Yes? No?
Anyway, as mere anarchy was loosed upon the party, that brought pressure to change the rules. When the Democrats' 40-year streak started, there was a formal party rule on how it selected committee chairs. The most senior Democrat on any committee automatically became chair, whenever they had the majority. Guess who got to chair the most important committees?
That's right. Southerners. Why? They were the most senior. They never lost. Get elected as a Democrat from the South, and you were safe because from the Civil War through much of the 20th Century, being a Republican in the South was like being a dark-skinned person at a Trump rally. So, racist shitbag Southerners chaired the most important committees. Seniority. It was an actual, formal rule.
As the composition of the party began to change, with more Northern liberals and relatively fewer Southerners, the party got ever more frustrated by this. Why? All it took was one recalcitrant Southern committee chair refusing to move on a bill, and the bill was dead, and the formal rules of the chamber meant that these cranky, creepy old motherfuckers were automatically the chairs of their committees. By the 1970s, the tension in the party between the Northern liberals and the Southerners brought about a bunch of formal rule changes. Lots of 'em. The most important, for our purposes here, is that the seniority rules were relaxed, and three committee chairs were sacked to make examples for the rest. Stop stopping our bills, motherfuckers! Otherwise, musical chairs, and when the music stops, you're on your ass!
Two good books here: David Rohde's Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House, and my old grad school advisor, Nelson Polsby's How Congress Evolves.
A few quick points about this. First, there was a real ideological dispute here. Liberals versus conservatives within the party, with the latter blocking bills proposed by the former, affecting policy outcomes. Second, one of the important functions of committees is that they play an informational role. A properly composed Congress will divide up responsibilities, and you get specialization because everyone can't know everything about everything. The seniority rule, as operating, wasn't serving that. It was just serving as an ideological distortion. Good book on informational roles for committees: Keith Krehbiel's Information and Legislative Organization.
Anyway, part of the result is that this centralized power in the party leadership. Party leaders can influence who chairs committees, and since seniority doesn't guarantee chairmanships, chairs must be responsive to party leaders. That was actually kind of the point. The Southerners were countermanding the influence of the more liberal Democratic leadership.
Now, fast-forward to 1994 and the beginning of the end of Congress, when mere anarchy truly is loosed upon the institution. As the centre fails to hold and polarization takes root, what happens? The worst is full of passionate intensity*. His name is Newton Leroy Gingrich. What kind of blood-dimmed tide sweeps across Congress when he becomes Speaker? Lots. More kinds than references I can make in a blog post, and that's a fuckload! Anyway, in terms of rule changes, the rough beast that slouched towards** Bethlehem to be born was as follows. Two decades earlier, the Democrats relaxed the seniority rules such that the most senior member of the committee (of the majority party) wasn't automatically chair. He, with the gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun, instituted term limits for committee chairs. Under the new rules created by Republicans in 1995, committee chairs would only serve for six years, maximum. After that, well...
OK, now that's just fucking stupid, but was also part of a pattern for Newton. He hollowed out committee resources so that they couldn't do research, and basically tried to centralize all power for himself. This is where you really start cutting into the informational role of committees.
Term limits are fucking stupid. There are few ideas in politics as idiotic as term limits. Any position in politics is a job. OK, so no matter how well you have done your job, we're throwing you out-- firing you-- and replacing you with someone of less experience, just fuckin' 'cuz. Yeah, I wrote about this.
This makes sense, how?! Back in '94, the Republicans were on a term limits kick. A bunch of those numbskulls actually took pledges that they were only going to serve, say, three or four terms total in Congress. I have a couple of favorites. Going into the 1994 election, the Speaker was Tom Foley. His challenger was George Nethercutt. A group called US Term Limits, pushing for a nationwide limit on House terms, backed Nethercutt, who took a 3-term pledge to step down after six years, no matter what. Nethercutt beat Foley! He beat the sitting Speaker! Holy shit, right?! Then... six years came around. And... he didn't step down. US Term Limits tried to take Nethercutt out and failed.
Then, there was Scott McInnis. Dude took a four-term pledge in '92, and then broke it after saying that he just didn't get that there were actually benefits to seniority in Congress! Even after mere anarchy got loosed, you still needed seniority to get transferred to the best committees, etc., and this useless fuckwit didn't know it!
Anyway, experience matters. Knowledge matters. Go figure that I, a professor, would write something like this. Hell, I'm giving you references to books by scholars like Nelson Polsby, David Rohde, Keith Krehbiel, and weaving the post together with William Butler Yeats. Yeah, I'm an elitist snob, and proud of it. Term limits are fundamentally anti-intellectual. They are based on the notion that the people who do better work are the ones with less experience, and less knowledge. This isn't about an ideological struggle between Northern liberals and Southern conservatives over civil rights.
It's just a matter of whether or not you think knowledge and expertise matter. Term limits are fucking stupid.
Which brings me to the tea party-fication of the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi has almost certainly locked in the Speakership, but there are two more things going on right now, which both betray the utter stupidity of her opponents, and the growing idiocy of the House Democratic caucus. First, as part of the pressure on her during her campaign to become Speaker again, twits like Seth Moulton had been demanding a timeline for when she steps down. This isn't about formal term limits, but it speaks to the general point of demanding that the best and most experienced person step down and let someone less qualified take over.
There is no other context in which anyone who even pretends to have a brain argues for this kind of shit. If someone is doing a good job, keep that person on the job. Fire them if they are doing a bad job. Period.
More importantly, though, what is now being debated in the House Democratic caucus is whether or not they adopt the same stupid rules the GOP has on committee chairs. It didn't really become an issue for the Democrats during their reign from 2007-2011 because with only four years, a six-year limit would have been moot. Now, though, Pelosi's opponents really are sounding just as idiotic as that proto-Trump, Newton Leroy Gingrich. Term limits for committee chairs. Yes, Pelosi's opponents are pushing for the same stupid shit that the proto-Trump used to tear down the institution under his ill-fated reign.
[Facepalm]
Why? Here's what they don't have. A policy-based, outcome-based argument. In the 1970s, the reforms that the Democrats instituted were a response to Southerners blocking Northern-backed legislation. That isn't what motivates Pelosi's opponents. They don't have an ideological dispute in any policy area. Remember that letter of opposition to her Speakership? It was all bullshit. There is no formal seniority rule. If any of the younger members work their asses off and show that they have what Pelosi has, she'd pick them to chair a committee. She's a pragmatist.
There are two elements to this. One is that some of the Democratic teabaggers want to skip the hard work, and they think that term-limiting chairs will give them a faster track to a chair. The other set, somewhat more innocently-- let's call them the best who lack conviction, or innocence to be drowned, or something-- just think that everything in politics should be done with some kind of childish, taking-turns thing. As opposed to, you know, actually having people with knowledge and skill accomplish anything.
Maybe Pelosi should just create a bunch of bullshit new committees for them, mint up some "I'm a winner" trophies, put gold stars on their precious, little foreheads and take them out for ice cream. That won't deal with the lazy bums who just want a fast track to chairmanships without having to put in the kind of work that she did, but it would solve some of her problems.
Term limits. There really aren't many ideas in politics dumber than this. The fact that it is catching on in the Democratic Party, among Pelosi's opponents, tells you a lot about what's really happening.
Vexing. Nightmarish. OK, that's enough poetry for today.
*You know, I just start writing these things, and I never know how much mileage I'm going to get out of a reference until it plays out. Writing is weird that way.
**People have gotten on my case about "towards" in the past. "Toward" is more common in modern American usage, but both are technically correct. Yeats used "towards." Fuckin' Yeats, motherfuckers! I'm fine writing "towards" any time I like.
