The Senate has managed to conduct the business of confirming or rejecting federal judges with relative efficiency and only occasional controversy for some 200 years. That the Senate came so close to going “nuclear” over this legislative chore is a symptom of a rather serious illness in the upper body. Face it, giving or withholding consent for judicial appointments is not akin to reversing global warming or ending world hunger. What created the conditions for this uber-partisan debacle is a degradation in the culture of the Senate that has grown acute since 1989. The change has left the Senate less able to produce legislation on major issues, less able to compromise, less reflective of public opinion (ironically, since these people are obsessed with polls), and less able to produce leaders for both the institution itself and the nation. The filibuster flap is emblematic of more enduring and consequential cultural changes. Several trends both illustrate and explain this conduct unbecoming of the Senate: Legislative paralysis. Last May, with the Senate in its usual election-year inertia, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said to a Washington Post reporter, “Have we lost the will to legislate?” Well, yes, sir, it seems that way.

The inability to produce landmark legislation on major issues is not just a symptom of an unhealthy legislative body; it becomes a cause. As they say about the politics of academia, the tempers are so high because the stakes are so low. Not doing creates more ill will than doing. Missing moderates. The Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party almost got the nomination in 1968 and expanded in the Senate of the 1970s and ’80s with names such as Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Charles Mathias, Arlen Specter, John Heinz, Bill Cohen, Warren Rudman, John Chafee, John Danforth, Richard Lugar, Nancy Kassebaum and Lowell Weicker. Only Lugar and Specter are left, joined occasionally by Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and, sometimes, Arizona maverick John McCain. Last year, the Democrats lost two key figures who could work with Republicans: John Breaux of Louisiana and Zell Miller of Georgia. Other conservative Democrats, such as Howell Heflin, are long gone. The permanent campaign. Senators now must weigh every comment they make against its potential for being taken out of context and used in a 30-second attack ad. Leaders force kabuki votes on controversial bills with no chance of passing, or of withstanding Supreme Court judgment, simply to force the opposition to cast unpopular votes. They invent pseudo-issues such as the Terry Schiavo decision, flag-burning and funding for groups that may support the offbeat art of Robert Mapplethorpe. Interest groups don’t just write editorials and buttonhole senators in the hall anymore; they bankroll massive media campaigns. Campaigns are entirely financed by private money, mostly from special interests. With open primaries and private funding, parties have no control over who runs and no way to enforce party discipline when it’s time for unpopular but important decisions. Politicians respond by running for office constantly. Senator as a vocation. All this has made being a senator less fun. Powerful senators such as Breaux and Don Nickles left the Senate to become lobbyists; Lawton Chiles of Florida and Frank Murkowski of Alaska left to become governors, as did a young Idaho Republican, Dirk Kempthorne. The Senate has been less able to produce veteran members whose clout and stature come from expertise and seniority. Senators once piled up the years of seniority and institutional wisdom on committees they someday would dominate. The Richard Russells, Everett Dirksens, Sam Ervins and Henry Jacksons would be anachronisms today. The last senator to gain national stature and real Washington clout this way was probably Sam Nunn, who left the Senate in 1996 at a relatively young 59. 24/7 news. There once were three networks and CNN. Now we have two more all-news cable stations, scores of news Web sites and the explosion of political talk radio. Senators have direct access to national media and senators are human beings. They like to be on TV. It offers a path to national name recognition once available only to the most senior and accomplished legislators. Add all this up and it’s no great shocker that the Senate is cramping over issues of only mild concern to voters and is far more polarized than the electorate as a whole. The last-minute compromise that averted a showdown vote over judicial nominees may at least slow the metastasis of the Senate’s cancerous culture. But if ever the Senate were going to restore its once-virtuous aspects, it would have done so amid the nation’s post-9/11 sense of unity. That didn’t happen. Dick Meyer covered the Senate from 1987 to 1993 for CBS News. He is editorial director of CBSNews.com , where he writes the “Against the Grain” column.

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