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Bureaucrats also have difficulties in dealing with this Congress. State Department officials complain that legislators are interfering in the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy. For example, at the instigation of California Democrat Yvonne Burke, the House Appropriations Committee last year cut aid to the Philippines because of human rights violations. Some old hands in the Pentagon miss the days when they had to deal only with a few committee chairmen to get money for new planes or ships. Now the Pentagon has to work with many more Congressmen, as well as with countless powerful aides.
Further, the Defense officials protest, a lot of independent Congressmen are attempting what amounts to "micromanagement" of Pentagon programs. The House Appropriations Committee last year wrote nearly 400 pages of instructions to the Defense Department on how it was to spend its $116 billion budget; a decade ago, the instructions rarely exceeded 40 pages. Senior Defense officials are also spending more time testifying on Capitol Hill and, under increasingly expert questioning by members of Congress and their aides, liking it less. In 1976, 1,721 Pentagon witnesses appeared before congressional committees, up from 630 in 1964.
Few Democrats feel an obligation to support their President's positions, in part because most of them ran ahead of him at the ballot boxes in 1976. The President hurt himself further by at first showing little patience with the legislators and by making no real effort to consult with them. But Republican Senator Robert Dole of Kansas believes that no President could guide the votes of many members in the current Congress. Says he: "Most of them are no longer going to jump up when they get a call from the President, whether he is Carter, Ford or anybody else. They want to help him, but they also put their fingers up to see which way the wind is blowing."
Democratic leaders of Congress have had trouble imposing even the minimum amount of discipline needed to keep the House and Senate running smoothly. Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress from Washington's Catholic University, observes of the junior members of Congress: "Their politics is based not on compromise but on symbolism and opposition to authority. It's the politics of individualism." Michigan Democrat Don Riegle, a ten-year House veteran who was elected to the Senate in 1976, thinks the job of congressional leadership is virtually impossible, "like trying to ride a Brahma bull." Adds John Anderson of Illinois, the third-ranking Republican leader in the House: "A huge majority has to be under some type of discipline to be effective. If everybody says he is king of the hill, then it's going to be a disorderly hill."
In the Senate, Robert Byrd knows all the parliamentary tricks for staying on top of the hill and uses them when necessary. Lyndon Johnson twisted arms and forcibly pulled Senators into line ("Sometimes," said L.B.J. of his iron-fisted methods, "the skin comes with the hair"). Mike Mansfield, the Senate leader from 1961 to early '77, was scholarly and unaggressive. Byrd, a new kind of leader for a new time, was chosen by his colleagues chiefly because they wanted a technician who would make the Senate run smoothly and efficiently and not try to lead them on too many issues and policies.