Contempt in Congress

On Friday, November 8th, I attended former Jepson grad, Sean Theriault’s lecture titled “Contempt in Congress: The Decline of Statesmanship in the U.S. Senate.” Theriault’s lecture was the final in the 2019-2020 Marshall Center Lecture Series. Theriault is a professor at the University of Texas, and has spent most of his professional career analyzing Congress. He is currently conducting research regarding the extreme polarization of Congress in recent years. Because his research is unfinished, he spent a lot of time explaining how he hopes to continue his research.

Theriault attributes the grid lock in congress to a group of senators that he has nicknamed “the Gingrich Senators.” This name comes from the Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978, the year of Newt Gingrich’s first election to the House. These senators are more conservative, more likely to obstruct legislative process, and more likely to oppose Democratic Senators that their fellow Republicans in Congress. He thinks that these “partisan” warriors have radically transformed the way that the Senate operates. In 2011, Senator Al Franken started an annual Secret Santa in Congress in order to combat partisanship. Gingrich Senators are the least likely to attend. It makes sense that members of congress who are more moderate and want to “work across the aisle” would be more likely to attend. Interestingly, participants of the Secret Santa are no more likely to pass legislation that leads to problem solving that those who did not attend. Theriault’s research aims to understand why this is the case.