In this fairy
tale, the first benign result would likely have been the attraction
of a different breed of candidates, thus a different breed of
members. Candidates would offer themselves up for service to their
neighbors and their country, as the Framers intended, rather than
running for the privilege of serving themselves and helping themselves
to the levers of power to perpetuate themselves.
There is
a Gresham's Law in operation among a nation's politicians, as
well as in its currency. Gresham's currency law tells us that
bad money drives good money out of circulation. The most recent
example of this is the replacement of silver coinage by the base
metal coinage we have in circulation today. In politics Gresham's
Political Law tells us that bad politicians drive good politicians
out of circulation. Thus the pool of talent available for congressional
service had been severely restricted by the nature of the system
as it existed prior to our Amendment.
Fortunately,
our imagined Amendment had the effect of ameliorating the damaging
effects of Gresham's Political Law. How? By diminishing the number
of bad politicians in Congress, thereby making the good ones less
scarce.
We are all
familiar with the Law of Unintended Consequences — but tend
to forget that some unintended consequences can be beneficial.
When this nation was founded under God two and a quarter centuries
ago, it was blessed with great leaders. Would it be fair to call
them giants? The fifty-six who signed the Declaration certainly
were giants — giants of unflinching honor. And those who
wrote the Constitution were, as well. All were godly men of intellect,
courage, vision and dedication, men who for all their differences
had one thing in common — a desire to serve what they perceived
to be the best interests of their new country, in every dimension.
Happily,
our make-believe 27th Amendment began to entice our modern giants
to come forth, either voluntarily or at the behest of their friends
and neighbors, and the giants began to infiltrate the Congress.
We all looked
on amazed at other consequences of our Amendment, intended or
unintended.
We noticed
a lessening of posturing, preening and posing among members, perhaps
because of a diminished need to appear important.
Members felt
less compulsion to bring home pork, (so they could call press
conferences to announce dams, contracts or appropriations in their
respective districts, never mind how many log-rolling votes had
been traded to others to get each of these — a sort of negative
leverage to our annual spending.)
We learned
that when a member goes to the Capitol to serve, he is not desperate
to get reelected, so that he has not nearly the craving for that
biennial fiscal fix which had previously afflicted members.
We were pleasantly
surprised to learn that freedom from the money addiction became
the one greatest and most effective version of campaign finance
reform that could possibly come out of Congress. That meant that
years later we wouldn't be exposed to all the tinkering that could
occur when the lobbyists were turned loose with all their
money to obtain their brand of finance reform.
We were spared
the spectacle of what former Speaker Jim Wright has referred to
as "…the
deluge of big campaign gifts [which might] cross that invisible
line between buying preferred 'access' to legislators and actually
buying votes."
Lobbyists
were permitted — no, actually invited — to testify before
the various committees, but were prohibited from giving to any
member any more money than a constituent. The CEO of General Electric
and the President of the AFL-CIO were limited in the same way.
The Supreme Court's Beck decision was codified, so that workers'
dues could not be spent by unions on political campaigns without
each individual's permission, but were to count against, and be
limited by, the limits placed on every other taxpayer.
With the
increase of tamed egos in each house, it was soon discovered that
the number of committees and subcommittee could be pruned, and
the number of bills filed and referred to committees had dropped
each year. This meant that a large amount of time could be saved
annually in conducting the nation's business, leaving time for
lawmakers to actually read legislation before they voted on it
— just as had been the practice in the nineteenth century.
It also permitted committee members to participate in writing
legislation, helping them to understand and head off the convoluted
language that may have been placed in a bill at the behest of
some lobbyist, or smuggled into a bill by another committee member
with an axe to grind.
Fiscal Discipline
reared its lovely head as Congress began asserting itself over
the ever-expanding bureaucracy, limiting payrolls and shrinking
rule-making authority of government agencies, thereby saving taxpayer
dollars while cutting for the first time in modern history the
regulatory cost to the economy.
In each house,
members found themselves actually working together to cut the
size of government.
Then, wonder
of wonders, Congress, in both houses, found the individual and
collective backbone to stand up to rogue presidents and play-it-by-ear
judges, stopping them in their tracks. In this sense, our 27th
Amendment made the 22nd somewhat less necessary.
Last but
not least, Teddy Kennedy, the Senator from Chappaquiddick, was
term limited out of office, and we were finally relieved from
the national embarrassment of watching him whine through the televised
hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lying about the records
of judicial nominees or Attorney General nominees. He was able
to go back to his womanizing and drinking, full time.
