Congressional politics 123they wished to show that, in spite of the fact that they did not control the
presidency, they were the effective government of America. The Democrats
in Congress wished to demonstrate their support of the first Democratic
President to gain re-election in twenty-eight years.
Both congressional parties wished to demonstrate their unity. It may be
surprising, then, for those used to a European style of politics, to observe the
extent to which the voting discipline of Senators and Congressmen fell far
below the kind of party unity normally to be found in parliamentary systems
of government. In the latter, party discipline would normally be measured
by the extent to which the voting support of members of a political party for
the policies of its leaders fell below the ‘norm’ of 100 per cent. When British
political parties fail to achieve this norm there is a great deal of comment
and analysis. However, very few votes in the United States Congress would
come near to this standard of party cohesion. In the 1970s party unity was
very low, in the 1980s there was a gradual increase in partisanship, but it was
in the 1990s that the battle between the parties became more intense.
Nearly 50 per cent of the recorded votes – roll-call votes – taken in the
1997 session were actually bipartisan votes, that is votes in which a majority
of the Republicans were voting the same way as a majority of the Democrats,
opposed by minorities from both parties. Only half the votes taken, there-
fore, were ‘party votes’. The Congressional Quarterly, from which these figures
are taken, defines a party vote as one in which a majority of the Republicans
is opposed to a majority of the Democrats, which is thus a test of party unity.
Even in the case of these ‘party’ votes, however, the cohesion within each
of the two parties was far from complete. In 1997 the average Democrat in
the House of Representatives voted with a majority of his or her own party
on only 82 per cent of the recorded votes taken during the session, and the
average Republican 88 per cent of the time. Individual Congressmen and
Senators varied greatly in the degree of their support for the party major-
ity. In the Senate five Republicans voted with a majority of their party on
fewer than 50 per cent of the votes taken, and Senator D’Amato of New York
voted with a majority of his party on only 33 per cent of the votes taken. Two
Republican members of the House of Representatives, both from New York
State, voted with the majority on only 30 per cent of the votes taken; to put
it another way, they voted against their party 70 per cent of the time. The
opposition of Senators to the policies of their own parties reflected strong
regional and ideological divisions within the party. The Republican Senators
who voted most against their party’s position came from the Northeast. The
sectional element in American politics is far from dead, and it is most visible
in congressional politics.
The first term of President George W. Bush should have signalled an in-
crease in party unity in the legislature. There were three factors in the elec-
tion of the year 2000 that suggested a new approach to party discipline and
to a greater degree of loyalty to the president from his party in the Congress.
First, alongside the election of a Republican president, the Republicans