Like a tree falling alone in the forest,
if a rule is unwritten, was it ever even really a rule?
In its early days, Congress developed a lot of rules and precedents.
Thomas Jefferson even wrote a book about it,
which Congress — has more or less used ever since.
But there’s also a large body of unwritten rules, call them customs, traditions, folkways
that has a lot to do with legislative success and failure and the trajectory of individual careers.
And it’s these unwritten rules that break down when politics gets excessively polarized.
For instance, one long-standing expectation was for newly elected members to defer
to their leaders – to their elders basically — to be seen and not heard,
to vote with their party and wait for time to bring them promotion.
Today that’s become a tradition more often broken than followed.
Many first-termers come to the floor to express themselves, and some even come to the floor
to denounce their own party leaders.
That’s what Ted Cruz did in the summer of 2015.
[clip] Ted Cruz: “We now know that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and
makes an explicit commitment that he is willing to say things he knows are false.”
{Ron Elving] Some of these unwritten rules are all about helping everybody get along,
easing the tension, like when you’re at a Thanksgiving dinner, and you say,
"I just got to have the recipe for this fabulous turnip casserole.”
Take for example, the custom by which one senator would not campaign actively against
any other senator, regardless of party or home state.
That one’s been under a lot of strain lately as the Senate has become more highly polarized.
One senator, a centrist, a moderate named Joe Manchin from West Virginia, tried to get his colleagues
in both parties to sign a pledge not to campaign actively against any of their colleagues.
[clip] Joe Manchin: “I would hope that each one of you would consider this.
I think we have to take this in our own hands right now and make sure we look at each other.
We look at each other with sincerity. You’re my friend.“
[Ron] Most of his colleagues have yet to respond.
Another example is the elaborate courtesy members use in addressing one another –
Clips [Angus King] My esteemed colleague.
[Roger Ricker] The gentleman, the Senator from Alaska.
[Nancy Pelosi] Thank you Mr. Speaker, I thank the general lady for yielding and congratulate her
on her extraordinary leadership.
Stilted and sometimes silly, these flowery forms of address are meant to smooth the raw
edges of actual personal conflict.
They are relics of an even more partisan time in our nation's history when members fought
duels, brought small arms with them to the Capitol and occasionally came to blows.
Another place old customs still prevail is in the cloakrooms.
Each of the chambers, the House and Senate, have separate cloakrooms for Republicans and
Democrats, and our producers are probably not gonna be able to show you a picture of
one because these long and narrow rooms off the floor are closed to TV cameras and photographers
and journalists and lobbyists and members of the other party and members of the
“other body,” which is the slightly disgusted phrase that members of the House and Senate use for
members of the other chamber.
And yes that’s another tradition.
These cloakrooms are the last bastions of confidentiality.
What is said in the cloakroom is supposed to to stay in the cloakroom.
But what is plotted in the cloakroom often
becomes the key to what then happens out on the floor.
Some of these traditions may be ready for the dustbin of history, but many of them have been
useful in managing the many conflicts of congressional operation and of our nation’s history.
At NPR I’m Ron Elving, thank you for coming to my office hours.