfection in man…We should not look for great talents and splendid acquirements to fill every office.  But we should look for common honesty and if a man possess no other qualifications but such as would entitle him to a diploma from an academy for horse-jockeys, I think he is not entitled to any post of trust or profit under our government.

A lot of words are thrown around during election seasons, as we saw in 2020 and will see again this year, some irresponsibly and some sincerely. “Common honesty” might be a high goal, but it’s one we should demand of those who want our votes. To fail to do so is to sell ourselves cheaply.

Outgrowing Ourselves

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Picked up a copy of The Pathway the other day to read while I was having lunch at Chez Monet, which has moved back into the capitol basement to run the cafeteria.  The newspaper is a publication of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

The lead story told me that a bill in the state senate “threatens the First Amendment rights of Missouri Christians.”  Since I consider myself one of those, I thought I should learn about this threat to me.

The bill is the Missouri Non-Discrimination Act. It would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “It masquerades as equal treatment for all, but it results in unequal treatment for people of faith like Colorado baker Jack Philips and Washington florist Baronelle Stutzman, Christians in business who seek to live out their faith in the marketplace.”

The article is critical of MONA and its federal counterpart, the Federal Equality Act, by extending prohibitions against discrimination in hiring or lodging based on race, national origin, and age.

The publication complains the bill would “penalize and discriminate against everyday Missourians for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.”

This is a ticklish area because there are those who suggest non-Christians are behind such words. Then there are Christians who believe they MUST be behind those words.

The conflict results in some proclaiming that others can’t be Christians if they don’t support this kind of language. Or that some can’t be Christians if they DO support it.

And then there are some who question the Christianity of those who would argue about that.

—which bring us to a fundamental question of whether Christianity is an inclusive faith or an exclusive faith, a Big Church Faith or a Little Church Faith.

The article says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God…..”

I confess that I sometimes wonder how to balance an omnipotent Creator God with a God who seems to make a mistake in creating someone who is gay or someone who does not identify with their birth gender.  Isn’t an omnipotent God immune from making such mistakes?

Or are we really all God’s children?  How can all of us be God’s children if some of us are gay and gay people are to be treated differently by Christians because it turns out not all of us are God’s children after all, or so they suggest.

I gave you only part of the sentence a minute ago.  The full sentence says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God, family, marriage, sexuality, community, decency and religious liberty.”

Is it possible for a family with a gay child to really be a Christian family?  Can a gay or transgender person practice Freedom of Religion or does their gender identity impair their ability to be followers of the Christ?  Are they, at best, second-class Christians if they are Christians at all?

There have been times in our history when good Christian black and white people could not marry and even to be seen together was risky because others subscribed to “convictions based on Scripture.”  It offended Christian decency and was some kind of an insult to a community (small “c”).

Maybe there’s something wrong with me when the simple words of a hymn many of us sang as children keeps going through my head.

“Praise Him, praise Him, all ye little children, God is Love, God is love; Praise him praise Him all ye little children, God is love, God is love.”

When the Disciples rebuked Jesus for touching infants that had been brought to him, he told them, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God.”

He also told the disciples, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Given a chance to follow their natural impulses, children of all races, creeds, and nationalities will play together without judgment.  One might grow to be gay. Another might grow up to be transgender.  But that makes no difference when they are children involved in the innocence of play.

It’s too bad that we have to grow up and require laws that make us play nice together—or to separate us on the basis of some exclusive righteousnss or other.

Sometimes I think we are born as children of God.

And then we outgrow it.

I Mourn for the Missouri Senate

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I was talking to one of our state senators a few days ago in one of the side galleries when he said, “I think I’m witnessing the death of the senate.”

If so, it has been a long and agonizing death.

If this is what the Missouri Senate is to be, he’s correct. And it hasn’t been just a death. It’s been a slow suicide. The life-blood of the body has slowly seeped away, leaving a once-deliberative and respectful lawmaking chamber splintered and dominated by a self-centered, small but power-hungry, group that has brought the place to near anarchy.

Make no mistake: the senate has been the scene of some fierce battles, even wars perhaps. But respect for its customs, traditions, and its famous unwritten rules has imposed an inner discipline that has served it well.

The increasingly painful decline and drift away from those characteristics seem to have two points of origin.

The sacrifice of public responsibility represented by the adoption of term limits is one of the points.  The rise of those I call Gingrich Republicans is the other.

Term limits is the disaster its opponents warned us it would be. Voters willingly but hypocritically gave up their rights to vote for someone who had earned their confidence and in doing so laid the groundwork for the sad spectacle we have seen in the senate for the past three weeks, a situation that is a tyranny imposed by a minority.

A small group of senators demanding a new congressional district map that serves the purpose of political power more than it serves the purpose of fair political representation has stopped almost everything else from moving with actions that disrespect the very thing in which they are engaged—the filibuster.

The filibuster historically has been a tool that forces two disagreeing sides eventually to find some acceptable middle ground, assuming the two sides have a modicum of good will. Sometimes no agreement is possible.  The losing side, while not getting some or any of its wishes, nonetheless recognizes that it has at least aired its grievances and allows the process to move ahead despite the differences so the process can serve the people’s needs on other issues.

That has not been the case in the senate this year. A small group has decided it must have a map drawn its way to expand the power of one party or the people at large who are expecting the makers of law to take actions that protect and serve them are out of luck.

The attitude has irritated colleagues of both parties, has aggravated a bipartisan group of women senators, and has gotten on the nerves of the senate leadership.  When one of the contentious crowd violated one of the unwritten decorum rules by wearing bib overalls on the floor (even with a coat and tie) and was called on it by the President Pro Tem, he instead of quickly leaving and returning properly dressed argued about it.  For elevating what should have been a small issue into a larger public one, he was penalized with the loss of most of his committee assignments—which led to another extended period of reading from a book instead of publicly apologizing to the Senate.

Parents sometimes have to deal with a defiant child by taking away some privileges. The same holds true in a public body of government.

How does term limits fit this situation?

A deliberative body such as the Senate must have within its being a deep traditional sense of respect for the chamber, the processes, and the members. The saying, “Everybody is a Senator” is more than a statement recognizing an elected title.  It is a proclamation that all participants in the senate process are equal and will be respected as equals, that the title is greater than the individual. Respect for the title and the mutual recognition of shared courtesies required for progress are essential and those who disregard those responsibilities and therefore disrupt the work of the senate for their own purposes are subject to discipline.

These are qualities of service in the Senate that once were taught to new members by those who had served for years, perhaps decades, and knew from life experience that respect for individuals and the system were the keys to responsible lawmaking.

But term limits have robbed our legislative bodies of that valuable institutional knowledge and have left them liable for disruptive actions that undermine responsible lawmaking. And the situation has deteriorated so badly that some wonder if the Senate can ever recover enough of those values to be the effective body it once was.

The second factor that has led to the present debacle was the advent of the Gingrich Republicans in the early 1990s.  The take-no-prisoners style of politics was almost immediately disruptive of the deliberative process that was the culture of the Senate.  The early small and disruptive  element increased as years went by. Increasingly, filibusters increased and a small dissident group learned how it could hold the floor for hours and passed along that knowledge so that the filibuster became less of a tool of compromise and more of a sledgehammer of force.

Distressingly, what we are seeing in Missouri is not uncommon in other states and is on flagrant display in our national politics.  Some have suggested term limits are needed for Congress.

Congressional disarray is already frightening enough.  What has been happening in Missouri should be a warning of the danger to democracy that term limits in Washington would bring.

Where we are in the state senate has been a long time coming.  Those who have watched the  deterioration of the chamber and who cannot see an end to this distressing set of events wonder if deliberative and respectful government can be returned to our capitol—and to our nation.

You and I, dear readers, are the ones who hold that future in our hands.

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The sphere of her usefulness

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We were reading Tessa Weinberg’s Missouri Independent article a few weeks ago about the eleven women members of the Missouri Senate who have put together a children’s book that tells the stories of the 36 women who have served and are serving in the Senate.  We thought, “I need get some copies of that book for my granddaughters.”

And then I’m going around office-to-office and have the authors sign them.  .

I have known all 36 of those women senators which says (a) I’m an old guy, or (b) women were late in arriving in the Senate. Actually, there is no “or” about it.  Both observations are true.

A few days ago, while looking for something else, I came across this article from the St. Louis Daily Evening Herald Newspaper and Commercial Advertiser of June 10, 1836.

EMIGRATION OF THE RIGHT SORT

The predominance of the female over the male sex, in the ancient commonwealth of Massachusetts, is very great. In some towns, according to the last census, the proportion is more than two to one, and the excess in the whole state is more than 14,000. Of course, there must of necessity be 14,000 old maids in Massachusetts, over and above the number that goes to offset the old bachelors, (the fools) which may perhaps account for half as many more. Twenty thousand old maids in the single commonwealth of Massachusetts! Now although we have no antipathy to an old maid (we have to an old bachelor though) having always found that much abused class sensible, good-natured, and conversible, yet it must be admitted that in this position, the woman can never manifest the higher qualities of her nature. It is as a wife, a mother, at the head of a family, presiding over the destinies of an infant and miniature commonwealth, that the woman shines forth in all the loveliness of those moral excellences of which she is capable.

Without this, the sphere of her usefulness is greatly circumscribed, and although we may confidently expect that she will not do much harm, neither can she do much good.  We are therefore glad to learn that a company of “industrious, capable and intelligent” young women are about to start from Northampton, Mass., for the valley of the West.  They are needed as school teachers, to fulfill the various mechanical employments which are the province of their sex, and above all, they are needed as the sweeteners of the toil and hardships of our young men who now, in great numbers, are laboring in unblessed loneliness over the vast domains of the west. These young women come out under the protection of a gentleman, and we do not hesitate, in the name of all that is pure and lovely, to promise them a hearty welcome from all classes of our fellow citizens.

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There are a lot of things to read into this article. Dismissing it as “quaint” might not be fair, though.  It’s part of our history, an understanding of the role of women in society—which was largely and quietly accepted on both sides of the gender line—an appreciation of a sort of the contribution women even in those un-emancipated times played in the home and the community—a comment on the loneliness of life on the frontier (1836 was the year that the Platte Purchase added the northwest corner to our state), and other issues.

It also is a commentary on the Missouri pioneer editor, a more colorful purveyor of that profession than we seem to have today.  I think many of these guys just had more fun in those days, whether it was in the gentle writing of this story or the more partisan pronouncements that were not uncommon in the columns of the time.

A little less than ninety years later, a woman’s place was in the House (of Representatives) in Missouri, and fifty years after that the Senate became a woman’s place, too.

These eleven senators did something important in putting together this book that the menfolk in the Senate might want to learn from.  These eleven women recognized they could do something good by forgetting about party politics, getting together over food and drink, and accomplishing something useful not for themselves but for those whose futures are far from determined.

Would that more people could do that in these times when fighting seems more important than accomplishing, when concerns about power supplant commitments to service. .

We hope that not too many years in the future a woman—perhaps one of these eleven or a young woman who reads their book—manifests “the higher qualities of her nature” by occupying the governor’s office.

As the title of the book says, “You can, too.”

YAKYAKYAKYAKYAK

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It is Valentine’s Day.  And there’s not much love in the Missouri Senate.

I recently listened to the killing filibuster in the Senate on the confirmation of the state health director’s appointment. Afterwards I spent a couple of more rewarding hours watching some paint dry.

That was nothing, however, compared to the long-running tantrum that was started last week by a minority of the majority party who objected to a proposed congressional district map. It is still ongoing as this new week begins.

I am afraid that by the time it ends, three species will have gone extinct and become fossils.

I was reminded of an article in the Boonville Missouri Register of July 16, 1840 about a speech given in Jefferson City by A. G. Minor, a Whig—the newspaper leaned Democratic:

“He opened his speech with a flowery declamation…He then went on for quantity…It was one of those stereotyped editions of Whig oratory you may hear any time and place where a number of Whigs are congregated together…Thus he trudged along through a two hours and a half speech, and left us as wise as we were when we commenced.”

Been there.  Know that, from many hours listening to filibusters in the State Senate. I always started legislative sessions with a new Filibuster Book, something to read while somebody exhausted themselves saying nothing worth remembering for hours on end—-which is okay as a tactic but makes one desperate for a newly-painted wall for sanity maintenance.  Unless the one enduring the display has a good book.  One way or another, I was determined to survive these events MORE than as wise as I was at the start.

Old-time speech-making was often colorful—and lengthy.  Two-hour speeches from the stump were not rare.  Two-hour sermons weren’t either. We have become significantly more sophisticated now.  Our televangelists can take only about 18 minutes to convince us we’re all going to Hell although we might face better alternatives if we help them for their next executive jet.

We have examples of those sometimes more eloquent expositions because newspapers sometimes printed speeches in their entirety or printed lengthy excerpts. Representative John E. Pitt of Platte County introduced legislation in January1859 to print 100 handbills announcing the celebration of the Battle of New Orleans on January 8.  He told his colleagues:

Gentlemen keep continually talking about economy. I, myself, do not believe in tying the public purse with cobweb strings, but when retrenchment comes in contact with patriotism, it assumes the form of “smallness.”

Such economy is like that of an old skinflint, who had a pair of boots made for his little boy, without soles, that they might last longer. (Laughter.)

I reverence “the day we celebrate.” It is fraught with reminiscences the most cheering; it brings to mind one of the grandest events ever recorded in letters of living fire upon the walls of the temple of time by the god of war!

On such occasions we should rise above party lines and political distinctions.

 I never fought under the banner of “old Hickory,” but, “by the eternal” I wish I had. (Laughter and applause.) If the old war-horse was here now he would not know his own children from the side of Joseph’s coat of many colors—Whigs, Know-Nothings, Democrats, hard, soft, boiled, scrambled and fried Lincolnites, Douglasites, and blather-skites!

I belong to no party; I am free, unbridled, in the political pasture. Like a bob-tailed bull in fly time, I charge around in the high grass and fight my own flies. (Great laughter.)

Gentlemen, let us show our liberality on patriotic occasions. Why, some men have no more patriotism than you could stuff through the eye of a knitting needle. Let us not squeeze five cents till the eagle on it squeals like a locomotive or an old maid. Let us print the bills and inform the public that we are as full of patriotism as are the Illinois swamps of tad poles.

I don’t believe in doing things by halves. Permit me, Mr. Speaker, to make a poetical quotation from one of our noblest authors. “I love to see the grass among the red May roses, I love to see an old gray horse, for when he goes, he goeses.” (Convulsive laughter.)

The comments were reported in the Weekly California News, published in Moniteau County, on January 29, 1859.

John Brooks Henderson, seeking to be a state representative in his first try for public office, remarked at a July 4th event in Pike County in 1847:

Though all former governments have fallen and yielded to the corroding influences of time, and shared the fate of all other human concerns, yet there are principles, firm as the unchangeable rocks of Adamant, upon which the fabric of government will stand, until human affairs shall have ceased and Heaven’s Messiah shall fill the throne of peace. These principles are founded upon the equality of mankind, upon truth, reason and justice; and the government whose foundations rest upon these, and whose strength is dependent upon the free will of a virtuous people, will only fail when time shall grow hoary with age, and nature herself shall decay.

In the days long before audio and video recordings, the only way people could learn what was said in those patriotic speeches was to read them in newspapers such as the Democratic Banner, published in the Pike County seat of Louisiana, in this case, on August 16, 1847.

Henderson, by the way, became a Union Army officer whose troops “conquered” Callaway County early in the Civil War. Later, as a U.S. Senator, he was one of those who voted against impeaching President Andrew Johnson, a courageous step that cost him his senatorship.

One more example of rhetoric of the 19th century that puts speakers of today to shame.  Walter B. Stevens, in his Centennial History of Missouri (The Center State), published in 1921, tells of an Ozarks preacher of the early 1800s who might have offered this prayer over a young man bitten by a rattlesnake:

We thank Thee, Almighty God, for Thy watchful care over us and for Thy goodness and tender mercy, and especially we thank Thee for rattlesnakes. Thou hast sent one to bite John Weaver. We pray Thee to send one to bite Jim, one to bite Henry, one to bite Sam, one to bite Bill; and we pray Thee to send the biggest kind of a rattlesnake to bite the old man, for nothing but rattlesnakes will ever bring the Weaver family to repentance. There are others in Missouri just as bad as the Weavers. We pray Thee to stir up Missouri, and, if nothing else will bring the people to repentance, we pray Thee to shower down more rattlesnakes. Amen!

We say “might have offered” because the story might be apocryphal.  But it’s too good a story to go untold to future generations.

This prayer offers something to all of us who are tired of the obviating, posturing, and prevaricating in our political discourse.  For those who do not consider being inspiring, humorous, and uplifting while they fill the air, instead, with boring verbosity, “we pray thee to shower down more rattlesnakes.”