Things are pretty bad when Washington is happy about a filibuster.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, with help from a small group of primarily Republican senators, staged a nearly 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to direct the Central Intelligence Agency last week. Paul’s anti-Obama rant added up to little more than a symbol of opposition to supposed White House overreach, as the president’s policy on the use of drones was quickly clarified the following day, and Brennan was easily confirmed by the Senate that afternoon.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t Brennan’s nomination that Paul specifically opposed — it was a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder. Writing in response to a query from Paul about whether the president could authorize lethal force like a drone strike on U.S. soil, Holder explained that the administration had “no intention” of ever using drone strikes in the country. But he didn’t explicitly rule out using lethal military force in case of an “extraordinary circumstance” like a terrorist attack. The response wasn’t to Paul’s satisfaction, so he proceeded with his headline-grabbing diatribe.
And Washington is abuzz. Twitter exploded with the hashtag “StandWithRand” as Paul’s speech dipped into prime time. Just hours after his tirade ended, Paul told Politico he was seriously considering running for president in 2016.
Granted, it is true that Paul’s filibuster stands out in recent political memory. It’s the first talking filibuster to exceed five hours since 2010 and before that since 1992. Modern-day senators, in a twist on centuries-old Senate rules, typically just tell their leader they intend to filibuster a bill or resolution, and the matter is dropped. Bills with so-called “holds” on them are simply never scheduled for a vote. It takes no effort and requires no public interaction.
So it’s noteworthy that Paul chose to actually talk in this last filibuster — to own his cause and fight for it in the public eye with real skin in the game. But at the same time, massive support for Paul and calls to resurrect the “old rules” of the filibuster reveal a certain desperation in the Senate and American politics in general. After all, no landmark legislation was passed, and no dangerous bill was killed — even the target of Paul’s filibuster, Brennan’s nomination and subsequent confirmation, easily slipped away.
It was all just talk, and everyone’s celebrating. In Berkeley, we suffer from a similar malady. Whether it’s prolonged discussion about Telegraph revitalization that should’ve happened years ago or the city’s consistent but hollow commitment to solving the problem of widespread homelessness on Shattuck, on Telegraph, at People’s Park and elsewhere — Berkeley has an acute case of U.S. Senate syndrome.
We often hear about the value of “discourse” and “meaningful conversation” while attending Cal and living in Berkeley. Conversation is powerful, but real discourse is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Without effective action as a result, though, discourse is just a waste of everyone’s time.
As for the Senate, it’s simply time to change the rules. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, appeared to go along with numerous Democratic proposals to do away the filibuster in 2011, only to strike an agreement with GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, that cut through a little red tape but left the Senate’s institutionalized system of interruption and delay largely intact. Almost every action in the Senate requires 60 votes now — the voter-approved Democratic majority in the upper house is essentially meaningless.
But it doesn’t have to be. The American public, the media, the White House and many in the Senate are ready to do away with the filibuster or at least the anonymous pseudo-filibuster “hold” that’s so often used today. What reason could there possibly be to not trash the rule that allowed Strom Thurmond to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for a record-setting 24 hours and 18 minutes?
In the Senate, as in Berkeley and in many other state and local governments across the country, achieving forward motion has to entail cutting back. The Senate’s rules combine with the personal motivations of American elected officials to prevent Congress from being an effective governing body. When arcane rules and bureaucratic inertia change the nature of American representative democracy without approval of the people, the reality of that democracy is fundamentally threatened.
It’s time for the Senate to relinquish its grip and acknowledge that today it is just as much the people’s house as the House of Representatives. The American people have suffered far too long to be refused this time — since John C. Calhoun popularized the ploy in 1841, since Huey Long perfected its use for personal gain 1935 and since Thurmond attempted to block civil rights in the 1950s.
Paul’s filibuster may be less ideologically repugnant to Americans than the escapades of Long or Thurmond, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less reprehensible.
Contact Connor Grubaugh at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.