As Fenno sets out these three goals of Congressmen, Mayhew, in his book "Congress, the Electoral Connection" (1974) asks the question whether Congressmen can affect their election and re-election chances, and if so, how? He accepts Fenno's elevation of re-election to the status of the primary individual goal and answers his own question by putting forth the argument that Congressmen can influence their election prospects by doing three main things: advertising, credit-claiming and position taking. Advertising consists of making sure that their name is known by the electorate, by using the free mailing privilege enjoyed by Congressmen to mail their constituents a newsletter detailing his achievements, for example. This is only a simple way of advertising, and some Congressmen have become masters at self-publicity, such as the two examples cited by Mayhew, namely Charles C. Diggs, Jr (D., Mich.), "who has run a radio program featuring himself as a 'combination disc jockey-commentator and minister' [and] Congressman Daniel J. Flood (D., Pa.) [who] is 'famous for appearing unannounced and often uninvited at wedding anniversaries and other events'" (Mayhew,1974:51). Congressional advertising serves to remind the constituents (lest they forget) of their particular Congressman's achievements and helps people recognise his name, for they are much more likely to vote for a familiar name on a crowded ballot paper than a totally unknown one.
The second way of maximising re-election chances that Mayhew puts forward, credit-claiming, is where a Congressman points to a particular piece of legislation or a localised benefit and says, "I did that". He tries to impress his constituents with what he has been doing for them, or at least what he can make them think that he has been doing for them, a point which is illustrated by a comment by a Republican member of the House Public Works Committee, "The announcements for projects are an important part of this... And the folks back home are funny about this - if your name is associated with it, you get all the credit whether you got it through or not" (Murphy,1968 in Mayhew,1974:55). Committee service is very useful for credit-claiming, as most of the electorate remain ignorant of what happens in Committee, allowing a Congressman to claim credit for virtually anything done in his Committee that he was at least vaguely involved with, and his fellow Committee members doing the same in their constituencies. Credit-claiming can be reduced to making the electorate think that the nice new building or the increased subsidy for the local industry was due to the local Congressman, which obviously makes them loth to vote out a Congressman who is bringing them all these benefits.
As credit-claiming is the pursuit of recognition for a Congressman's accomplishments in Congress (perceived or real), position-taking is the pursuit of recognition for expressing a particular opinion or idea. Some position-taking is obvious, for example a Congressman in a predominantly Catholic community would not be wise to strongly insist his support for abortion and contraception, but instead should strongly make it known to his constituents that he shares the same opinions as them. Another example of position-taking is drawing attention away from a particular Congressman's lack of appeal to another issue which will grip the public's attention, the prime example of this being Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist stance in the 1950's, for "McCarthy took up the Communist menace in 1950 not with any expectation that it would make him a sovereign of the assemblies, but with the single hope that it would help him hold his job in 1952" (Rovere,1961 in Mayhew,1974:69).
Having set out the individual goals of the members of Congress and the ways to achieve them, the institutional goals of Congress will now be set out. They can be summarised into four main areas; legislation, overseeing the executive and the bureaucracy, representation and education. The legislative powers of Congress were set out by the Founding Fathers in Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be invested in a Congress of the United States". Congress is empowered with the ability to make and pass the laws of the United States of America, although the emphasis in this area has moved to the President and now back again to Congress as the President and Congress' relative power has waxed and waned over the course of the life of the United States. Some areas, however, are the exclusive preserve of Congress such as declaring war, raising an army, and all the other powers granted by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
It is doubtful, however, that when the Founding Fathers drew up Congress as the major legislative body, they could possibly have foreseen ways of legislating such as 'log-rolling', whereby Congressmen agree to support someone else's bill if the other person will support theirs. This leads to huge bills with extremely varying pieces of legislation tacked on together, all passed as one bill, and if the President is radically opposed to just one part of the bill, he has to veto all the measures in the bill, even though there may be some good pieces of legislation in it. This state of affairs seems like it is going to change with the line-item veto proposal in the 'Contract with America', whereby the President can strike out all the measures added to the original bill, leaving only the original piece of legislation that began before all the other measures were added to it.
Overseeing the executive and the bureaucracy is an important function fulfilled by Congress as it proves that the President and his cabinet are not immune from the law, as Congress has the power of impeachment to remove the President if he has been proven to have broken the law, although a President would usually resign if they are about to be impeached, such as Nixon's resignation after the facts of Watergate came to light. Aside from the power to impeach a member of the executive when he is already in office, Congress has to ratify the President's appointments to such bodies as the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. These nominations usually pose no problems, but in recent years Congress refused to allow John Tower to be appointed to the Bush Cabinet, nearly stopped Judge Clarence Thomas from being appointed to the Supreme Court, and are currently voicing great opposition to Bill Clinton's nomination for Surgeon-General, after contributing to the resignation of the last one. This area of Congressional power is usually zealously carried out, especially when the President is a member of one party and Congress is controlled by the other.
The third major institutional goal of Congress is that of representation, a role that James Madison laid out, "it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that [Congress] should have an immediate dependency on, and an intimate sympathy with the people" (Rossiter [ed] 1961). This refers to the House of Representatives, as this is a much more representative institution than the Senate, having constituencies of approximately half a million people each in the House, whilst the Senate has two senators per state (a possible constituency of half of California), and is more of a geographical chamber than a representative one. As Congress is supposed to represent the people, it also has the goal of educating them, for if Congressmen are to know what their constituents want, their constituents must know first. It is therefore natural for Congress to be the major educative body, for it is the major representative body, and representation and education must both be effective to have true representation.
The individual and institutional goals in Congress have been laid out, but the question of how they affect each other still remains, as does the question of how to reconcile them if, indeed, they do differ. To begin to answer this question the aforementioned subject of Committees in Congress must be re-examined, along with the American party system and various other pertinent issues.
The Committee system, as has already been mentioned, is a useful area for Congressmen to engage in electorally useful activities such as credit-claiming and position taking. These two activities seem to clash with legislating, but the Committee system, with its division of labour, allows Congressmen to pursue their electorally useful activities and legislate from the same setting, the Committee, thus taking care of the Members' individual goals and institutional goals at the same time. In this situation it could be argued that the Committee system serves as a vehicle to unite the individual and institutional goals by enabling them both to be achieved from the same area, as at the same time that Congressmen are working on legislation in their particular Committee, they can also be working on bringing the benefits of that legislation to their particular constituency, thus heightening their chances of getting re-elected .
The problem arising from this scenario is the fact that the Congressman is working on the ways that a piece of legislation can aid his consistuency, and if he succeeds in bringing benefits to his constituency, then he can be said to have made good public policy for his constituents. The difficulty with this is that while he may succeed in making good public policy for his constituents, this is not necessarily the same as making good national public policy. A distinction must be made here between good local public policy and good national public policy, with the situation being that for electoral reasons, the individual Congressmen are more interested in making good local policy more than good national policy, as it is the voters of his constituency he is responsable to, not voters on a national scale
A major factor in causing this state of affairs is the American party system, and through reform of this it would be possible for voters to give their verdict on a party's performance on a national scale as opposed to an individual Congressman's performance on a local scale. As the system stands, it is difficult to promote a cohesive national party programme (the Republican 'Contract with America' is the exception, rather than the rule) due to the fact that the parties have little influence over the individual Congressman, instead it is "the Constituency [that] has a virtually unqualified power to hire and fire. If the member pleases it, no party leader can fatally hurt him; if he does not, no national party can save him" (Huitt & Peabody in Mayhew,1974:75).
There are a number of possible ways to strengthen the American party system, such as eliminating primaries so the party could select candidates to contest a particular seat, limiting individual spending, instead having the party dispense funds from the centre, an idea which would no doubt encourage party loyalty, but which would probably encounter problems on the grounds of it being 'unconstitutional'. If the party system was strengthened to become more like the British party system it would encourage more cohesiveness, making the public give their vote according to the performance of a party, not an individual, as the current system promotes. These measures to strengthen the party system would change the whole emphasis in American politics from local to national, also changing the emphasis of the individual goals by elevating the goal of making good national policy and working as part of a unit to get all the members of the same party re-elected, instead of spending all the time making sure that only one person gets re-elected. This would reconcile the two sets of goals, but would mean changing the whole philosophy of American politics to that of communitarianism, instead of the individualism that currently rules and would destroy the unique link between an individual Congressman and his constituents.
While changing the party system would be one possible way of reconciling the two sets of goals to a greater extent, another possible solution to the problem could be longer terms for House members. This would give them some breathing space from their constant electioneering to concentrate on making national policy as well as local, and could be achieved without totally changing the whole system like a large-scale reform of the party system would.
The current Congressional system is very fragmented, with 435 Representatives all trying to get a good deal for their constituents to the detriment of legislating for the national benefit. It is surprising that such an institution that "bleeds from 435 separate cuts" (Fenno,1978 in Mayhew,1974:43) still functions and does not fragment further into 435 Representatives at perpetual war with each other, each trying to secure benefits for their constituents to the detriment of everything else. The reason that it does not is that a Member who is going to make a career in Congress does not want it to get completely devalued as an institution because he, by association, would also become devalued, so he has an interest in keeping the institution as a whole from becoming diminished in the eyes of the public, an interest which can conflict with his re-election goal, but helps Congress continue to function.
To conclude, the fact that the individual and institutional goals in Congress can conflict with one another has been proved, but they do not necessarily conflict all the time, as in some circumstances they can overlap and even complement each other, depending on how a situation is viewed. What may look like two totally opposite goals can, in a certain situation, complement each other so that Congressmen who are working for their own interests can also be working for the interests of the institution as a whole.
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