Forgetfulness, Forgiveness, and Politics: The Case of Congress

Since 2010, Congress’s approval rating has never been higher than 37 percent, and in 2013 it hit an all time low of 8 percent. Given Congress’s behavior over the past several decades, such a damning assessment is sadly unsurprising. When we, as citizens and voters, think about Congress, we tend to remember its contemporary failures: a plethora of government shutdowns, pointless impeachment battles, Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s unceremonious ouster by his own party, and hypocritical fights in the Senate over the filibuster (the majority party tends to complain about its abuse and overuse, only to readily deploy the filibuster themselves once in the minority). These and other examples of political incompetence have produced a generation of jaded voters, who cannot remember a healthier political climate in Congress. In a recent focus group led by the veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz, young voters described Congress and its members as “the worst part of the United States government,” “atrophying,” “extremely incompetent,” and “performers, not legislators.” 

If we are to have healthier politics, and if Congress is to become less dysfunctional, we suggest that both Congress and voters need to shift the way we think about and remember Congress. As we have argued previously, both the public and members of Congress need to remember times when Congress worked, to see that it is able to work. But just as importantly, members of Congress need to learn to practice selective forgetfulness—in order to overlook past wrongs, forgive partisan foes, and move past the current cycle of destructive vengeance that is ravaging our national legislature. 

Why Forgiveness? Problems of Disfunction and Distrust

A functional Congress must be more devoted to the common good than partisan advantage and must be willing to play its role within the constitutional system. Members should be willing to cooperate across the aisle to promote genuinely beneficial legislation; improve congressional procedures to promote reasoned deliberation, superior representation, and able lawmaking; and stand alongside their partisan opponents to defend and assert legitimate congressional prerogatives against encroachments—even by a president of their own party. The Hoover Institution has recently offered a number of thoughtful proposals to reform congressional procedures and structures to achieve some of these goals. But first among these goals must be to remind members of Congress of the need to have solidarity and institutional pride if they are to cooperate for the common good. 

That solidarity has been undermined by a variety of causes, but one essential problem is that representatives and senators tend to harbor grievances about past wrongs and distrust members from the other side of the aisle. What is necessary, then, is forgiveness. Forgiveness in politics is possible, but would require members to move past previous partisan misbehavior that has spawned a cycle of vengeful abuses of power and short-sighted rule changes. 

Unsustainable Vengeance: Spiraling Misuses of the Filibuster and Impeachment

The filibuster and impeachment provide obvious examples of such abuses. In 2005, Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block the confirmation of ten judges nominated by George W. Bush. According to Democrats, this was legitimate because the judges were conservative extremists; moreover, they pointed to the Republican filibuster of Judge Richard Paez’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit in the 1990s. Turnabout, Democrats reasoned, was fair play. Republicans thought differently and threatened to “nuke” the filibuster to push Bush’s judicial nominees through on a partisan majority vote. The bipartisan “Gang of 14,” led by then–Arizona Republican senator John McCain and then–Nebraska Democratic senator Ben Nelson reached a compromise that allowed the nominations to move forward and limited resort to the filibuster to “extraordinary circumstances” only. This compromise, spearheaded by moderates of both parties, had real potential—but it failed to survive past 2013, when the tables were turned.

In 2013, Democrats, who had previously defended the filibuster as a vital means of defending minority rights, suddenly switched sides and denounced Republican senators for filibustering Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. Then–Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) accused Republicans of trying to prevent any Democratic nominees from taking seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This was not only a stunning switch from 2005, but a stark turnabout from just a few months earlier, when Reid had promised not to alter Senate rules and insisted that his party was “not touching judges.” But the hypocrisy—if not downright dishonesty—was not limited to Democrats. Republicans, who in 2005 had been more than willing to nuke the filibuster, suddenly became its most ardent advocates. Then–Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell argued that filibustering Obama’s nominees was simply guaranteeing a legislative check on executive power. But even while defending Republican filibusters, he also managed to blame Democrats for the entire problem: “Democrats . . . literally pioneered the practice of filibustering circuit court nominees” during the Bush administration, he claimed. It seemed that Republican filibusters were part of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances, while Democratic filibusters were mere partisan obstruction. Reid had his way, and by a narrow 52–48 vote (three Democrats voted against the plan), abolished the filibuster for all executive nominations except nominations to the Supreme Court. Again, it is difficult not to suspect hypocritical inconsistency. Reid and the Democrats put themselves in an untenable position, arguing that filibustering most presidential appointments was utterly unacceptable, but filibustering Supreme Court nominations remained permissible. 

Just before Reid pushed through his dubious reform, McConnell assured Democrats, “you will regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.” McConnell made good on his threat when in 2017 he abolished what remained of the judicial filibuster in order to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Again, hypocrisy abounded. Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic whip and a prominent member of the Judiciary Committee, accused Republicans of “violating Senate traditions that are over one hundred years old.” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer complained that the move marked “the end of a long history of [bipartisan] consensus on Supreme Court nominations.” But both had voted to dismantle the filibuster on judicial nominations in 2013! 

Having won their point, Republicans were satisfied. But reaction and revenge have continued. Democrats have now proposed packing the Supreme Court and creating carveouts to the legislative filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, creating a nationwide right to abortion, and also for bills aimed at defending voting rights. Admittedly, the Republican victory in the 2024 elections has rendered these promises moot, at least for now. But the fact that such radical proposals can now be openly touted by Democratic leaders has altered what can be said and what some Democratic voters will expect in the future, making it more likely that a future Democratic majority will carry out these threats. 

Bad behavior from one party led to a cycle of revenge and payback, in which both parties progressively tore down traditional procedural protections that they claimed to value while in the minority, while expressing hostility to them while in the majority. As then–Michigan Democratic senator Carl Levin pointed out in 2013, once a narrow majority determined that Senate rules could be ignored for the sake of political expediency, there would then be “no rules which bind a majority, and all future majorities will feel free to exercise the same power.”

Likewise, Congress’s most potent power—the ability to impeach, convict, and remove governmental officials—has been cheapened by a similar spiral of vengeance. While much could be said about Bill Clinton’s personal failings, upending his presidency with an impeachment over allegedly lying under oath constituted little more than an act of political theater. No one seriously believed that 55 Republican senators would manage to persuade 12 of their Democratic colleagues to vote to convict and remove Clinton. In fact, in the final Senate vote, five Republican senators voted to acquit Clinton. Clinton’s impeachment, however, left sufficient bad feelings to make it easier for Democrats to justify the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump, which in turn contributed to Republican efforts to impeach Joe Biden. When investigations into what they described as the “Biden Crime Family” failed to produce a smoking gun, House Republicans (on their second attempt) impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as a kind of consolation prize to their disappointed party base. None of these efforts had any meaningful chance of success. In fact, we would argue that the goal was never to make the constitutional process (impeachment, conviction, removal) work; the point was simply to embarrass their opponents and gain an edge at the ballot box. 

Forgiving and Forgetting 

With both filibuster and impeachment, one party’s misbehavior either convinced or encouraged the other party to retaliate. The end result, however, has not been to warn off future bad behavior, but to spawn more of it, driving Washington farther down the political drain. Threats of revenge, like McConnell’s, may at times serve as a deterrent. But like a nuclear deterrent, when such threats are actually carried out, the result is mutually assured destruction. 

The only conceivable solution is forgiveness. As then–Arkansas Democratic senator Mark Pryor argued just after the first “nuking” of the filibuster in 2013: “I think there is one way to fix [Congress], and that is by following the Golden Rule. I think if we take those words of Jesus literally and apply those to what we do here in the Senate—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’— . . . I think all these problems would go away.” 

Forgiveness is not easy in politics, but it is necessary for civility and a functional Congress. Admittedly, one party will probably have to act on faith and unilaterally forget past wrongs. Such an action poses a real risk, since the other party may choose to continue its bad behavior. If Democrats—for example—made some sort of party commitment to protect the filibuster and move toward impeachment only when the public and a bipartisan supermajority of senators were likely to support conviction and removal, might Republicans continue to use the filibuster and impeachment for partisan advantage? Of course.

Yet such risks are inherent in human life. Forgetting past wrongs—forgiveness—always carries with it the risk that the forgiver may be harmed by the forgiven. In any personal spat between friends, family members, or spouses, it is almost always the case that there is blame on both sides. But it is also true that one party must, inevitably, make the first move toward reconciliation, putting themselves in a vulnerable position and opening themselves up to the other party that spurns the apology or refuses to accept responsibility for their own share of the blame. The alternative, however, is worse, with both parties holding on to perpetual grudges and engaging in an endless cycle of reaction and rising tensions. These dynamics that govern how we maintain relationships with our friends, our siblings, our spouses (even when we wrong each other), are equally applicable to our fellow citizens of different parties. 

At the same time, whatever risk one party might incur by practicing forgiveness and self-restraint, such an action carries with it significant political potential. By exercising forgiveness and restraint, the forgiving party can demonstrate that its members are the adults in the chamber, acting for the long-term good of the nation and not for partisan gain, a narrow advantage in the next election, a fundraising benchmark, or control of the next news cycle. In light of Congress’s low approval ratings, one would hope that the public would eagerly embrace a political party able to show such maturity and public spiritedness. 

We are aware that calling for forgiveness in politics may seem naive and unlikely. Nevertheless, there is at least some evidence that cooler heads are trying to prevail and let bygones be bygones. Despite various efforts to bar Trump from resuming the presidency, Democratic members of Congress certified his election without incident, declining to imitate Republican efforts to block the certification of Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021. Likewise, although Trump has advocated eliminating the filibuster to pass his agenda, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly pledged that the Senate Republican majority would defend the procedure. These actions should be applauded. They show a commitment to restraint rather than revenge. They show a way forward, both in being willing not to make short-sighted procedural changes for partisan advantage, and in demonstrating that some measure of institutional pride remains in the halls of Congress. Ultimately, they show that forgiveness is possible—even in Congress. And ultimately, what other option is available, if a country of 330 million people is to continue to live together in peace?

Image by JudithAnne and licensed via Adobe Stock.