The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama [61]
But most of the time, legislation is a murky brew, the product of one hundred compromises large and small, a blend of legitimate policy aims, political grandstanding, jerry-rigged regulatory schemes, and old-fashioned pork barrels. Often, as I read through the bills coming to the floor my first few months in the Senate, I was confronted with the fact that the principled thing was less clear than I had originally thought; that either an aye vote or a nay vote would leave me with some trace of remorse. Should I vote for an energy bill that includes my provision to boost alternative fuel production and improves the status quo, but that’s wholly inadequate to the task of lessening America’s dependence on foreign oil? Should I vote against a change in the Clean Air Act that will weaken regulations in some areas but strengthen regulation in others, and create a more predictable system for corporate compliance? What if the bill increases pollution but funds clean coal technology that may bring jobs to an impoverished part of Illinois?
Again and again I find myself poring over the evidence, pro and con, as best I can in the limited time available. My staff will inform me that the mail and phone calls are evenly divided and that interest groups on both sides are keeping score. As the hour approaches to cast my vote, I am frequently reminded of something John F. Kennedy wrote fifty years ago in his book Profiles in Courage:
Few, if any, face the same dread finality of decision that confronts a Senator facing an important call of the roll. He may want more time for his decision—he may believe there is something to be said for both sides—he may feel that a slight amendment could remove all difficulties—but when that roll is called he cannot hide, he cannot equivocate, he cannot delay—and he senses that his constituency, like the Raven in Poe’s poem, is perched there on his Senate desk, croaking “Nevermore” as he casts the vote that stakes his political future.
That may be a little dramatic. Still, no legislator, state or federal, is immune from such difficult moments—and they are always far worse for the party out of power. As a member of the majority, you will have some input in any bill that’s important to you before it hits the floor. You can ask the committee chairman to include language that helps your constituents or eliminate language that hurts them. You can even ask the majority leader or the chief sponsor to hold the bill until a compromise more to your liking is reached.
If you’re in the minority party, you have no such protection. You must vote yes or no on whatever bill comes up, with the knowledge that it’s unlikely to be a compromise that either you or your supporters consider fair or just. In an era of indiscriminate logrolling and massive omnibus spending bills, you can also rest assured that no matter how many bad provisions there are in the bill, there will be something—funding for body armor for our troops, say, or some modest increase in veterans’ benefits—that makes the bill painful to oppose.
In its first term, at least, the Bush White House was a master of such legislative gamesmanship. There’s an instructive story about the negotiations surrounding the first round of Bush tax cuts, when Karl Rove invited a Democratic senator over to the White House to discuss the senator’s potential support for the President’s package. Bush had won the senator’s state handily in the previous election—in part on a platform of tax cuts—and the senator was generally supportive of lower marginal rates. Still, he was troubled by the degree to which the proposed tax cuts were skewed toward the wealthy and suggested a few changes