"Government is the enemy until you need a friend."

- William Cohen, United States Secretary of Defense (1997-2001)

Once In, Always In

21%. As of this writing, that is the average approval rating of the United States Congress. That’s so low you might say!

Actually no, it’s not, at least for Congress. In fact, 21% is a fairly high approval rating for our legislative body in recent times. For most of the past decade, Congress’s approval rating has been below the 20% mark, at one point even falling into the single digits.

The last time the rating even broke 30% was mid-2009, and it has not recovered to that level since. Furthermore, excluding a momentary spike after 9/11, Congress’s approval rating has rarely broken 50% in almost all polls taken since the mid-1970s.

Given this abysmal performance, clearly incumbent Congresspeople are being thrown out in droves. Obviously, voters are running to the polls every two years to expel 20-year officeholders from power. Surely.

Except, as everyone knows, this is not the case. If anything, it is an American tradition to reelect incumbents, especially in Congress. This has been especially true over the past two decades.

The incumbent reelection rate for all 435 members of the House of Representatives was 91% in 2018, 97% in 2016, and 95% in 2014. In fact, the only time the rate dropped below 90% over the past two decades was in 2010 – where “only” 85% of representatives stayed in office.

Throw them all out?

You’ve heard the refrains.

“They’re all corrupt.” “We need new blood in there.” “I wish they would stop being petty and solve our country’s problems.” “They’re not serious people.”

“They should all be thrown out.”

Ok, so do it. Seriously, vote against incumbents. If you think that nobody should be in office longer than, say, six years, vote against your representative at that point. In the primary election, in the general election, it doesn’t matter, get them out.

Of course, nobody is actually going to do this, for a very clear reason: when push comes to shove, people would rather have someone in office for 20 years that they do agree with, than someone in office for two years that they don’t. It’s politics.

If somebody is a die-hard Republican, does anybody actually believe they’ll vote for a Democrat in the general election, just because their incumbent Republican representative has been there for decades? No.

The Term Limit Problem(s)

At this point, those critical of Congress will say that they have a solution to the dilemma posed above. They argue that if voters will not remove decades-long incumbents from office, the law can. They argue for congressional term limits.

This idea is dead in the water, for the simple reason that for it to be implemented, members of Congress themselves would have to support it, limiting their own careers. Not going to happen.

However, even if this was not the case, the same political logic from earlier holds here as well.

Let’s say there was a six-year limit for congressional representatives. Therefore, voters could have their cake and eat it too. They could vote down party lines to their hearts’ content, without being forced to keep a 20-year incumbent in power.

There would always be “new blood,” new representatives, and they would not be risking their party losing control of the district. Sounds great, right?

Wrong.

Political scientists constantly use two phrases when referring to a Congressperson’s tenure. One is the “sophomore surge” – the bump in support a member of Congress sees during their first reelection campaign.

However, what is more important, and what most people ignore, is the “retirement slump.” There is a drop in support that an incumbent’s party sees in the election immediately following that incumbent’s retirement.

Simply put, incumbents do better in congressional elections. So much so that many districts often are represented by a Republican or Democrat despite being in regions which are continuously backing the other party.

A Story from the South

The state of Alabama is a fantastic example of this. In the 1988 election, it went overwhelmingly for George H.W. Bush, by a margin of 59%-40%. At the time, Alabama had seven representatives in the House: 5 Democrats, and 2 Republicans.

Bush won the state by a huge margin, did this impact Alabama’s congressional races?

All five Democrats won re-election. Two of the state’s Democratic representatives, Bill Nichols and Tom Bevill, were first elected in 1966. So strong was their position that Republicans did not even bother to put up a candidate against them, and both Bevill and Nichols won re-election with more than 90% of the vote.

Furthermore, for all of the other Democrats in the Alabama delegation, the margins of victory were not close.

Today, Alabama still has seven Congressional seats, and most of the 1988 Alabama delegation has passed away. The balance in the state is 6 Republicans, 1 Democrat. Between 1988 and 2018, how many times did a Democratic incumbent actually lose reelection?

Once, and by a very narrow margin.

In every other instance, the only time a seat flipped was when the incumbent retired. Further demonstrating the point, the Democrats briefly flipped a seat back in the 2008 only to lose it in 2010. And how did they do this? The Republican incumbent was retiring.

What We Elect

Voters can’t have their cake and eat it too. You can’t constantly demand fresh-faced representatives and still claim to care about your party having power.

Like it not, incumbents win. They are always the better bet for controlling a seat, sometimes for many years. What many people seem to forget is that in this country, we don’t elect parties, we don’t elect lists of policies, and we don’t elect slogans.

We elect people.

Living, breathing people, who are capable of developing deep personal connections with the communities they represent. They use their offices to provide services which their constituents enjoy, they meet with constituents at community events, and advocate for their district’s needs in every piece of legislation possible. And people love them.

When asked about whether their specific representative deserves re-election this year, a full 60% of Americans said yes. Yet, when asked whether most members of Congress deserved reelection, the number fell to 35%.

And therein lies the hypocrisy of the American voter.

“They’re all awful – except my guy.”

When a dam gets built in another district or a government contract goes to a company in another state, it’s “government waste.” But when your member of Congress gets that for your district? They’re just looking out for you!

Senator Ted Cruz famously voted against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, arguing that the federal government had “an addiction to spending money we do not have.” Cruz received support from his constituents.

Then, in 2015, at a time when the national debt was larger than it was during Hurricane Sandy, Cruz called on the federal government to aid his own state of Texas following a series of floods. Cruz received support from his constituents.

Bogged Down

Enough is enough.

If someone rants about how Congress is controlled by special interests, but then calls upon the AARP to reach out to their Congressperson because a Social Security payment was delayed – they are a special interest.

If someone complains that Congresspeople care most about politics, but then votes down the party line for decades-long incumbents – they care most about politics.

Congresspeople draw their power from their constituents, they work to please enough voters to retain that power, and they almost-always succeed.

It is a shame that there are those who blindly demand that we “drain the swamp” without realizing that we are all swimming in it.