A WEST POINT FOR CONGRESSMEN

JAY FRANKLIN

If you must have your appendix removed, the first rule is to call in a surgeon. The local plumber may be more folksy and a Brother Elk in the bargain, but, all things considered, it is best to have the scalpel and not the blow-torch, the forceps and not the monkey-wrench, applied to your innards. If you take a sea-voyage, you prefer to have the liner commanded by some one who understands navigation and to let the chief steward attend to the glad-hand end of the business. If you build a house, you generally get a trained architect to design it and don't entrust the job to the local Methodist preacher. And when the country goes to war, you entrust its defence to men who have had a lifetime of training in the art of strategy, tactics, and command of men.

But when you come to select your Congress —that body of individuals to whom you entrust the most delicate and dangerous powers of determining how much you shall pay for government, whether you shall live at peace or at war, the relations of government to property, to business, and to the most intimate details of your public and private life—what do you do? The answer is written on Capitol Hill today, as it has been written since the dawn of our independence.

You select the plumber, the Brother Elk, the glad-hander, the Methodist, the babykisser, and the froth-blower. So long as he is twenty-five years old, has been an American citizen for seven years, and is an inhabitant of the State which he represents, you can select anybody in the world to represent you —and you generally do. This means that financial matters as delicate as the act of removing an appendix, you turn over to the political plumbers. This means that the issues of war and peace—compared with which the art of navigation is as simple as hopscotch— are put in the hands of the glad-handers. This means that the issues of civil liberty, of private appetite and human happiness—concerning which no ecclesiastic can reason sanely—are entrusted to the representatives of the evangelical clergy, and that the whole complex and Gargantuan machinery of government is at the mercy of small-town men with small-town minds, of political horsedoctors and economic panhandlers. It means that the most important branch of government is controlled by the least trained and least responsible type of men in national politics.

The belief that the common man—by reason of his very commonness—is best fitted to govern the nation is an American fallacy. There has never been a time when it was true. The great age of British politics and of British statesmanship was when, for the most part, England's public men had been cast in a common mould by Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge. The politics of prewar Germany reflected the deep veneration of the German mind for learning and expertness. For generations, the Manchus gave China the best government it has had, by the simple device of throwing the administrative services open only to those students who excelled in a stiff competitive examination in the Chinese literary classics.

It's high time that we realized that the Chinese are "damned clever" in more ways than one. Why, for example, should our Congress be open to a man whose mind is a cross-section of the Great American Desert, simply because he has roared and twisted his way into the ballot box? Even now, we kick him out if his election is tainted with fraud. Why should we not consider that a man's pretensions to Congressional fitness may also be fraudulent? When we want to make an army officer, a Congressman appoints him to West Point. But West Point, knowing Congressmen, won't admit the candidate until he has passed an examination. And even then, the appointee is not an officer but has to go through four years of rigorous training before he can obtain a commission.

Why, in fact, should the mere mandate of the electors in a boss-ridden district, why should voters afflicted with the Biblical or the economic heaves, be permitted to thrust an empty-headed moron or a genial boob upon the nation as a whole? Why not follow the West Point technique and require the successful candidate to pass a written examination and intelligence test before he is eligible to vote in Congress on issues affecting the lives and property of 120,000,000 of his fellow citizens?

This examination need not be unduly scholastic. It would be sheer cruelty to require the average Congressman to write an essay on the law of diminishing returns— he would probably think it dealt with election returns—or to distinguish briefly between sovereignty and government. There are some who suggest that the average Congressman could not add two and two, without claiming that he was entitled to five. This is certainly an exaggeration, as experienced observers believe that Congressional behavior with appropriations proves that the Congressman is adept in addition of funds, multiplication of offices, and division of the spoils, but is utterly incapable of subtraction. While it would be a good idea to test Congressional ability to write grammatical English, one's heart goes out to the examiners.

The fairest way to commence would be by giving a simple intelligence test, conducted along the following lines:

1. Congressman A wants a tariff on oil, Congressman B wants a tariff on copper, Congressman C wants a tariff on lumber, and Congressman D wants a tariff on coal. You are Congressman A. What would you do?

2. You won your last election by a margin of 350 votes and there are 1,200 veterans in your district. The veterans demand a bonus. How would you vote on a bonus bill?

3. There is only one millionaire in your district and he contributed to your defeated opponent's campaign fund. There are 60,000 consumers in your district. Which would you support: a high income tax which would not raise the necessary revenue or a sales tax which would balance the budget?

4. Your brother-in-law George has just lost his job and the law entitles you to employ one additional clerk at $2,000 a year and no questions asked. You know that George won't come to Washington and you wouldn't want him around anyhow. Does George get the job?

5. The interests of the country demand that the government shall economize. The Army and Navy are vital to the defence of the country, but do not vote. The farmers in your district want a government appropriation to enable them to keep on losing money. The farmers do vote. Which would you vote to reduce: the appropriation for national defence or the appropriation for farm relief?

6. As a member of an important Congressional Committee, you have an opportunity to travel at government expense to Europe. You know that the whole trip is a junket which will serve no useful purpose. Do you or do you not go on the trip?

These questions, and a few more like them, will serve to determine the calibre of the prospective Congressman. If he passes this intelligence test, he will automatically become ineligible to serve. If, however, his answers show a rudimentary sense of responsibility to the country as a whole, he may be allowed to take the other examination. This will be brief. He will be given his choice of writing an essay on either of these two subjects: (a) How the government can help the people in my district, or (b) What the people in my district can do for the nation as a whole. Any candidate who answers the first question at all will be automatically booted down the front steps of the Capitol. If he decides to answer the second question, his answer will be analysed by economic, financial, industrial, social and political experts. On the basis of their analysis, a definite course of study will be mapped out for him and before he is allowed to vote on any important measure he will be required to take a brief special test designed to discover whether he is familiar with the character, special features, general purpose and probable effect of that measure.

At this stage, he will be a "Plebe". He will be in Congress, but not of it, still on probation. He will not be allowed to introduce any bills, to serve on any committees, to make any speeches, or to vote on any measure unless he passes his tests. He will have a regular assignment of home work and will be given some mark to distinguish him from a full-fledged Congressman.

At the conclusion of the first session of Congress, he will not be allowed to return to his home, but will go instead to the magnificent new West Point for Congressmen which the government will erect on the banks of the Potomac facing Mount Vernon. There he will be given an intensive course in the theory and practice of taxation, tariffs and comparative political systems. According to his abilities, he will be allowed to choose, on the basis of a general written examination, the field of government in which he intends to specialize. Those who fail to pass this examination will be honourably returned to their districts, which will go without representation until the next election, thus teaching them to send more intelligent men to Washington.

During the next session, those Congressmen who have passed their examinations will be allowed to vote ad lib. on all measures which come before the House, but will still be debarred from introducing bills. If this seems an unnecessary hardship it must be remembered that it will always be possible for a promising neophyte to get a regular Congressman to introduce a bill in his stead. Home work will be continued and social activities or recognition will still be prohibited. During this period, the individual Congressman will specialize in preparation for taking the final Committee examinations. Thus, a man who wishes to qualify for the Committee on Insular Affairs must undergo an exhaustive test of his knowledge concerning the geography, racial composition, strategic and economic importance, history, climate and politics of Porto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines. The man who would qualify for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs would be required to pass the Foreign Service examinations of the Department of State. The man who aspires to membership on the House Ways and Means Committee would be examined by the Treasury experts, and so on.

If the Congressman failed in this test, he would retain his probationary status and be compelled to attend another session of the Summer School. If he passed, he would automatically become a member of the Committee, with full powers to make speeches and to introduce legislation. By this time, his term would have expired and he would be up for reelection. He would then be in a position to warn his constituents: "You had better reelect me, because if you don't, the new man won't be able to represent you for two years." The district would then have the choice of keeping a well qualified man in office or of being unrepresented by its choice for two years. Even supposing that they took a chance, under the new system, the defeated candidate would retain his position, as a National Congressman at Large, until the new man had qualified, so that the nation would still retain the benefit of his training in spite of the change in representation.

This would, of course, not mean that the education of a Congressman would be considered complete when he qualified for a Cornmittee. More and more competitive examinations would stand between him and eligibility for membership on sub-committees, chairmanships of sub committees, the post of ranking member or of Chairman of the committees. There would have to be more sessions at the Summer School and possibly travelling scholarships instead of junkets. Why, for example, should not a promising young member of the Ways and Means Committee be sent to study for a year at the London School of Economics or a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee attend the Ecole des Sciences Politiques at Paris? Special studies in Moscow could be made of the question of unemployment under communism or in Germany of the system of unemployment insurance. There is no limit to the possibilities.

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Of course, this is all a dream—and an idle dream at that. The government plans no West Point for its Congressmen and the demagogic dogma will continue to spue forth on Washington its biennial output of political chiropractors, contortionists, boobs, and hand-shakers, with their professional grins and their private bills, their patronage, their log-rolling grabs at the public purse, and their reckless assaults on the public welfare. And as usual, the intelligent and hard-working Congressmen of both parties and all shades of political opinion will suffer from the cowardice, foolishness and irresponsibility of the mass of representatives. Neither the government nor the people will have the sense or the courage to insist that the men who shape our destinies shall be fitted for the job, and we will continue to be politically mismanaged by intellectual two-by-fours and moral hand-me-downs. Only a revolution serious enough to shatter the very basis of popular sovereignty could dispel the notion that if a man looks dignified in a frock coat and has a voice like a foghorn he is automatically entitled to help wreck the nation.

If the time ever comes, however, when we are visited with a revolution or a dictatorship it will be because, in our eagerness to avoid revolution or tyranny, we have permitted our legislature to be run on a horse-trading basis in the age of horse-power. Those who have the unblushing record of Congressional gov ernment before them can only wonder why, if popular sovereignty is so essential, the people do not insist that their representatives know something about their jobs. We have civil service examinations for every type of governmental position—from postmaster up to diplomat. We have Annapolis for the Navy, New London for the Coast Guard and West Point for the Army. Why not civil service examinations for Congressmen and why should we not get Congressmen from a political West Point instead of Congressmen from political points West ?