T he U.S. Senate, which likes to think of itself as “the upper body,” is about to suffer an institutional embarrassment at the hands of “the lower body” ? the U.S. House of Representatives.
With the Senate dithering over whether or not to debate President Bush?s latest troop buildup in Iraq, the Democratic leadership in the House is going ahead next week with debate of its own, thumbing its nose at tradition and protocol.
As the legislative body responsible for such key matters of foreign relations as approving treaties and confirming ambassadors, the Senate customarily leads the way on issues of international consequence. Its 100 members elected statewide revel in its reputation as “the world?s greatest deliberative body,” compared with the House, whose 435 members are often painted as more focused on the needs of their districts.
But the Senate, poised this week to consider a bipartisan, nonbinding resolution expressing disfavor with the Bush troop “surge,” got bogged down in parliamentary and tactical maneuvers by the Republican minority. The 60 votes required to bring the resolution to the floor could not be mustered.
There then ensued an argument over considering alternative resolutions from both sides of the aisle, complicating whether the Senate would be able to send a message to the president that his decision to send 21,500 additional forces to Iraq was a mistake. As the majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, and the minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, took turns the other day blaming each other for the impasse, colleagues from each party filled the time debating whether there should be a debate on the war, and which of the proposals should be debated.
As they did, Democratic senators offered the points they intended to raise if a resolution did reach the floor.
They questioned the wisdom of sending more Americans into Iraq in the midst of a civil war, accused the Bush administration of dispatching them with inadequate armor and without an exit strategy.
Republican senators, for their part, asked how the Senate could confirm Gen. David Petraeus as the new U.S. commander in Iraq and then vote against his plan to deal with the chaos he would encounter there. They argued that the president?s plan to send more troops deserved a chance ? some called it a last chance.
The expressions of views were not, however, a debate in the sense of a direct exchange between or among the senators. That was because, as each speaker droned on, seldom were more than one or two fellow senators in the chamber listening. The C-SPAN camera providing live coverage of the Senate was focused on each speaker without any sweep of the whole chamber, which would have shown a sea of empty desks and chairs. If viewers out around the country chose to believe a real debate was going on, well, they were free to do so.
It must be said that speakers did their best to create the impression that they were actually debating, and apparently happy to do so, receiving so much free time on television without interruption or challenge to points made.
On rare occasions, the chair would note the absence of a quorum and bells would ring, ostensibly to summon enough senators to continue business. But the real reason for the quorum call was to give an absent scheduled speaker time to get to the microphone. If it was the Super Bowl being played, the referee would have called it a time-out. Senators ignored the summons in droves.
With polls indicating the nation to be in deep despair over Bush?s failed misadventure in Iraq, one might have expected in this best of all possible democracies that the good senators would want to be on hand to hear the many reasoned arguments of their colleagues, whether there was a resolution before the “upper body” or not.
Senate Republicans who want to go on record against the Bush “surge” have threatened to piggyback their resolution on other bills. But unless or until that happens, all senators may have to walk over to the House side of the Capitol next week to catch the “real” debate on the war.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
