"The Senate Was As Dysfunctional 125 Years Ago As It Is Now," Jamelle Bouie, New York Times: What To Do About The Filibuster?

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Massachusetts, 1901

"The Senate Was As Dysfunctional 125 Years Ago As It Is Now"

March 6, 2021

By Jamelle Bouie Opinion Columnist

To research my Friday column on the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 and the Lodge federal elections bill, I spent a lot of time on JSTOR, a searchable database for primary sources and academic research. I found a lot of stuff I didn’t use, including an 1893 article by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, published in The North American Review and titled “Obstruction in the Senate.”

It’s a short piece, arguing against the tradition of unlimited debate in the chamber. The background to Lodge’s argument, as I explore in my column, is that when he was a member of the House in 1891 his federal elections bill was killed by a Democratic filibuster after months of delay and obstruction.

I want to highlight one section in particular that with few adjustments could be published today as an argument against the filibuster as it currently exists.

“Practically speaking,” Lodge writes, “each Senator can speak as often and at as great length as he chooses. There is not only no previous question to cut him off, but a time cannot even be set for taking a vote, except by unanimous consent.” He continues:

This is all very well in theory, and there is much to be said for the maintenance of a system, in one branch at least of the government, where debate shall be entirely untrammelled. But the essence of a system of courtesy is that it should be the same at all points. The two great rights in our representative bodies are voting and debate. If the courtesy of unlimited debate is granted it must carry with it the reciprocal courtesy of permitting a vote after due discussion. If this is not the case the system is impossible.

There are more lines like that in the piece. For instance, Lodge says: “To vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is imbecile. The difficulty in the Senate today is that, while the courtesy which permits unlimited debate is observed, the reciprocal courtesy, which should insure the opportunity to vote, is wholly disregarded.”

He concludes his argument with a point that defenders of the filibuster would do well to heed: “How the Senate may vote on any given question at any given time is of secondary importance, but when it is seen that it is unable to take any action at all, the situation becomes of the gravest character. A body which cannot govern itself will not long hold the respect of the people who have chosen it to govern the country.”

What I Wrote

My Tuesday column was on President Biden’s brief address in support of labor rights, which was much more groundbreaking than it might seem at first glance.

Biden is not the first president to speak in support of unions, but he may be the first to speak so publicly — and so directly — in their favor (certainly since Harry Truman). The words themselves are ordinary, but the context, an American president speaking in support of the most high profile organizing drive in the country, makes them extraordinary. And that, in turn, raises expectations for what Biden can and should accomplish as president on behalf of the labor movement.

My Friday column, as I said at the top, was on the twin stories of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 and the Lodge federal elections bill, and what lessons they may hold for our own time.

By the end of the decade, in 1900, most of the rest of the South had followed Mississippi down the path of official white supremacy and total suppression of Black voting. Circumstances varied from state to state, but the dynamics were the same: first came biracial agrarian rebellion, then new constitutions, new restrictions, and a new equilibrium of white elite dominance over land, labor and capital.

I also joined my former colleague Aisha Harris on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, to talk about the new movie “The United States v. Billie Holiday” and depictions of the F.B.I. on film.

Now Reading

Tressie McMillan Cottom on Dolly Parton in her newsletter.

Michael Kazin on the future of the Democratic Party coalition in The New Republic.

Jeannie Suk Gersen on the true story of the “comfort women” in The New Yorker.

Mark and Paul Engler on presidential power and grass-roots mobilization in Dissent magazine.

Kwame Anthony Appiah on the economist Thorstein Veblen in The New York Review of Books.

Rebecca Sun on the actress Kelly Marie Tran in The Hollywood Reporter.

Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com.