The Folly of 'Up or Down' Politics

By Jeffrey Feldman, Frameshop. Posted May 24, 2005.

In his zeal to do away with any opposition to President Bush's judicial nominees, Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) has been disorienting the Senate by repeating the phrase "up or down vote." If you tuned into CSPAN-2 and listened to what Republican senators were saying,  sure, the faces looked different, but the words were the same:  "Up or Down Vote," said Bill First. "Up or Down Vote," said Chuck Grassley.  "Up or Down Vote," said Bob Dole ... said Mitch McConnell. 

It's hypnotic this latest GOP attempt to frame political debate to their advantage.  With so many important issues at stake, all the Republicans keep saying is: Up or down, up or down, up or down, up or down ...

And who can blame them?  It's a powerful little phrase. 

At first glance, it seems that the GOP logic is just this:  "Up" means "Yes" and "Down" means "No."  An up or down vote in this logic is just a "yes" or "no" vote.  Senators are either for or against President Bush's judicial nominees.  But if we think about it, this "yes-or-no" idea is just one small part of what the GOP is trying pass off on the American people.  The bigger idea is much more troubling.

The idea being advanced by Bill Frist and Co. in the Senate is that a Senate vote is nothing more than a "yes" or "no" to the will of the president.  In this logic, all senators are supposed to do is agree or disagree with what the president sends them -- thumbs up or thumbs down to the will of the president.  Such is the life and work of a senator according to the GOP majority attempting to take over Congress.

But wait one cloture stopping second.  That's not what being a senator is about at all!  Senators are not elected by the president; they are elected by citizens and are, therefore, first and foremost responsible to those citizens. 

Voting in the Senate is not about agreeing or disagreeing with the will of the president.  Voting in the Senate is about standing up for one's constituents.  It's about being responsible to those who voted for the senators.  And last I checked, when the president votes for a senator, that vote is not any more important than the vote of anyone else. 

Voting in the Senate is about speaking for and standing with one's constituents.  When a senator votes, it's not about giving thumbs up or thumbs down, but about standing with the American people.

Remember the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution?  Sure you do.  That's the amendment, passed in 1913 during the progressive era of the United States, which mandated that Senators should be elected by the people.  This is an amazing fact that most Americans do not know.  Just prior to the passage of Social Security, the United States ratified the Constitution so that senators were no longer appointed by state legislators, but were directly elected by the people -- and responsible to them.

Prior to 1913, the average senator  had no responsibility in particular to the people of his state (they were all men back then).  The senator was responsible to the people who appointed him -- state party machine bosses -- and to the leader of the party.

So, when Bill First  standss up on the floor of the Senate and tells us that the senators have a responsibility to the president, he is asking America to throw out the Seventeenth Amendment.  He is asking us to turn back the clock to the time before 1913 when senators didn't have any responsibility to the people, but were only responsible to the leaders of the party.

That's the real issue at stake in this "up or down" logic.  Whether Senators should stand with the people when they vote or should just sign off on the will of the party boss.

The down side to all this "up or down" logic is that Dems are trapped in a frame that makes them the nay-sayers of the Senate.  Frist and Co. are making it seem that they have a positive agenda and the Democrats are blocking the will of the people. 

Nonsense.

But it's been tricky for a visibly fatigued Minority leader, Harry Reid, to get out of this "up or down" logic.  So, rather than giving a long drawn out prescription, I've just decided to give Harry Reid a speech -- a short speech for him to use on the floor of the Senate, free of charge. The goal of this speech is to frame the filibuster issue in a new metaphor:  voting is standing together.

Here's the speech:

Who Should Senators Stand With?

Over and over again on the floor of the Senate -- following the lead of Majority leader Frist--Republican senator after Republican senator has stood up and told the American people that the job of a senator is to vote "up or down" on the proposals of the President.

Jeffrey Feldman is an assistant professor at New York University.

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