Mack Attack On Disloyalty Warranted

During the half-century that Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics, he demanded that his players dress and act as proper gents. “I will not tolerate profanity, obscene language or personal insults from my bench,” he said. “Mr. Mack,” as he was always called, led by example. Uniquely among managers, he persisted in wearing a business suit, with tightly knotted tie, in the dugout.

His grandson, Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., sought to invoke the same values of discipline and leadership by example last week when he forced the Senate Republican Conference to consider the opposition of Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., to the balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. His goal was not to punish Hatfield but to “fire a warning shot” against similar acts of apostasy.

When it became clear a few weeks ago that Hatfield was the lone GOP holdout against the amendment and that his vote might cause its defeat, Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., and others pleaded with him in vain to back the party position - or at least abstain from voting. Hatfield said he would resign from the Senate rather than change his mind - and the amendment fell by one vote.

The veteran Oregon senator has been hailed for a “profile in courage.” Mack, who joined freshman Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in asking for a closed-door discussion of Hatfield’s case, has been roundly criticized for allegedly trying to stifle dissent or impose a rigid ideology on the party.

But this is no good guy/bad guy struggle. It is a serious effort to recreate conditions in which it is possible, once again, for voters to exert their will in a system of representative government that has been atomized by the rampant, egocentric individualism of our politics.

For voters to be able to exercise their sovereignty, elections have to mean something. The Republican Party has pledged to support the balanced-budget amendment in every recent platform. It was the centerpiece of the 1994 House Republican “Contract With America.” I happen to agree with Hatfield that the amendment is a bad idea, but there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the voters who created the new Republican majorities in Congress last November had a reasonable expectation that the amendment would be passed and referred to the states for ratification.

Hatfield’s vote denied them that reward. But what about conscience? What Mack says is right: “Every senator has not only a right, but an obligation, to vote his conscience. But members of the Senate Republican leadership are held to a higher standard … on those core issues” at the heart of the party’s program.

Hatfield holds his seat in the Senate because of the Oregon voters. His chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, one of the three most powerful posts in the Senate, was a gift from his Republican colleagues and came as a result of a party, not a personal, victory.

Mack was wise, I think, not to seek to strip the chairmanship from Hatfield. To punish a senator, retroactively, for a vote of conscience on an amendment to the Constitution would be vindictive. But Mack was striking a blow for responsible government in prodding the conference to consider whether agreement to fundamentals of party program and philosophy should replace blind seniority in handing out committee chairmanships in the future.

Loyalty is not a virtue to be scorned. In 1990, Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., then the House GOP Whip, led a membership rebellion against the budget agreement endorsed by President Bush; that split plagued Bush and contributed to his 1992 defeat. In 1993, House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and Majority Whip David Bonior, D-Mich., led a membership rebellion against the NAFTA agreement endorsed by President Clinton. That split contributed to the Democrats’ 1994 defeat. Such leadership defections tell voters a party is not prepared to govern.

Gingrich has learned the lesson. After leading his party back to majority status for the first time in 40 years last November, he skipped over more senior members on three major committees and asked House Republicans to elect chairmen he thought were more committed to the principles of the Republican Contract - and more competent to deliver the promised legislation. Mack is suggesting that Senate Republicans do the same thing in the future - and he is right.