David Brooks ended an excellent recent column , "Students Learn From People They Love," asking "How would you design a school if you wanted to put relationship quality at the core? Come to think of it, how would you design a Congress?"
This last question has become more urgent as Congress becomes increasingly dysfunctional. Things have gotten so bad that a recent New York Times lodging review says, "Given that people of opposing political persuasions tend to live, eat, shop, work, and worship in self-selected bubbles, it was probably only a matter of time before someone decided that Republicans and Democrats needed their own hotels too."
Hotels?!
Technical progress has exacerbated political divisions.
Fast, inexpensive air travel has encouraged the withering of collegiality and good personal relations among members of Congress. When travel was slow and expensive, most politicians couldn't go back home very often.
They tended to move their families to Washington, D.C. and to stick around most of the time. They had more opportunities to socialize with other members of Congress, including those from the other party. The presence of spouses and children encouraged social contacts.
Many members of Congress are now only in town on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, returning to their home turf for long "weekends" most of the time.
They are incredibly busy during these few days in Washington. The increasing cost of political campaigns compels most of them to spend half time raising money for the next election. And since they return to their home areas so often, fewer of their families relocate to Washington.
Their lack of casual social interaction reinforces tendencies for Democrats and Republicans to see each other as stereotyped enemies instead of as human beings with whom they might have something in common.
For David Brooks, "a defining question for any school or company is: What is the quality of the emotional relationships here?" Positive emotional relationships among members of Congress are less likely to develop when they have little to do with one another except in contentious meetings on the job.
Many small changes could be made. Going to lunch once in a while with members of the other party could help. Perhaps joint Democratic-Republican baseball teams could form.
For members who have time to read an occasional book, bipartisan discussion groups might be created.
These and other small steps would be compatible with the very large change — probably impossible but useful to think about — that I will suggest.
Imagine that we could prohibit senators and representatives---unless they represent a state adjacent to Washington, D.C. — from occupying housing within 50 miles of the Capitol building. They would also not be allowed to dine at any privately operated restaurant or in any private residence in the Washington area.
Instead, the government would construct dormitories where senators and representatives could live, free of charge, and a cafeteria in which they would take all their meals together, again free of charge. They would receive no expense money for accommodations or meals in Washington. The arrangements should be comfortable but not lush, much as one would find in dormitories and student cafeterias in typical state universities.
An additional reform, which I may discuss in a future column, would release members of Congress from the need to spend hours of time daily soliciting money for their next election campaigns. This would give residents in the new dorms ample time to become acquainted with each other and to chat casually over cafeteria meals.
Casual interactions could promote mutual understanding, respect, and perhaps even affection among the members, enabling them to conduct more fruitful negotiations in their legislative work.
A congressional dormitory and cafeteria could probably never get enough support in the House and Senate to become law. But it can be useful to prescribe an ideal arrangement which can provide "a star to steer by" when contemplating lesser reforms. And the idea has an important historical precedent from ancient Greece.
You may be familiar with Plato's "Republic".
Plato, circa 380 B.C., envisioned a political system in which a class of "guardians" would constitute the elite pool from which top rulers would be chosen. The guardians' living arrangements would closely resemble those I am proposing for members of Congress. As Adrian College professor Antonis Coumoundouros summarizes Plato, the guardians "will not have private property, they will have little privacy, they will receive what they need from the city via taxation of the other classes, and they will live communally and have common messes."
Perhaps if our leaders had common messes they could avoid making so many messes.
Who says we can't get good ideas from reading the classics?
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981 and his most recent book is "Beyond Capitalism: A Classless Society With (Mostly) Free Markets." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and a number of other states. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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