Opinion | How Congress is grandstanding its way to obsolescence

This chatter is probably political posturing. But the fact that the threat can’t be dismissed out of hand reflects something real about the way the federal government now operates. Americans have grown used to persistent congressional gridlock, followed by presidential power-grabs, followed by rolling litigation. For example, the Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the lawfulness of Biden’s unilateral forgiveness of $400 billion in student loan debt. This pattern of joint executive and judicial policymaking — as opposed to legislative compromise — has also become the norm on issues such as environmental regulation and immigration reform.

In his new book, “Why Congress,” political scientist Philip A. Wallach of the American Enterprise Institute argues that we should take seriously the prospect that members of Congress are grandstanding their way to obsolescence. Polls show Congress is the least popular branch of government, but it is the only one designed to confer deep and lasting legitimacy on government acts. If the United States’ legislature becomes merely “an ornament to bureaucratic decisions and presidential decrees,” as Wallach puts it, political liberty itself will be in peril.

Presidents are usually the protagonists in U.S. political history, but Wallach gives two examples of Congress’s decisive role in the 20th century — during World War II and the civil rights movement. In the 1940s, Congress checked President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s collectivist tendencies, including his wartime push for federal control over the civilian labor market. Legislators in both parties, representing a range of economic interests, ensured that “American victory would perpetuate a recognizably American way of life,” Wallach writes.

In the two decades after the war, only Congress was able to break the South’s racial caste system. Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling against school segregation, is one of the judiciary’s proudest moments — but as Wallach reminds us, it “was a nearly complete failure.” Segregation persisted. Congress moved more slowly, as filibustering segregationists fought civil rights tooth and nail. But when Congress finally passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it codified a broad democratic consensus and the effects on Southern society were swift and politically irreversible.

Both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to Congress’s decline. Progressives since Woodrow Wilson have been skeptical of Congress’s role as a forum for creating political trust and legitimacy — from their point of view, experts and administrators can solve problems more efficiently than parochial politicians. Conservatives grew distrustful of legislative power in the 1970s and 1980s, when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives but Republicans usually held the presidency.

The 21st-century Congress is increasingly a venue for political theatrics. A study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences assigned a “Grandstanding Score” to members of the House based on their statements at committee hearings. It found that members who grandstand more at hearings — as opposed to eliciting useful information — perform better in their next election.

Wallach is skeptical that today’s congressional dysfunction is simply a reflection of polarization in society. Creating the appearance of legislative polarization has been a deliberate political strategy. Congressional leaders in both parties think they benefit from drawing a vivid contrast with their opposition.

This approach to politics is democratic in that it offers voters a clear choice in each election. You know what you’re voting for with each party. But the paradoxical result may be the marginalization of democracy’s foremost institution — Congress. Wallach contemplates a grim future in which the main function of senators’ and representatives’ offices (in addition to partisan tweeting) is helping local constituents navigate a federal bureaucracy that Congress no longer meaningfully controls.

Wallach highlights a distinction, easily overlooked, between democracy and representative government. “Blunt majority rule is about domesticating brute political force into a somewhat gentler form,” he writes, “but effective representative government reveals to us which of our interests can be joined together to create shared public endeavors and which cannot.”

Representative institutions can exist without democracy. Medieval British monarchs summoned notables from across the realm — parliaments — to help facilitate their rule. Democracy, and political equality, would not emerge until centuries later.

The United States in the 21st century risks enjoying democracy without representative government, Wallach suggests. Executive power would change hands in elections, and people would be equal before the courts. But the country’s diverse, overlapping interests would no longer be meaningfully represented in a single body. Government might respond to popular opinion, but its legitimacy would erode.

Democracy has no answer to the debt-ceiling standoff. President Biden and the House Republican majority each won about 51 percent of the nation’s votes. What’s needed is not more democracy but better representation — a Congress that can once again mediate difference, not just express and amplify it.