Deliberative Democracy Headed for the 'Dark Side?'.

• Author: Ornstein, Norman J.

This renowned political observer believes there are perils ahead for Congress--increasing partisanship, ideological polarization and weak leadership. Add cyberdemocracy to the mix and prepare for a direct challenge to representative government.

1999 has not been a very good year for Congress. The 106th House was sworn in on Jan. 3 with a new and accidental speaker, the smallest party majority since 1954, a majority party reeling from an election in which it defied history and lost seats, and a higher level of partisan tension than at any time in modern memory. The 106th Senate started with an acrimonious impeachment trial. The policy process hit the ground stumbling, and largely drifted through the first 10 months, before members enacted their first major piece of legislation, banking reform.

Despite the firm pledges of congressional leaders that they would make sure the 13 appropriations bills were enacted on time, no major spending bill was close to enactment when the new fiscal year began on Oct. 1, and the budget negotiations dragged on until neatly Thanksgiving. The top policy priority of the Republican Congress, a $792 billion tax cut, was abandoned entirely. The leaders of the majority in both houses had extraordinary difficulty maintaining enough party unity to enact legislation or dominate the agenda on their own and were unwilling or unable to attract enough Democrats to create frequent bipartisan coalitions. In the Senate, even when Republicans stuck together, the 60-vote threshold required by the filibuster often stymied Majority Leader Trent Lott. In mid-November, surveys showed barely 40 percent of Americans approving of the conduct of Congress, not exactly a ringing affirmation.

But Congress has been through far worse news than this. A decade ago in the late 1980s, the era of pay raises and the House bank, approval ratings in the 20s were the norm. If this Congress does not have a long laundry list of major policy accomplishments, it has not collapsed into gridlock. After embarrassing delays and reversals, and an astonishing display of statistical chicanery and budgetary legerdemain, Congress still managed to work with the White House and emerge with a budget that will build down the national debt. This Congress continues the actions of the last several, which, together with the president, turned deficits as far as the eye can see into budget surpluses as far as the eye can see.

Much of the credit for the budget turn-around goes to the overall economy. But much of the credit for the remarkable economy goes to Congress and the president--partly because they did not muck around so much in the private sector and let the natural strengths of the American market economy react and adjust to globalization and the information revolution.

If things are indeed better than they look on the surface, they are not exactly hunky-dory. There are big problems in Congress manifested in this past year, some of them endemic. Are these problems, or is Congress's bottom line performance unusual or unique? What do they tell us about Congress in the years to come or, put another way, about Congress in the new millennium? A congress, of course, is a two-year phenomenon, and it is not always or often adequate to judge one on the basis of its first year alone. But the last Congress of this millennium and the first of the next millennium left for the holidays with its work cut out for it in its final year.

Some of the difficulties the 106th Congress had were the product of larger dynamics. Democrats had kept majorities in the House of Representatives for 40 consecutive years from 1954 to 1994. When the Republicans captured the institution, not one Republican elected as such had ever been in the majority before; only one Democrat (Sidney Yates of Illinois) had ever been in the minority. The flip-flop in roles was difficult for both sides. Republicans had had four decades of frustration; Democrats, four decades of complacency. Frustration bred shrillness and irresponsibility; complacency bred arrogance and insensitivity. Partisan tensions were very high when the Republicans took over. The commitment to bipartisanship expressed in his inaugural speech by incoming Speaker...