The 94th Congress that assembled last week is sprinkled with bright new members who seem intent on embarking in new directions. Oddly enough, this promising shift is the result of last November's torpid election, in which only 38% of Americans of voting age cast ballots. That apathetic performance confirms a disillusionment with politicians that has been gathering for a long time.
"From the beginning of the Republic," House Speaker Nicholas Longworth once complained, "it has been the duty of every freeborn humorist to make jokes at us." He may have had in mind Mark Twain's crack that Congress is our only native American criminal class. But there have been times in recent years when the entire nation could have been indicted for contempt of Congress.
Politicians have a bad name: a lot of fathers would not want their daughters to marry one, and candidates' wives openly express the wish that their husbands were in some other line of work. But at the very least, politicians are entitled to plead, in the words of the old song: "You made me what I am today, I hope you're satisfied." That plea will probably get them about as much sympathy as the jilted lover gets, but it deserves to be considered. Complacent public discussion usually turns on the poor quality of the candidates up for election. Only rarely are two more pertinent questions asked: In its demands, is the public emphasizing the wrong qualities in a man? And is the public making failure inevitable by entertaining false expectations of what a man can do in office? These questions apply to all politicians, even to the ones who become Presidents.
The very public that asks politicians to be statesmen will not forgive them for failing to look first after that public's narrower interests. The first bleak lesson a young idealist in politics learns is that his idealism may give him an attractive freshness, but his durability in office will be decided on more practical grounds: by a public looking for a public servant. Thus Gerald Ford probably did not think of himself as cynical but as merely plying his trade when he cautioned reporters not to judge how he would act in the White House on the basis of how he had voted in Congress. "Forget the voting record," he said. "The voting record reflects Grand Rapids."
Compare that with Edmund Burke's celebrated 18th century address to the electors of Bristol, in which he promised the voters not obedience to their desires but the free exercise of his judgment. Burke's elevated remark won an enduring place in political history—but he soon fell out of favor with his Bristol electors. America's founding fathers decreed that Congressmen should face re-election every two years to give them "immediate dependency" on the electorate. A public that scorns Congress as a whole usually likes its own Congressman, particularly if he has made it his business to please them. For all the talk of throwing the rascals out, close to 90% of Congressmen regularly win reelection. Often, it is not just that the down-home voters like (or at least tolerate) their man in Washington, but that they recognize that his increased seniority helps him to do better by his district.
Incumbency is thus a politician's most cherished possession.