Congressional politics 131the party in the House, when they can be obtained. The Speaker can tell
the president what is possible and what is not. At the extreme, a Speaker
who fundamentally disagreed with the president might resign, but usually
the president will respect and accept the Speaker’s views about policy in the
House, because the Speaker is a personage to be reckoned with. However,
when president and Speaker are from different parties, then the relationship
is very different, for the Speaker becomes the leader and spokesman of ‘the
opposition’, with whom the president must deal almost on terms of equality.
Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker who came into office as a result of
the congressional election of 1994, was determined to take over control of the
programme of legislation, and to impose it upon the incumbent Democratic
President Clinton, and had some degree of success in this endeavour.
The majority and minority floor leaders
The Constitution appoints the vice-president of the United States as the
presiding officer of the Senate, although not normally presiding over its
proceedings, attending only when it is expected that there might be a tied
vote. There is no direct equivalent of the Speaker in the upper chamber. The
president of the Senate pro tempore, usually the longest-serving member of the
majority party, presides over the Senate’s proceedings, but without the politi-
cal weight of the Speaker in the House. The senior party leaders in the Sen-
ate are the majority and minority leaders. When the president’s party has a
majority in the Senate the majority leader is the link between the chief ex-
ecutive and the upper chamber, and has the responsibility of furthering the
president’s programme. There is a majority leader also in the House, who is
the lieutenant of the Speaker, although as always in Congress there will be
occasions when they disagree. The minority leaders in both Houses are also
important in the legislative process, particularly when the leadership of the
majority in Congress is of the opposite party from the president. The leaders
on both sides tend to be drawn from the more moderate, middle-of-the road
members of the legislature, for essentially their function is to act as brokers
between the various wings of the party, and to elicit the greatest possible
degree of agreement.
As in the British Parliament there is a system of whips in Congress but,
as is the case with the Speaker, the whips in the House and Senate perform
a role very different from their namesakes in the House of Commons. Like
the British whips, they are two-way channels of communication, informing
the leadership of the views and voting intentions of members of the party,
and passing down information on the position of the leadership on legisla-
tive issues. In the House there is a system of assistant whips, organised on a
regional basis. The whips also have the task of trying to get members of the
party on to the floor to take part in voting, but they cannot exercise any dis-
ciplinary authority, or hope to pressure members of Congress into following