They deliberately fought against becoming “institutionalized”—that is, against placing the good of the institution above immediate policy considerations. As Paul Tsongas (D-Mass,) put it, the Class of ’74 sought to “resist integration into the House for the time being,” acting not within the institutional structure but outside of it. Rather than working through the existing institutional structures, such as committees and party caucuses, they formed their own groups and sought to undermine the existing structures. They openly discussed ousting their Speaker, Carl Albert (D-Okla.), for being too accommodating to the other party and for being unwilling to twist the arms of moderates within the caucus. After Speaker Albert retired, he wrote in his autobiography: “I tried to be the leader of this group that refused to be led.”
Does any of this sound familiar?
This is from Joseph Postell, “Congressional Decline: Deja Vu All Over Again,” in our sister on-line publication Law and Liberty, August 20, 2018.
Postell, as the above quote implies, puts a lot of weight on the explanation that the big change in Congress happened with the class of 74. According to Postell, John A. Lawrence, author of the book Postell is reviewing, pulls his punches a little. Nevertheless, Lawrence, who spent a few years as chief of staff to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, himself does attribute a fair bit of the change to the class of ’74. Otherwise he would probably not have written the book.
I remember the class of 74 well. I knew that the voters would crush the Republicans in post-Watergate payback. I hadn’t expected it to be this extreme. As Postell points out, “93 new members of the House of Representatives (predominantly liberal Democrats) took office in January of 1975.” And we got a lot of legislation, mainly bad, as a result. Moreover, it cemented the positions of Henry Waxman and others whose contributions were net negative.
By the way, I wish we could put an end to the “deja vu all over again” formulation. I sometimes run into young people who, when I say “deja vu,” wonder if I’m not leaving out “all over again.” Many seem never to have heard the simple “deja vu” without the redundant “all over again.” The redundant formulation was funny the first time and maybe even the fifth time. It’s not funny the 1000th time.
The whole review is worth reading. Probably the book too, although the odds are that I won’t get to it.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 21 2018 at 2:34pm
I don’t know what Professor Postell’s politics are but can make a reasoned guess by his current affiliation(Heritage Foundation). that he calls Howard Wirtz Smith a giant in the House out to be immediately disqualifying. As chairman of the House Rules Committee, Smith bottled up Civil Rights Legislation until events in 1964 proved to be even too much for him to overcome.
While it is true that there were 93 new members of the House elected in 1974 only 49 seats flipped to the Democrats (48 Republicans and one independent). In ‘liberal’ California most of the incumbents who ran for reelection prevailed. Only two Republicans who ran were defeated by Democrats; there were a couple of retirements where Democrats picked up formerly Republican held seats. Democrats picked up more House seats in Indiana than in California (I was a graduate student at Indiana at that time) and none of them were ‘wildly liberal’ (Andy Jacobs was as close to a Libertarian as we had in those days). There were a number of other pickups in the Midwest as well as some in the South. One needs to look carefully at the new members before passing judgement.
Yes, Henry Waxman was a liberal but was always behind John Dingell who chaired or was ranking minority member of the Energy and Commerce Committee for almost all the time Waxman served on the Comittee. Waxman only chaired it for the first two years of the Obama Administration. Perhaps from a Libertarian viewpoint some of the legislation Waxman spearheaded is disliked but from a public health perspective they were quite important. During my career I worked with the Waxman staff on several pieces of legislation of important to the pharma industry and found that they always listened to all sides.
Even with the election of 1974, many of the key committee chairs stayed the same because of seniority rules. the Democratic caucus was extremely heterogeneous at that time as there were large number of members from southern and border states (for example the TX delegation broke down as D-21; R-3 in marked contrast to today).
Yes, there were a lot of changes in 1974 that were predictable but it was not the ‘liberal’ landslide that the reviewer makes it out to be. As an aside, one of my old poly sci professors took a sabbatical around this time period to help Richard Bolling (D-MO) rewrite some of the House rules.
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 21 2018 at 2:47pm
Made an error, should be Howard Worth Smith. While he did lose a primary to a more liberal Democrat the change in demographics of the district may have been of importance. I could not find a 1966 map of the district but do believe it represented the DC suburbs in VA which began a more liberal trend at that time. It just might be the Rep. Smith was too conservative for the district with those changes.
Thaomas
Aug 21 2018 at 3:59pm
It’s hard to see how the Bush II deficits, the unpaid-for expansion of Medicare, Republicans opposing ACA for 8 years with no plan for making it better or borrowing a lot of money in order to reduce tax collections from wealthy individuals, and sitting idly by while the Administration launches a trade war is the fault of the people elected in 1975.
TMC
Aug 22 2018 at 1:58pm
Too many of those mentioned are still around or have been around until recently. I’ve never been for term limits, but this article screams for them.
Phil
Aug 22 2018 at 4:09pm
“Too many” must not be very many. Turnover is higher than most people imagine. The average tenure of the 115th Congress is 9.4 years (4.6 terms) for a Representative and 10.1 years (1.7 terms) for a Senator. At the start of the Congress, 26% of Representatives and 21% of Senators had no more than 2 years of experience, higher percentages than members who had served more than 16 years, 20% and 19%, respectively. (Sources: CRS Report, Membership of the 115th Congress of July 11, 2018, and CRS Report, Congressional Careers of January 3, 2017).
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