THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609010064
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 163 lines
The Constitution says this: To be a senator you must be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for at least nine years and a resident of the state you represent. Your duties will be to introduce and vote on legislation, handle impeachments and ratify presidential nominations and treaties.
The job awaiting the next Sen. Warner from Virginia, be it John the Republican or Mark the Democrat, is very different from what the Constitution's framers expected.
A senator today is a powerful, highly visible politician, constantly on the move, who can significantly influence the national agenda in a number of ways.
If the senator is a freshman, he is expected to hit the ground running; the ``apprenticeship'' system for junior senators died long ago.
In fact, the power of any and every senator is considerable, and that's considered one of the Senate's problems today.
Being a senator in the late 20th century means:
In the electronic media age, senators are among the most sought-after guests for talk shows and network news. Even a freshman senator can easily gain national recognition. This is a far cry from the day when seniority was all and freshman senators were meant to be seen and not heard.
Today's senator is likely to be more individualistic and less team-oriented than his predecessors - witness the rise of filibusters. This is somewhat more democratic, but it also means that it's much harder for Senate leaders to control the proceedings and get things done.
Senators are less specialized than they used to be. Even a senator who doesn't sit on the appropriate committee can latch onto an issue and ride it right through floor debate to passage.
Senate debate is more acrimonious than it was 40 years ago, and is possibly more similar to the pre-Civil War days.
Serious discussion today centers on the state of the Senate. In recent years, leading senators such as Bill Bradley, Nancy Kassebaum, Warren Rudman and Sam Nunn have left voluntarily, warning as they went that the Senate's effectiveness is breaking down.
``Senators are burned out by endless partisan wrangling,'' Rudman, R-New Hampshire, wrote in ``Combat,'' his memoir. He noted that the number of Senate votes is increasing, but mostly because of ``politically inspired and meaningless'' legislation.
``I thought the essence of good government was reconciling divergent views with compromises that served the country's interests. But that's not how movement conservatives or far-left liberals operate. The spirit of civility and compromise was drying up,'' he said.
Barbara Sinclair, a political science professor at UCLA who has long studied the Senate, agrees with the substance of these complaints but doubts their sincerity.
``A lot of them are willing to say this is a crummy way of doing things,'' she said. ``But they're still not willing to make change, at least not in large numbers.''
G. William Whitehurst, who served 18 years in the House of Representatives from Virginia's 2nd District, said he noticed changes in the Senate from the other chamber.
``It's a great body,'' he said. ``But the giants of the past had mostly disappeared. I mean people who just towered above the place, like Everett Dirksen.
``I don't mean to say that today's senators are mediocre. There are many fine people there. There just didn't seem to be the giants that stood out in the past.''
The nation's founders intended the Senate to be the nation's highest arena for debating the republic's most pressing issues.
From states' rights and slavery in the early 19th century, to civil rights in the 1950s and '60s, and balancing the budget in the 1990s, the Senate has been exactly that.
Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Taft, Kennedy, Johnson, Goldwater, Humphrey, Ervin, Jordan, Dole - when you think of leading American politicians and debaters, many of them are U.S. senators.
The Senate, with six-year terms and entire states for districts (senators used to be chosen by state legislatures), was to be the more level-headed, conservative body, balancing the free-wheeling House of Representatives.
Thomas Jefferson was uneasy with the elitist-seeming Senate, and told George Washington so. Legend has it that Washington asked Jefferson why he poured coffee into his saucer. ``To cool it,'' Jefferson replied.
``Exactly,'' Washington said. ``We pour legislation into the Senate to cool it.''
Yet within a few decades, the issues of states' rights and slavery, left unresolved at the nation's founding, began to crack the Senate's calm. Senators came to work armed, and verbal battles inside the Senate led to duels outside. In 1856, a South Carolina congressman walked up to Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner's desk on the floor and savagely beat him with a cane for remarks he had made during an anti-slavery speech.
The verbal and physical violence in the Senate waned after the national bloodletting of the Civil War. The Senate began quietly building a system of committees, consensus and seniority.
By the 1940s, the chamber worked so smoothly that nearly 98 percent of the bills that passed the Senate did so without need for a roll call vote. Most of the work was done in committees; senators cultivated specialties appropriate to their district and often deferred to one another's expertise.
Freshman senators were expected to serve an ``apprenticeship,'' following their seniors' lead and speaking seldom.
Today, the apprenticeship system is long dead. The power of committees has waned. Senators now routinely become involved in bills their own committees do not address, and 10 percent to 20 percent of all bills passed go to a roll call vote.
The smoothly-running machine of the past is slowing down, mostly because power has been diffused in the Senate from a central authority, the leadership, to the individual members. Senators are ``more equal'' than ever before.
One indication is the occurrence of filibusters. They used to be rare, but only out of a sense of individual restraint which seems to be missing today. A senator can filibuster - speaking at length as a delaying tactic - to stop legislation or extract concessions.
The Senate needs 60 votes to stop a filibuster, and that's hard to come up with. Some ingenious senators have even found ways to continue after they had been told to be quiet by the membership.
Sinclair said that with the number of interest groups seeking the Senate's attention and the variety of media stages, any senator can make a name for himself or herself.
``There are many niches for senators to play important roles,'' she said. ``There are many groups looking for champions.''
Sinclair concludes that the new, more democratic Senate allows more small interest groups to be heard. The Senate's role, more than ever, is in helping to set the nation's agenda.
``Although decision-making is less efficient,'' she said, ``it may be more responsive to the desires of citizens as a whole.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
John Warner
Republican
Mark Warner
Democrat
Graphic
Editor's Note:
Monday's Labor Day speech-making and parade-walking by the Senate
candidates in small-town Buena Vista - the traditional start of
Virginia's fall election season - nod to the customs of candidacy
when oratory was under a tent, not in televised time capsules.
In today's campaigns, candidates are handled, scripted,
ghost-written, scheduled, financed and groomed.
In reacting to the manipulations of the campaigns, the news media
often fail to focus on voters' real concerns by concentrating on
strategies for winning.
The skills for winning elections may not be the skills most
important for working in government. During this election, The
Virginian-Pilot will cover the campaign less as a horse race and
more as a process for hiring someone to do an important job.
The process is straightforward: Describe the job, decide the
qualifications you're looking for, screen applicants for their
qualifications and judge how well they'll perform through job
interviews, from checking their references, even from a temporary
assignment. Then make the hiring decision.
Every six years and every two years respectively, U.S. senators
and members of the U.S. House of Representatives reapply for their
jobs, asking you to decide whom to hire.
We begin that process today.
Today in Commentary: In their own words, candidates Mark Warner
and John Warner each explain why he would make the better senator.
You'll find letters of recommendation for each candidate and brief
resumes.
Election Day is Nov. 5. The deadline to register to vote is Oct.
7. Call the State Board of Elections at 1-800-552-9745 for
information.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES by CNB