Failure, Shock, and Incoherence in Washington

The picture coming out of Washington now is one of failure, shock, and incoherence.

Failure. The most obvious failure is that the big bailout package was rejected by the House of Representatives this afternoon. The vote was 228 nays and 205 yeas.

The significance of the bailout defeat goes beyond the legislation in question. The U. S. has a fragile political system that depends on strong centralized leadership to function. As the system has become more strained by the rise of popular conservative movements, Congress has become more reliant on centralized leadership to perform almost any kind of task. Reponsibility for important legislation has gradually been taken out of committee and sub-committee hands and centralized with the party leadership. This has been true in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The bailout legislation was not generated out of the Financial Services Committee. It was negotated primarily by Barney Frank as a representative of Nancy Pelosi. When Roy Blunt joined the negotiations, he was there as a representative for Republican leader John Boehner.

As a result, the defeat of the bailout package is not just a failure for the current Democratic and Republican leadership of John Boehner. Instead, it's a system failure of the organizational model that's been developing in Congress since at least the early 1980's when Tip O'Neill began to centralize leadership functions in his office as a response to the Reagan Revolution.

Congress is taking off for the Rosh Hashanah holiday on Tuesday and Wednesday. It's probably a good thing that the leadership of both parties has a couple of days to think about how they're going to breathe new life into a dysfunctional political system.

It won't be easy.

Shock. Unsurprisingly, the human consequence of the failure of the familiar leadership-oriented way of doing business is that everyone is in shock. The biggest shock is that Pelosi and Boehner's leadership failed on such a big issue and that's a shock that's felt by everyone. Of course, the leadership itself and the Representatives who voted with the leadership would be shocked. The House leadership has powerful tools for winning votes (whip system, committee assignments, earmarks, and campaign contributions) and has been very successful over the last ten years whichever party is in power. The fact that the leadership has failed NOW of all times must be a shock to those who have been generally supportive.

But the Democrats and the Republicans who voted against the legislation are probably also in shock. For a number of liberal Democrats and right-wing Republicans, this will be the first time one of their protest votes actually succeeded in killing a big piece of legislation. Big success can be just as big a shock to those involved as big failure.

Incoherence. As a result of the failure of the House leadership system and general shock throughout the House membership, there is very little that's coherent coming out of the House of Representatives right now. Everybody's pointing fingers--Democrats, Republicans, presidential candidates, pundits, and bloggers--but I haven't seen any coherent ideas on how the House of Representatives can move forward to put together a legislative package that can successfully address the current financial meltdown.

According to McClatchy:

Neither the House nor the Senate will vote Tuesday because of the Jewish New Year, but the Senate could debate the measure. No one, though, could say what might emerge as consensus legislation, or when.

Chairman Frank couldn't say if leaders will try to tweak the bill that failed or come up with a new, easier-to-explain plan.

"That's a question we have to address," said Frank."

"I don't know that we know the path forward at this point," said
House Republican leader Boehner.

And the meltdown continues. American bankers still aren't lending to each other and don't appear to be making short-term business loans either. That's a situation that can't go on for long without the entire economy beginning to seize up because of a lack of money.

The question then is whether the leadership and membership of the House of Representatives can recover from their shock and confusion soon enough to pass financial legislation before the current market panic turns into system-wide economic failure.

Unfortunately, the answer to that is very much unknown.