Defeating DC Disillusionment

I get along great with my mom. Except when we're going places together. She is always at least five minutes behind schedule. However, when compared to the speed of Congress in advancing legislation, she seems like The Flash.

It's a cliché observation, but there's a good reason it's observed so often: it's true. Occasionally, we do get movement on key legislation. The Senate finally passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act yesterday. Pat Powers, our lobbyist on Native American issues, jokes: "Only nine years of waiting."

I've gotten better at waiting since the days I would shake each of my Christmas presents as soon as they were placed under the tree. Still, I get impatient. When lobby visits and an active constituency fail to move a legislator, I get impatient. When after many months, the only movement on the bill I work on is the addition of a few co-sponsors, I get impatient.

But I'm an optimist and I don't like to leave people (including myself) feeling down, so here's my positive spin. There is room for change on Capitol Hill but, contrary to popular opinion, I don't think it begins at the top. I think it begins at the bottom, with the staff advising our nation's leaders.

Anyone who has watched "West Wing" is impressed by the tremendous power that President Bartlett's staff exercises. The same is true in many congressional offices (at least that's my impression from both my experience and the experience of friends on the Hill). While the legislator brings an ideological lens and potentially strong views on a few major issues, the bulk of the work on most issues is done by their legislative staff.

Legislative staffers face an overwhelming workload, requiring them to develop a working knowledge of a myriad of issues. Most are smart, terrifically hard-working, and quite friendly. Yet, too often there is one ingredient missing: courage. Courage is the willingness to take on good causes even when they don't fit their legislator's ideological bent. Courage is the willingness to make a potentially unpopular presentation on a bill to the legislative director, chief-of-staff, or legislator. Courage is the willingness to face rejection.

I don't think this is because those working on the Hill do not have the ingredients for courage. Instead, we have an environment where success and failure is not measured by good policy but by personal affirmation (whether measured in election results or promotions). The result is too often the first thought for staff is: what will my legislator think? What will his or her constituents think? And not: What is good policy?

To me, this reflects a misunderstanding of the democratic process. Legislators should not just be conduits of public opinion but also shapers of public opinion. Legislators are not elected because their constituents have studied their position on each issue, but usually because constituents have learned enough about them and a couple of their policy positions such that they trust their legislator's judgment.

It's this willingness to exercise judgment, I think, which is the missing link between the many bright staffers and legislators and good policy. Thus, my exhortation is simply this: exercise judgment.