October 1989 found me in a small hotel, the Londonderry Arms, on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland. It was during “The Troubles” and evidence of the sectarian strife was everywhere, even along that beautiful shoreline, complete as it is with the Giant’s Causeway, one of Northern Ireland’s big tourist attractions.
My wife, Linda Gasparello, and I were reminded of the bitter divisions between Protestants and Catholics when we were stopped by British soldiers at a roadblock. They were polite and checked our papers. While they were doing that, Linda said, “Aren’t those soldiers vulnerable, standing like that in the open road?”
“Take a look over there,” I replied.
Just as I knew there would be, there was a soldier in a ditch with a machine gun trained on us and offering cover to the troops.
It was a reminder of just how bad things were in Northern Ireland at the time with frequent murders, kneecapping, and a lack of any communication between Protestants and Catholics. One people divided by their religious and historical burden.
The Londonderry Arms was a hotel of historic importance, having once been owned briefly by Winston Churchill and which was operated from 1948 until last year by the legendary O’Neill family.
We had been warmly welcomed and made at home by Frankie O’Neill. After dinner at the hotel, he came to me and said, “I am afraid I won’t be able to be with you after today because I am taking my sister to Washington to see the Congress at work.”
“Why?” I asked.
One could imagine traveling to Washington to see the museums, the White House and the Capitol. But Congress in session, that querulous place with its confusing systems and norms?
Then he explained that the Northern Ireland Parliament, called Stormont, after Stormont Castle where it meets, is based on the British House of Commons where party discipline is absolute. Under a parliamentary system, the government of the day would fall if there were no party discipline. If you are Labor, you vote Labor; if Conservative, you vote Conservative. Only very occasionally is there a free vote on a moral issue, like the death penalty.
That meant, O’Neill told me, that in Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants were on opposite sides of the aisle and the government was always at a standstill.
He thought the American legislative system, with its ability to incorporate minority views, and for minorities to introduce and pass legislation of interest only to a fragment of the population, was a beacon for Ireland.
I don’t think O’Neill would take his sister to Washington today to see the Congress as it is now: inglorious, pusillanimous, fawning men and women more concerned with their own job protection than discharging the high duty of the House and the Senate. Worse, its magnificent independence has been traded for obsequious party loyalty.
Of course, the lickspittle members of Congress at present are the wretched, obsequious, groveling Republicans who have enabled President Trump to trample the Constitution and usurp the powers of Congress.
But one has to say the Democrats are hardly admirable, not exactly an impressive body of leaders. In their way, they are humbled by their own diminished concept of the role of the loyal opposition.
The Republicans may be the more guilty invertebrates, but the equivalence of the Democrats is also noteworthy in this sad abrogation of responsibility that has taken hold of the political class in Congress. Look no further than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s failure of courage in throwing in with the Republicans to keep the government open. It was political will withering in plain sight.
As someone who was covering Congress at the time of O’Neill’s declaration about the superiority of Congress as a democratic legislating arrangement, I have seen that great body subsume the national interest to personal job security and fear of criticism from on high, the White House.
The great thing at that time was the individualism of members of Congress, who had a keen eye to their constituents and what they felt was the national interest.
Sadly, that grand time of free-for-all legislating came to an end when Newt Gingrich took up the House speaker’s gavel in 1994 and introduced a concept of party discipline more appropriate to Westminster than to Capitol Hill. Shame.
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