Air mattresses in the mercenary Congress

Echoing my recent post on the current obsession among congressmen over avoiding all appearances of attachment to DC, the Washington Post today published an article about members of Congress sleeping on the floors of their offices.    Many of these are Tea Partiers who apparently have not realized that using their office as a home involves freeloading on the federal government for plumbing and electricity, possibly in violation of the tax code.  I don't care about this, but I would like my representatives to act like professionals with responsibilities of national importance. 

I agree with the Wayne Gilchrest quote:  "It's lonely. You're isolated. And it's in some ways, it's sort of pathetic." 

Congress is not summer camp.

Chris Lee in the mercenary Congress

As some of my research in the past has dealt with voter reaction to scandal accusations against members of Congress, I found the rapid resignation Congressman Chris Lee (R-NY) intriguing.  The story got a lot a fast headlines yesterday, but really very little in-depth or editorial coverage from what I can tell.   It is likely that Rep. Lee’s immediate and conclusive response saved him from the scrutiny that was applied to Senators John Ensign and David Vitter, who have (thus far successfully) endured in the face of what must be described as more serious scandals, albeit at the cost of his political career.

Conceivably, Lee believed the scandal would play as particularly tawdry with older voters because it involved anonymous communication over the internet.   But the basic gist of the story is really nothing more than “Lee intended to cheat on his wife, and was mildly dishonest in the way he went about it.”  This obviously reflects a serious personal moral failing, but it is nothing particularly unusual or surprising, nor does it call into question Lee’s ability to do his job.  It is pretty clear that Bill Clinton was guilty of much worse. 

Nevertheless, the main purpose of this post is not to posit an opinion on whether Lee should resign over these particular actions.  Rather, I want to argue that recent trends in how the role of members of Congress as leaders and politicians is viewed, and how members see their own roles, have made an increase in this sort of activity inevitable.  In particular, congressmen no longer “live” in Washington.  The see themselves as mercenaries for their district or their cause, marching to war during the week, leaving their families in their home districts, to hopefully reunite with on weekends amid a heavy schedule of constituent service and fundraisers.

This recent article by Lisa Miller in Newsweek shows how starkly things have changed from the recent past, where it was routine for congressional families to socialize with each other regardless of party lines. Miller notes that among 46 freshman members of Congress interviewed, “only one said he or she was planning to move to Washington with spouse and children in tow”.    Perhaps most tellingly, “Chris Gibson” (like Lee, from upstate New York) “plans to sleep on a blow-up mattress in his Washington office—and then hightail it back on weekends to Kinderhook, New York, where his young family resides.” 

Miller regrets that the lack of Congressional spouses in Washington has reduced bipartisan collegiality in the body.  But how can it also not increase the sense of loneliness that members feel on the job?  Moreover, the simple fact that many members have only temporary housing in Washington must encourage the sense that they are always on the road, always in campaign mode, always needing to be ready to change their lives, their routines, and perhaps their political actions, at slightest sign of crisis or controversy.  Can we really expect our elected officials to view themselves as serious thinkers and statesmen when they are essentially living the home lives of college frat boys?  These are the leaders who are tasked to determine the direction that our national policies will take us, and voters seems to begrudge them the basic wish to live normal family lives in the city where they work.

Perhaps if Lee has moved his family to DC with him, he would have never experienced whatever sense of loneliness or descent into immaturity that drove him to solicit anonymous sex over the internet.  And even if still committed these actions, morally repugnant but professionally inconsequential, maybe he would have has the stability and resolve to tough out the scandal if he and his family ever really saw Washington as their home.  In the recent political climate, no legislator wants to be tagged as a “career politician” or “Washington insider”.  But I believe the constant pressure to style oneself an “outsider” within Congress has had severe costs on both the professional and personal lives of members.