Congress The Electoral Connection
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Congress: The Electoral Connection
Mayhew, David. "Congress: The Electoral Connection." CourseReader n.d. 2010. Web. 29 July 2013.
Document Type: Excerpt
Whether they are safe or marginal, cautious or audacious, congressmen must constantly engage in activities related to reelection. There will be differences in emphasis, but all members share the root need to do things—indeed, to do things day in and day out during their terms. The next step here is to present a typology, a short list of the kinds of activities congressmen find it electorally useful to engage in. The case will be that there are three basic kinds of activities. It will be important to lay them out with some care, for arguments in part 2 will be built on them. One activity is advertising, defined here as any effort to disseminate one's name among constituents in such a fashion as to create a favorable image but in messages having little or no issue content. A successful congressman builds what amounts to a brand name, which may have a generalized electoral value for other politicians in the same family. The personal qualities to emphasize are experience, knowledge, responsiveness, concern, sincerity, independence, and the like. Just getting one's nam across is difficult enough; only about half the electorate, if asked, can supply their House members' names. It helps a congressman to be known. "In the main, recognition carries a positive valence; to be perceived at all is to be perceived favorably." 74 A vital advantage enjoyed by House incumbents is that they are much better known among voters than their November challengers.75 They are better known because they spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to make themselves better known.76 There are standard routines-frequent visits to the constituency, nonpolitical speeches to home audiences,77 the sending out of infant care booklets and letters of condolence and congratulation. Of 158 House members questioned in the mid-1960s, 121 said that they regularly sent newsletters to their constituents;78 48 wrote separate news or opinion columns for newspapers; 82 regularly reported to their constituencies by radio or television;79 89 regularly sent out mail questionnaires.80 Some routines are less standard. Congressman George E. Shipley
I found it really interesting how congressman are constantly fighting the battle to hold their position even though they are the ones that seem to hold it 90% of the time. Recognition seems to play a big role in getting reelected because the people like to see a familiar face.“In the main, recognition carries a positive valence; to be perceived at all is to be perceived favorably”. I found this quote contradicting because it states that to be perceived at all is a good thing meaning even if it were a bad perception of yourself. Does this mean it is better for a congressman to be perceived in an unfavorable way than to not be perceived at all? This idea really intrigues me.
(D., Ill.) claims to have met personally about half his constituents (i.e. some 200,000 people).81 For over twenty years Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (D., Mich.) has run a radio program featuring himself as a "combination disc jockey-commentator and minister." 82 Congressman Daniel J. Flood (D., Pa.) is "famous for appearing unannounced and often uninvited at wedding anniversaries and other events." 83 Anniversaries and other events aside, congressional advertising is done largely at public expense. Use of the franking privilege has mushroomed in recent years; in early 1973 one estimate predicted that House and Senate members would send out about 476 million pieces of mail in the year 1974, at a public cost of $38.1 million—or about 900,000 pieces per member with a subsidy of $70,000 per member.84 By far the heaviest mailroom traffic comes in Octobers of even-numbered years.85 There are some differences between House and Senate members in the ways they go about getting their names across. House members are free to blanket their constituencies with mailings for all boxholders; senators are not. But senators find it easier to
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appear on national television—for example, in short reaction statements on the nightly news shows. Advertising is a staple congressional activity, and there is no end to it. For each member there are always new voters to be apprised of his worthiness and old voters to be reminded of it.86
A second activity may be called credit claiming, defined here as acting so as to generate a belief in a relevant political actor (or actors) that one is personally responsible for causing the government, or some unit thereof, to do something that the actor (or actors) considers desirable. The political logic of this, from the congressman's point of view, is that an actor who believes that a member can make pleasing things happen will no doubt wish to keep him in office so that he can make pleasing things happen in the future. The emphasis here is on individual accomplishment (rather than, say, party or governmental accomplishment) and on the congressman as doer (rather than as, say, expounder of constituency views). Credit claiming is highly important to congressmen, with the consequence that much of congressional life is a relentless search for opportunities to engage in it.
Where can credit be found? If there were only one congressman rather than 535, the answer would in principle be simple enough.87 Credit (or blame) would attach in Downsian fashion to the doings of the government as a whole. But there are 535. Hence it becomes necessary for each congressman to try to peel off pieces of governmental accomplishment for which he can believably generate a sense of responsibility. For the average congressman the staple way of doing this is to traffic in what may be called "particularized benefits." 88 Particularized governmental benefits, as the term will be used here, have two properties: (1) Each benefit is given out to a specific individual, group, or geographical constituency, the recipient unit being of a scale that allows a single congressman to be recognized (by relevant political actors and other congressmen) as the claimant for the benefit (other congressmen being perceived as indifferent or hostile). (2) Each benefit is given out in apparently ad hoc fashion (unlike, say, social security checks) with a congressman apparently having a hand in the allocation. A particularized benefit can normally be regarded as a member of a class. That is, a benefit given out to an individual, group, or constituency can normally be looked upon by congressmen as one of a class of similar benefits given out to sizable numbers of individuals, groups, or constituencies. Hence the impression can arise that a congressman is getting "his share" of whatever it is the government is offering. (The classes may be vaguely defined. Some state legislatures deal in what their members call "local legislation.")
In sheer volume the bulk of particularized, benefits come under the heading of "casework"—the thousands of favors congressional offices perform for supplicants in ways that normally do not require legislative action. High school students ask for essay materials, soldiers for emergency leaves, pensioners for location of missing checks, local governments for grant information, and on and on. Each office has skilled professionals who can play the bureaucracy like an organ—pushing the right pedals to produce the desired effects.89 But many benefits require new legislation, or at least they require important allocative decisions on matters covered by existent legislation. Here the congressman fills the traditional role of supplier of goods to the home district. It is a believable role; when a member claims credit for a benefit on the order of a dam, he may well receive it.90 Shiny construction projects seem especially useful,91 In the decades before 1934, tariff duties for local industries were a major commodity.92 In recent years awards given under grant-in-aid programs
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have become more useful as they have become more numerous. Some quests for credit are ingenious; in 1971 the story broke that congressmen had been earmarking foreign aid money for specific projects in Israel in order to win favor with home constituents.93 It should be said of constituency benefits that congressmen are quite capable of taking the initiative in drumming them up; that is, there can be no automatic assumption that a congressman's activity is the result of pressures brought to bear by organized interests. Fenno shows the importance of member initiative in his discussion of the House Interior Committee.94
Its very interesting how what congressman do, as it says here, they spend there time in office doing things that will make them get reelected. When they are running for office they make it seem that they are the greatest people, and are going to change the nation and make it great. Once congressman are elected I believe they are to busy trying to make them selves look good so they can get reelected.
A final point here has to do with geography. The examples given so far are all of benefits conferred upon home constituencies or recipients therein (the latter including the home residents who applauded the Israeli projects). But the properties of particularized benefits were carefully specified so as not to exclude the possibility that some benefits may be given to recipients outside the home constituencies. Some probably are. Narrowly drawn tax loopholes qualify as particularized benefits, and some of them are probably conferred upon recipients outside the home districts.95 (It is difficult to find solid evidence on the point.) Campaign contributions flow into districts from the outside, so it would not be surprising to find that benefits go where the resources are.96
How much particularized benefits count for at the polls is extraordinarily difficult to say. But it would be hard to find a congressman who thinks he can afford to wait around until precise information is available. The lore is that they count—furthermore, given home expectations, that they must be supplied in regular quantities for a member to stay electorally even with the board. Awareness of favors may spread beyond their recipients,97 building for a member a general reputation as a good provider. 98 A good example of Capitol Hill lore on electoral impact is given in this account of the activities of Congressman Frank Thompson, Jr. (D., N.J., 4th district):
In 1966, the 4th was altered drastically by redistricting; it lost Burlington County and gained
Hunterdon, Warren, and Sussex. Thompson's performance at the polls since 1966 is a case study of how an incumbent congressman, out of line with his district's ideological persuasions, can become unbeatable. In 1966, Thompson carried Mercer by 23,000 votes and lost the three new counties by 4,600, winning reelection with 56% of the votes. He then survived a district-wide drop in his vote two years later. In 1970, the Congressman carried Mercer County by 20,000 votes and the rest of the district by 6,000, finishing with 58%. The drop in Mercer resulted from the attempt of his hard-line conservative opponent to exploit the racial unrest which had developed in Trenton. But for four years Thompson had been making friends in Hunterdon, Warren, and Sussex, busy doing the kind of chores that congressmen do. In this case, Thompson concerned himself with the interests of dairy farmers at the Department of Agriculture. The results of his efforts were clear when the results came in from the 4th's northern counties.99
So much for particularized benefits. But is credit available elsewhere? For governmental
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accomplishments beyond the scale of those already discussed? The general answer is that the prime mover role is a hard one to play on large matters—at least before broad electorates. A claim, after all, has to be credible. If a congressman goes before an audience and says, "I am responsible for passing a bill to curb inflation," or "I am responsible for the highway program," hardly anyone will believe him. There are two reasons why people may be skeptical of such claims. First, there is a numbers problem. On an accomplishment of a sort that probably engaged the supportive interest of more than one member it is reasonable to suppose that credit should be apportioned among them. But second, there is an overwhelming problem of information costs. For typical voters Capitol Hill is a distant and mysterious place; few have anything like a working knowledge of its maneuverings.
Hence there is no easy way of knowing whether a congressman is staking a valid claim or not. The odds are that the information problem cuts in different ways on different kinds of issues. On particularized benefits it may work in a congressman's favor; he may get credit for the dam he had nothing to do with building. Sprinkling a district with dams, after all, is something a congressman is supposed to be able to do. But on larger matters it may work against him. For a voter lacking an easy way to sort out valid from invalid claims the sensible recourse is skepticism. Hence it is unlikely that congressmen get much mileage out of credit claiming on larger matters before broad electorates.100
Yet there is an obvious and important qualification here. For many congressmen credit claiming on nonparticularized matters is possible in specialized subject areas because of the congressional division of labor. The term "government unit" in the original definition of credit claiming is broad enough to include committees, subcommittees, and the two houses of Congress itself. Thus many congressmen can believably claim credit for blocking bills in subcommittee, adding on amendments in committee, and so on. The audience for transactions of this sort is usually small. But it may include important political actors (e.g. an interest group, the president, the New York Times, Ralph
Nader) who are capable of both paying Capitol Hill information costs and deploying electoral resources. There is a well-documented example of this in Fenno's treatment of post office politics in the 1960s. The postal employee unions used to watch very closely the activities of the House and Senate Post Office Committees and supply valuable electoral resources (money, volunteer work) to members who did their bidding on salary bills.101 Of course there are many examples of this kind of undertaking, and there is more to be said about it. The subject will be covered more exhaustively in part 2.
The third activity congressmen engage in maybe called position taking, defined here as the public enunciation of a judgmental statement on anything likely to be of interest to political actors. The statement may take the form of a roll call vote. The most important classes of judgmental statements are those prescribing American governmental ends (a vote cast against the war; a statement that "the war should be ended immediately") or governmental means (a statement that "the way to end the war is to take it to the United Nations"). The judgments may be implicit rather than explicit, as in: "I will support the president on this matter." But judgments may range far beyond these classes to take in implicit or explicit statements on what almost anybody should do or how he should do it: "The great Polish scientist Copernicus has been unjustly neglected;" "The way for
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Israel to achieve peace is to give up the Sinai." 102 The congressman as position taker is a speaker rather than a doer. The electoral requirement is not that he make pleasing things happen but that he make pleasing judgmental statements. The position itself is the political commodity. Especially on matters where governmental responsibility is widely diffused it is not surprising that political actors should fall back on positions as tests of incumbent virtue. For voters ignorant of congressional processes the recourse is an easy one. The following comment by one of Clapp's House interviewees is highly revealing: "Recently, I went home and began to talk about the ——— act. I
When a politician is running for a position they feel strongly about, they make many promises to the people of the United States to gain their favor. It is a scary thought to see how a politician can manipulate and play with the emotion’s of people so that they can win. Instead of making changes to government, politicians are only focused on preparing for the next election and the sad reality is, although nothing has been accomplished, hopeful citizens continue to vote for these politicians in hopes that the next term will be better due to how well the politician is presenting him/her self. This article makes a reader wonder why we have allowed Congress to continue this system and why the people have not realized what is truly occurring. It makes me wonder why no one has questioned the honesty of congress and demand that something be changed or else our country will never be able to advance.
was pleased to have sponsored that bill, but it soon dawned on me that the point wasn't getting through at all. What was getting through was that the act might be a help to people. I changed the emphasis: I didn't mention my role particularly, but stressed my support of the legislation.103"
The ways in which positions can be registered are numerous and often imaginative. There are floor addresses ranging from weighty orations to mass-produced "nationality day statements." 104 There are speeches before home groups, television appearances, letters, newsletters, press releases, ghostwritten books, Playboy articles, even interviews with political scientists. On occasion congressmen generate what amount to petitions; whether or not to sign the 1956 Southern
Manifesto defying school desegregation rulings was an important decision for southern members.
105 Outside the roll call process the congressman is usually able to tailor his positions to suit his audiences. A solid consensus in the constituency calls for ringing declarations; for years the late
Senator James K. Vardaman (D., Miss.) campaigned on a proposal to repeal the Fifteenth
Amendment.106 Division or uncertainty in the constituency calls for waffling; in the late 1960s a congressman had to be a poor politician indeed not to be able to come up with an inoffensive statement on Vietnam ("We must have peace with honor at the earliest possible moment consistent with the national interest"). On a controversial issue a Capitol Hill office normally prepares two form letters to send out to constituent letter writers—one for the pros and one (not directly contradictory) for the antis.107 Handling discrete audiences in person requires simple agility, a talent well demonstrated in this selection from a Nader profile:
"You may find this difficult to understand," said Democrat Edward R. Roybal, the Mexlcan-American representative from California's thirtieth district, "but sometimes I wind up making a patriotic speech one afternoon and later on that same day an anti-war speech. In the patriotic speech I speak of past wars but I also speak of the need to prevent more wars. My positions are not inconsistent; I just approach different people differently." Roybal went on to depict the diversity of crowds he speaks to: one afternoon he is surrounded by balding men wearing Veterans' caps and holding American flags; a few hours later he speaks to a crowd of
Chicano youths, angry over American involvement in Vietnam. Such a diverse constituency, Roybal believes, calls for different methods of expressing one's convictions108.
Indeed it does. Versatility of this sort is occasionally possible in roll call voting. For example a congressman may vote one way on recommittal and the other on final passage, leaving it unclear
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just how he stands on a bill.109 Members who cast identical votes on a measure may give different reasons for having done so. Yet it is on roll calls that the crunch comes; there is no way for a member to avoid making a record on hundreds of issues, some of which are controversial in the home constituencies. Of course, most roll call positions considered in isolation are not likely to cause much of a ripple at home. But broad voting patterns can and do; member "ratings" calculated by the Americans for Democratic Action, Americans for Constitutional Action, and other outfits are used as guidelines in the deploying of electoral resources. And particular issues often have their alert publics. Some national interest groups watch the votes of all congressmen on single issues and ostentatiously try to reward or punish members for their positions; over the years some notable examples of such interest groups have been the Anti-Saloon League,110 the early Farm Bureau,
111 the American Legion,112 the American Medical Association,l13 and the National Rifle Association.114 On rare occasions single roll calls achieve a rather high salience among the public generally. This seems especially true of the Senate, which every now and then winds up for what might be called a "showdown vote," with pressures on all sides, presidential involvement, media attention given to individual senators' positions, and suspense about the outcome. Examples are the votes on the nuclear test-ban treaty in 1963, civi1 rights cloture in 1964, civil rights cloture again in 1965, the Haynsworth appointment in 1969, the Carswell appointment in 1970, and the ABM in 1970. Controversies on roll calls like these are often relived in subsequent campaigns, the southern
Senate elections of 1970 with their Haynsworth and Carswell issues being cases in point.
Probably the best position-taking strategy for most congressmen at most times is to be conservative—to cling to their own positions of the past where possible and to reach for new ones with great caution where necessary. Yet in an earlier discussion of strategy the suggestion was made that it might be rational for members in electoral danger to resort to innovation. The form of innovation available is entrepreneurial position taking, its logic being that for a member facing defeat with his old array of positions it makes good sense to gamble on some new ones. It may be that congressional marginals fulfill an important function here as issue pioneers—experimenters who test out new issues and thereby show other politicians which ones are usable.115 An example of such a pioneer is Senator Warren Magnuson (D., Wash.), who responded to a surprisingly narrow victory in 1962 by reaching for a reputation in the area of consumer affairs.1l6 Another example is Senator Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.). a servant of a shaky and racially heterogeneous southern constituency who launched "hunger" as an issue in 1969—at once pointing to a problem and giving it a useful nonracial definition.117 One of the most successful issue entrepreneurs of recent decades was the late Senator Joseph McCarthy (R., Wis.); it was all there—the close primary in 1946, the fear of defeat in 1952, the desperate casting about for an issue, the famous
In the U.S it seems as though everyone wants change and that people believe that everything is broken and needs a fix, yet here we are conserving the old school traditions. This is why Donald Trump got ellected and not Hillary Clinton, it would seem. The article reccomends that you stay conservative, “cling to your own positions”, but Clinton did not. She was flip floppy and that cost her the election.
1950 dinner at the Colony Restaurant where suggestions were tendered, the decision that "Communism" might just do the trick.118
The effect of position taking on electoral behavior is about as hard to measure as the effect of credit claiming. Once again there is a variance problem: congressmen do not differ very much among themselves in the methods they use or the skills they display in attuning themselves to their diverse constituencies. All of them, after all, are professional politicians. There is intriguing hard evidence
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on some matters where variance can be captured. Schoenberger has found that House Republicans who signed an early pro-Goldwater petition plummeted significantly farther in their 1964 percentages than their colleagues who did not sign.119 (The signers appeared genuinely to believe that identification with Goldwater was an electoral plus.) Erikson has found that roll call records are interestingly related to election percentages: "[A] reasonable estimate is that an unusually liberal Republican Representative gets at least 6 per cent more of the two-party vote … than his extreme conservative counterpart would in the same district." 120 In other words, taking some roll call positions that please voters of the opposite party can be electorally helpful. (More specifically, it can help in November; some primary electorates will be more tolerant of it than others.) Sometimes an inspection of deviant cases offers clues. There is the ideological odyssey of former Congressman Walter Baring (D., Nev.), who entered Congress as a more or less regular Democrat in the mid-1950s but who moved over to a point where he was the most conservative House Democrat outside the South by the late 1960s. The Nevada electorate reacted predictably; Baring's November percentages rose astoundingly high (82.5 percent in 1970), but he encountered guerrilla warfare in the primaries which finally cost him his nomination in 1972—whereupon the seat turned Republican. There can be no doubt that congressmen believe positions make a difference.
An important consequence of this belief is their custom of watching each other's elections to try to figure out what positions are salable. Nothing is more important in Capitol Hill politics than the shared conviction that election returns have proven a point. Thus the 1950 returns were read not only as a rejection of health insurance but as a ratification of McCarthyism.121 When two North
It is interesting that the main focus of politicians is to just ensure that they will be in office after the next election. Each candidate makes sure that they do everything correctly to make the people happy. They work more towards becoming known by the voters in order to be re-elected than focusing on what they had been elected to office for. Even with this they still believe that their winning of an election actually means something. They play it safe while in office to be elected again, keep what their political agenda safe to be elected again, then believe that since they were elected have freedom to act how they want. They get elected off a false identity and try to act on their true identity
Carolina nonsigners of the 1956 Southern Manifesto immediately lost their primaries, the message was clear to southern members that there could be no straying from a hard line on the school desegregation issue. Any breath of life left in the cause of school bussing was squeezed out by
House returns from the Detroit area in 1972. Senator Douglas gives an interesting report on the passage of the first minimum wage bill in the Seventy-fifth Congress. In 1937 the bill was tied up in the House Rules Committee, and there was an effort to get it to the floor through use of a discharge petition. Then two primary elections broke the jam. Claude Pepper (D., Fla.) and Lister Hill (D., Ala.) won nominations to fill vacant Senate seats. "Both campaigned on behalf of the Wages and Hours bill, and both won smashing victories.… Immediately after the results of the Florida and Alabama primaries became known, there was a stampede to sign the petition, and the necessary 218 signatures were quickly obtained." 122 The bill later passed. It may be useful to close this section on position taking with a piece of political lore on electoral impact that can stand beside the piece on the impact of credit claiming offered earlier. The discussion is of the pre-1972 sixth California House district:
Since 1952 the district's congressman has been Republican William S. Mailliard, a wealthy member of an old California family. For many years Mailliard had a generally liberal voting record. He had no trouble at the polls, winning elections by large majorities in what is, by a small margin at least, a Democratic district. More recently, Mailliard seems caught between the increasing conservatism of the state's Republican party and the increasing liberalism of his constituency.
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After [Governor Ronald] Reagan's victory [in 1966], Mailliard's voting record became noticeably more conservative.
Because of this, he has been spared the tough conservative primary opposition that Paul McCloskey has confronted in the 11th.
But Mailliard's move to the right has not gone unnoticed in the 6th district.
In 1968 he received 73% of the vote, but in
1970 he won only 53%—a highly unusual drop for an incumbent of such long standing. Much of the difference must be attributed to the war issue. San Francisco and Marin are both antiwar strongholds; but Mailliard, who is the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has supported the Nixon Administration's war policy. In the 6th district, at least, that position is a sure vote-loser.l23
These, then, are the three kinds of electorally oriented activities congressmen engage in—advertising, credit claiming, and position taking.…
While in office, congressmen only plan and “engage in activities related to reelection.” Senators and Representatives spend their time building up their credibility for an image that will ensure them reelection. These congressmen focus on their personal characteristics; elaborating on their sincerity and knowledge, but having little or no issue content. The majority, if not all, of congress members attend public events in the hopes of bolstering their image, not for actual charity. When one actually begins to reflect on the true schemes of congress, one should question why we have allowed the system to continue to manipulate the public in their favor. After reading this article, it’s hard not to question the motives and sincerity of congress. But even now, if one were to try to reverse the system, I believe Congress is far too engraved with manipulation and possession to change.
NOTES
- Stokes and Miller, "Party Government," p. 205. The same may not be true among, say, mayors.
- Ibid., p. 204. The likelihood is that senators are also better known than their challengers, but that the gap is not so wide as it is on the House side. There is no hard evidence on the point.
- In Clapp's interview study, "Conversations with more than fifty House members uncovered only one who seemed to place little emphasis on strategies designed to increase communications with the voter." The Congressman, p. 88. The exception was an innocent freshman.
- A statement by one of Clapp's congressmen: "The best speech is a non-political speech. I think a commencement speech is the best of all. X says he has never lost a precinct in a town where he has made a commencement speech." The Congressman, p. 96.
- These and the following figures on member activity are from Donald G. Tacheron and Morris K. Udall, The Job of the Congressman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 281-88.
- Another Clapp congressman: "I was looking at my TV film today-I have done one every week since I have been here-and who was behind me but Congressman X. I'll swear he had never done
TV show before in his life but he only won by a few hundred votes last time. Now he has a weekly television show. If he had done that before he wouldn't have had any trouble." The Congressman, p. 92.
- On questionnaires generally see Walter Wilcox, "The Congressional Poll-and Non-Poll," in
Edward C. Dreyer and Walter A. Rosenbaum (eds.), Political 0pl'nion and Electoral Behavior
(Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1966), pp, 390-400.
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- Szita, Nader profile on Shipley, p. 12. The congressman is also a certified diver. "When Shipley is home in his district and a drowning occurs, he is sometimes asked to dive down for the body. 'It gets in the papers and actually, it's pretty good publicity for me,' he admitted." P. 3. Whether this should be classified under "casework" rather than "advertising" is difficult to say.
- Lenore Cooley, Nader profile on Diggs, p. 2.
- Anne Zandman and Arthur Magida, Nader profile on Flood, p. 2.
- Norman C. Miller, "Yes, You Are Getting More Politico Mail: And It Will Get Worse,'"Wall Street Joumal, March 6, 1973, p. 1.
- Monthly data compiled by Albert Cover.
- After serving his two terms, the late President Eisenhower had this conclusion: "There is nothing a Congressman likes better than to get his name in the headlines and for it to be published all over the United States." From a 1961 speech quoted in the New York Times, June 20,1971.
- In practice the one might call out the army and suspend the Constitution.
- These have some of the properties of what Lowi calls "distributive" benefits. Theodore J. Lowi,
"American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory," 16 World Politics 690
(1964).
- On casework generally see Kenneth G. Olson, "The Service Function of the United States Congress," pp. 337-74 in American Enterprise Institute, Congress: The First Branch of Government
(Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1966).
- Sometimes without justification. Thus this comment by a Republican member of the House
Public Works Committee: "The announcements for projects are an important part of this.… And the folks back home are funny about this—if your name is associated with it, you get all the credit whether you got it through or not." James T. Murphy, "Partisanship and the House Public Works
Committee," paper presented to the annual convention of the American Political Science
Association, 1968, p. 10.
- "They've got tosee something; it's the bread and butter issues that count-the darns, the post offices and the other public buildings, the highways. They want to know what you've been doing." A comment by a Democratic member of the House Public Works Committee. Ibid.
- The classic account is in E. E. Schattschneider, Politics. Pressures and 1M Tariff (New York:
Prentice-Han. 1935).
- "Israeli Schools and Hospitals Seek Funds in Foreign-Aid Bill" New York Times, October 4,
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- Fenno, Congressmen in Committees, p. 40. Cf. this statement on initiative in the French Third Republic: "Most deputies ardently championed the cause or interest groups in their district without waiting to be asked." Bernard E. Brown. "Pressure Politics in France," 18 Journal of Politics 718
(1956).
- For a discussion of the politics of tax loopholes see Stanley S. Surrey, "The Congress and the Tax Lobbyist-How Special Tax Provisions Get Enacted." 70 Harvard Law Review 1145-82 (1957).
- A possible example of a transaction of this sort: During passage of the 1966 "Christmas tree" tax bill, Senator Vance Hartke (D., Ind.) won inclusion of an amendment giving a tax credit to a
California aluminum firm with a plant in the Virgin Islands. George Lardner, Jr. "The Day Congress
Played Santa," Washington Post, December 10, 1966, p. 10. Whether Hartke was getting campaign funds from the firm is not wholly clear, but Lardner's account allows the inference that he was.
- Thus this comment of a Senate aide, "The world's greatest publicity organ is still the human mouth.… When you get somebody $25.00 from the Social Security Administration, he talks to his friends and neighbors about it. After a while the story grows until you've single-handedly obtained $2,500 for a constituent who was on the brink of starvation." Matthews, U.S. Senators, p. 226.
- For some examples of particularistically oriented congressmen see the Nader profiles by Sven Holmes on James A. Haley (D., Fla.), Newton Koltz on Joseph P. Addabbo (D., N.Y.), Alex Berlow on Kenneth J. Gray (D., Ill.), and Sarah Glazer on John Young (D., Tex.) . For a fascinating picture of the things House members were expected to do half a century ago see Joe Martin, My First Fifty
Years in Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), pp. 55-59.
- Michael Barone, Grant Ujifusa, and Douglas Matthews, The Almanac of American Politics (Boston: Gambit, 1972). pp. 479-80.
- Any teacher of American politics has had students ask about senators running for the presidency (Goldwater, McGovern, McCarthy, any of the Kennedys), "But what bills has he passed?" There is no unembarrassing answer.
- Fenno, Congressmen in Committees, pp. 242-55.
- In the terminology of Stokes, statements may be on either "position issues" or "valence issues." Donald E. Stokes, "Spatial Models of Party Competition," ch. 9 in Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order, pp. 170-74.
- Clapp, The Congressman, p. 108. A difficult borderline question here is whether introduction of bills in Congress should be counted under position taking or credit claiming. On balance probably under the former. Yet another Clapp congressman addresses the point: "I introduce about sixty bills
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a year, about 120 a Congress. I try to introduce bills that illustrate, by and large, my ideas-legislative, economic, and social. I do like being able to say when I get cornered, 'yes, boys, I introduced a bill to try to do that in 1954.' To me it is the perfect answer." Ibid., p. 141. But voters probably give claims like this about the value they deserve.
- On floor speeches generally see Matthews, U.S. Senators, p. 247. On statements celebrating holidays cherished by ethnic groups, Hearings on the Organization of Congress before the Joint Committee on the Organization of the Congress, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 1965, p. 1127; and Arlen J. Large, "And Now Let's Toast Nicolaus Copernicus, the Famous German,"Wall Street Journal, March 12, (973, p. 1.
- Sometimes members of the Senate ostentatiously line up as "cosponsors" of measures—an activity that may attract more attention than roll call voting itself. Thus in early 1973, seventy-six senators backed a provision to block trade concessions to the U.S.S.R. until the Soviet government allowed Jews to emigrate without paying high exit fees. " 'Why did so many people sign the amendment?' a Northern Senator asked rhetorically. 'Because there is no political advantage in no signing. If you do sign, you don't offend anyone. If you don't sign, you might offend some Jews in your state.' David E. Rosenbaum, "Firm Congress Stand on Jews in Soviet Is Traced to Efforts by
Those in U.S.," New York Times, April 6, 1973, p. 14.
- " … an utterly hopeless proposal and for ~that reason an ideal campaign issue." V. O. Key, Jr.,
Southern Politics (New York: Knopf, 1949), p. 232.
- Instructions on how to do this are given in Tacheron and Udall, Job of the Congressman, pp.
73—74.
- William Lazarus. Nader profile on Edward R. Roybal (D., Cal). p. 1.
- On obfuscation in congressional position taking see Raymond A. Bauer, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Lewis A. Dexter, American Business and Public Policy (New York: Atherton, 1964), pp. 431-32.
- "Elaborate indexes of politicians and their records were kept at Washington and in most of the states, and professions of sympathy were matched with deeds. The voters were constantly apprised of the doings of their representatives." Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928), p. 21.
- On Farm Bureau dealings with congressmen in the 1920s see Orville M. Kile, The Farm Bureau through Three Decades (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1948), ch. 7.
- V. O. Key, Jr., "The Veterans and the House of Representatives: A Study of a Pressure Group and Electoral Mortality," 5 Journal of Politics 27-40 (1943).
- "The American Medical Association," pp. 1011-18. See also Richard Harris, A Sacred Trust
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(New York: New American Library, 1966).
- On the NRA generally see Stanford N. Sesser, "The Gun: Kingpin of 'Gun Lobby' Has a Millio Members, Much Clout in Congress," Wall Street Journal, May 24, 1972, p. 1. On the defeat of Senator Joseph Tydings (D., Md.) in 1970: "Tydings himself tended to blame the gun lobby, which in turn was quite willing to take the credit. 'Nobody in his right mind is going to take on that issue again [i.e. gun controll],' one Tydings strategist admitted." John F. Bibby and Roger H. Davidson,
On Capitol Hill: Studies in the Legislative Process (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden, 1972), p. 50.
- A cautious politician will not be sure of an issue until it has been tested in a campaign. Polling evidence is suggestive, but it can never be conclusive.
- David Price, Who Makes the Laws? (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1972), p. 29. Magnuson was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. "Onto the old Magnuson, interested in fishing, shipping, and Boeing Aircraft, and running a rather sleepy committee. was grafted a new one: the champion of the consumer, the national legislative leader, and the patron of an energetic and innovative legislative staff." P. 78.
- Marjorie Hunter, "Hollings Fight on Hunger Is Stirring the South," New York Times, March 8.
1969, p. 14. The local reaction was favorable. "Already Senator Herman E. Talmadge, Democrat of
Georgia, has indicated he will begin a hunger crusade in his own state. Other Senators have hinted that they may do the same."
- Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (New York: Hayden,
1970), p. 29. Rovere's conclusion: "McCarthy took up the Communist menace in 1950 not with any expectation that it would make him a sovereign of the assemblies, but with the single hope that it would help him hold his job in 1952." Richard Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (Cleveland: World, 1961), p. 120.
- Robert A. Schoenberger, "Campaign Strategy and Party Loyalty: The Electoral Relevance of Candidate Decision-Making in the 1964 Congressional Elections," 63 American Political Science Review 515-20 (1969).
- Robert S. Erikron, "The Electoral Impact of Congressional Roll Call Voting," 65 American Political Science Review 1023 (1971).
- Griffith, The Politics of Fear, pp. 122-31. The defeat of Senator Millard Tydings (D., Md.) was attributed to resources (money, endorsements, volunteer work) conferred or mobilized by McCarthy.
"And jf Tydings can be defeated, then who was safe? Even the most conservative and entrenched Democrats began to fear for their seats, and in the months that followed, the legend of McCarthy's political power grew." P. 123.
- Douglas, In the Fullness of Time, p. 140.
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123. Barone et al., Almanac of American Politics, p. 53. Mailliard was given a safer district in the
1972 line drawing.
Source: Mayhew, David, Congress: The Electoral Connection, excerpt from pp. 49-73, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, 1974.
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
General Document Comments 0
The article was very interesting, in my opinion, because it really gave me a look into the lives of these congress men and what it took to get there. I thought the quote “Each office has skilled professionals who can play the bureaucracy like an organ” because it really puts in perspective what politics is. I also thought the quote “an incumbent congressman, out of line with his districts ideological persuasions, can become unbeatable” because it intrigued me that something like that could happen but i guess he just played the organ of bureaucracy well.
Overall, the article had some really insightful information concerning the three different activities that congressmen engage in to help them get reelected. It was interesting seeing how everything that congressmen do is tied to their wish to get as many people as they can to support them for their reelection, even if they do things in a unique way. Like Democratic Edward R. Roybal said, “My positions are not inconsistent; I just approach people differently.” Personally, I think this makes him unreliable and erratic because the people won’t know what he supports in reality, seeing as how he confronts people distinctively. However, if the congressman believes that it is the most effective way, then that’s on him; it is after all, his reelection that is at stake. All in all, even though Congressmen have exclusive ways of expressing themselves, they all engage in three similar activities: advertising, credit claiming, and position taking.
During their terms in Congress, Senators and Representatives seem to have only the job of planning for their reelection. I makes me skeptical to see Congress members announce their qualifications, good deeds, charities, etc because it all seems ingenuine. They make/shape policy and present themselves in a way that is most desirable to the public rather than what is the most beneficial option. Congress members take part in policies and events with the thought of reelection in the back of their minds, something that should be questioned by the public and not ignored. In the end, looks and words do not matter; only action and the passion to make their state thrive truly matter. Despite this, in recent and current years, politicians still are focused on making a name for themselves and keeping office for as long as possible, which is why the public has begun to distrust their motives.
Advertising is a way for the incumbents to be noticed. To be able to see a face will make the public feel more comfortable with who they are electing. Advertising is constantly being utilized and is one of the main key factors to gaining recognition. Credit-claiming portrays the candidate as a “good” person. This is because credit claiming shows how the candidate is benefiting the community, what new system they’ve started or just what they have contributed in. Even if it were just a small help, incumbents like to take the full credit of their actions/non-actions. And lastly, benefits are given out to favor the candidate’s constituents or non constitutents. The method of attracting their home district will help them win the vote by giving the public what they want. The method of attracting outside district constitutents is a way to sabotage those home district running candidates. As you can see, politics is a dirty game. It involves a lot of selfishness and cockyness to win the public over. It isn’t even about helping us anymore, it’s more about them holding their position or trying to get a position.
This article provides insight about what congressmen are really focused on. Building a brand name for themselves through the use of advertising and credit claiming seems to be their main focus. Although it’s understandable, they should also focus on keeping their promise to their constituents, instead of using their money to cover the amount of advertising mail they send out. I understand it must be difficult to make yourself well known, however there must be another solution. When the people realize congressmen repeat the same solutions to gain votes and take no action, there will be a loss of trust. If this continues we definitely won’t see any progress for out country.
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