Congress has to have leaders, and it would be paralyzed without its committee system. The trouble lies with the way leaders and chairmen are chosen, particularly the chairmen. They rise by seniority. Nothing else matters — competence, character, past performance, background, or orientation. All a man has to do is stay alive and keep getting reelected, and he will be a power in Washington in twenty or thirty years. He may be from a rural backwater. The odds are that he will be, because the "safe districts" are generally that kind. He may be a reactionary, a bigot, a
...more
