Congress Has Become a Collection of Performance Artists? Yes, but Why?

Jonah Goldberg in his column about the Kavanaugh senate hearings concludes as follows:

“Sasse eloquently expanded on a point I’ve been banging my spoon on my highchair about for a while now: The legislative branch is becoming a parliament of pundits, in which both parties teem with people desperate to emote, preen, and shriek for voters and donors who follow politics like it’s a form of entertainment.”

This or something like it has been increasingly noticed and remarked upon. The use of the word “parliament” is also significant carrying as it does the implication that the demarcation between the legislative and executive branch has been broken.

But what I haven’t seen is much attention to the question of why. The explanation that people in congress are happy to have the title without the responsibility is, I think, only partially correct and may also have cause and effect backwards. That is, a congress with little responsibility may now be attracting applicants who like that sort of thing.

If I may offer a theory as to why, I think we are seeing the institutional effects of what the philosopher Michael Oakeshott categorized as the politics of enterprise association. Think of a business and you’ve basically got what enterprise association is about. Oakeshott theorized that enterprise association turned governing into a managerial activity and thought a nation in war time (no doubt thinking of WWI and WWII) was when its pure form was most closely realized.

Now consider how a business is run. It is far more akin to the executive branch model than the congressional. The more historically inclined may correct me, but my sense is that in war time congress tends to take a back seat in affairs. The action shifts to the executive and the various administrative agencies.

My answer to my question then is that congress has become a somewhat vacuous collection of pundits because our politics have become enterprise association dominant. Congressional prerogative has been ceded to the executive and administrative agencies, not by accident or a desire to escape responsibility, so much as by form following function. Or to be clearer, the form of our government has shifted to coincide with a change in function. And by implication I would suggest that banging spoons on highchairs will come to nothing so long as the fundamental nature of our politics, what the people demand government be, remains unchanged.

Link to the article: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-confirmation-hearings-cory-booker-document-release/