Marriage amendment threatens GOP unity
WASHINGTON -- A unified government has long been a dream of policy makers who've watched America's system of checks and balances function more like blocks and chains at certain moments.
But the ideal of a president aligned with both houses of Congress, wielding power the way a European prime minister commands parliament, has been elusive. In recent decades, whenever a president and Congress of the same party came to power together, they soon came unglued, like a car with wheels spinning in different directions.
That is, until the current 108th Congress and President Bush launched the first smoothly functioning unified government in at least 30 years, since Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the Great Society in the sliver of time between the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War.
The unusual cooperation between Congress and the White House is an accomplishment in itself. Neither Bill Clinton nor Jimmy Carter was able to control a Congress run by his own party, and even Johnson didn't come close to the lean efficiency of the current GOP operation.
That's why the grumbling reaction of some congressional Republicans to Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage came as a surprise. One longtime Bush supporter, Representative David Dreier of California, declared flatly that "I'm not supportive of amending the Constitution on this issue."
Even a leading social conservative like Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah felt free to question the administration, saying he could go either way on the matter.
Changing the Constitution is a serious step, but Republicans haven't had trouble supporting amendments on flag-burning and a balanced budget. Gay marriage is opposed by a clear majority in the country, more so among Republicans. And while the amendment carries political risks, they're less obvious than in some other Bush initiatives supported by Congress.
The reservations of Hatch, Dreier, and some other GOP stalwarts were mild and respectful, and may be muted in time for tomorrow's hearing on the amendment.
In recent months, some conservatives and mavericks broke with Bush over the energy bill and the Medicare expansion, but those bills won majorities anyway. (The energy bill was later thwarted by a Democratic-led filibuster.)
Otherwise, Republican leaders in Congress have enforced order in ways that past Democratic bosses -- even legendary vote-counters like Speakers Sam Rayburn and Tip O'Neill -- could never quite manage.
Often fractured between powerful, long-serving Southern conservatives and Northern progressives, the Democrats rarely answered the call of party loyalty. With an almost uninterrupted reign from 1932 to 1994, the Democratic majority considered itself permanent residents in a city where presidents only visited.
O'Neill, who served during almost half of the Democrats' long run, declared Carter's relations with Congress the worst of any president in his experience.
Clinton's health-care initiative, the centerpiece of his first-term agenda, fell prey not only to conservative attacks but the separate agendas of powerful Democrats, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.
When the Republicans took over, they made a sensible adjustment in the rules to ensure that committee chairs don't owe their positions solely to seniority; having to appeal to one's colleagues for a chairmanship created an obvious incentive for party loyalty.
Other changes have been harsher. In the lockstep House, Republicans give moderates a chance to break ranks only after a bill favored by the leadership has enough votes to win. House and Senate Republicans conduct their own unofficial conferences to draft bills along with the White House -- a breach of Capitol etiquette that cuts Democrats out entirely.
Most bills sail through with only Republican votes. And even within the party, dissent usually is quashed. When some GOP senators, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, tried to restructure part of Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq as loans rather than grants, the president reportedly snapped at them: "I'm not here to debate with you."
Bush got his money.
But that was before his latest downturn in the polls, introducing the real possibility that Bush could be out of office in a year. The Republican Congress plans to be around a lot longer, maybe as long as the Democratic reign that preceded it.
At tomorrow's hearing on Bush's call for an amendment banning gay marriage, Republican leaders probably will try hard to maintain discipline. But after a much-questioned war and spending programs that have raised the deficit without a lot of political benefit to the GOP, Republicans must be wondering if the price of a unified government is a unified fate.
