Ex-Defense secretary says oversight hindered by partisan divide

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said Thursday that partisan divisions in Congress are severely hampering lawmakers' ability to oversee the federal government.

"I must tell you toward the end of my career I became frustrated," said Cohen, a Republican who represented Maine in the Senate and House for 24 years before becoming secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. Cohen was speaking at the Excellence in Government conference in Washington, which is sponsored in part by Government Executive.

"The rewards of public service were not as great as a result of the partisanship," he said.

Several political experts agreed with Cohen, saying that Capitol Hill is more divided than it has been in decades. Timothy Conlan, a politics professor at George Mason University, said political parties have become more polarized around their ideological extremes, with fewer lawmakers edging toward a moderate common ground.

"I think there is little doubt that Congress has grown more partisan," Conlan said. "Even through the 1960s and 1970s, the institution as a whole had a greater sense of comity."

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the current divide along party lines more closely resembles Congress in the early 1900s than Congress from the past few decades. He also attributed the shift to a loss of moderate lawmakers.

"There are almost no conservative Democrats left in Congress and only a few real moderates. Similarly, there are at most a handful of moderate and liberal Republicans in Congress," he said. "Some specific events have made the situation worse. Bill Clinton's scandals and subsequent impeachment attempt, the extremely close 2000 presidential contest, and George W. Bush's war in Iraq have maximized the partisanship and minimized the opportunities for cooperation across the aisle."

In his speech Thursday, Cohen said he attributed much of the division to the heavy media coverage of Congress. The high level of exposure, he said, has forced lawmakers to conduct much more "speechifying" and avoid relaxed camaraderie.

"It is much more rigid, much more fixed, and much less engaging," according to Cohen.

Conlan also agreed the partisan divide is hindering the smooth operation of government. Federal management issues, he said, tend to get "swamped by the larger political movements of the day."

"Just as the norms of behavior within the Congress have weakened," he said, "there is less self regulation of members to try to keep partisan politics out of the day-to-day administration of government."