Would you consider election to the United States Senate a career setback?
The late congressman John Dingell did.
At least that’s what he told me.
It was August 1993 and I was winding down a summer internship in the congressman’s Dearborn, Michigan, district office.
Mr. Dingell, as his devoted staff called him, had a commanding presence befitting the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and a man who had been in Congress since 1955. Tall with large hands and an authoritative baritone voice, he was physically imposing and it was easy to imagine him cajoling or intimidating votes from his colleagues in Washington.
Mr. Dingell took seriously the role of the legislative branch. He once sharply reminded a reporter who made the mistake of asking how many presidents he had “worked under” that members of Congress don’t work under anyone in the executive branch. This attitude he balanced with pithy humor, as I learned when once hearing him announce his intention to use the restroom by saying “Time to salute the President.”
For all of his power and presence, he was in equal measure kind and generous with his time and attention.
Before I returned to college for the fall semester, he set aside an hour of his busy schedule so that we could chat. He wanted to know how I enjoyed working in the office, what I had learned, what had made an impression.
Then he wanted to know if I had any questions for him.
“Ask me anything,” he said invitingly.
What to say? During my internship, much had been made by the staff and in news articles about Mr. Dingell’s longevity in the House and the legacy he was continuing. He had won a special election in 1955 following the death of his father, John D. Dingell, Sr., who had held the seat beginning in 1933.
So I asked why, after all his time in the House and with the name recognition and notoriety he had built, he had never run for the Senate.
He smiled the smile of a person who has been asked a particular question a thousand times and had a ready answer:
“I’m not interested in a demotion.”
The mind reeled. He considered membership in “the most exclusive club in the world” a demotion? Perhaps it was indeed time for Mr. Dingell to hang it up.
He relished the quizzical expression on my face and delivered a master class about the seniority system in Congress. Committee chairmanships and ranking minority status are bestowed upon those who have served longest, and he had worked his way up for almost 40 years.
The phrase time is money is well-known. But that day I learned that in Washington, time is power, and it's spelled with a Capitol T.
At the time of our meeting, nearly a third of all legislation proposed in the House was referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee over which Mr. Dingell presided as chairman. Much of it dealt with legislation pertaining to, and regulation of, businesses and corporations of all shapes and sizes. The Supreme Court’s continuous expansion of the Commerce Clause allowed the committee an inordinate amount of power.
As chairman of the committee, Mr. Dingell enjoyed the benefits. In addition to his considerable congressional office staff at the Capitol and back in the district, Mr. Dingell was in charge of a sizable committee staff and additional legal counsel with investigative and subpoena authority. Chief executive officers of multinational corporations were regularly scrutinized during hearings of the committee.
His talk about the balance of power within the federal government was not cheap. The Energy and Commerce hearing room often became a mental torture chamber for officials of the executive branch who permitted waste and corruption in their departments. With Mr. Dingell at the helm, the committee exposed the infamous $600 toilet seats purchased by the Department of Defense, and uncovered fraud in the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other executive departments.
So he was absolutely correct. A seat in the “upper chamber” of Congress would have immediately made him a backbencher with a spot in the end of the line for committee chairmanships. Why move across the Rotunda? Why cede the investigative power that he had accumulated and sidetrack his standing in Washington?
An argument could be made (and often is) that it is vital that people like Mr. Dingell must be in Washington, that his career even to that point in time demonstrated that his presence there for as long as he wanted was essential.
But whether Mr. Dingell used his ability and authority for good or ill is beside the point.
When during that conversation Mr. Dingell unwittingly converted me into a supporter of term limits for members of Congress, he was just shy of 40 years of service in the House. He continued to run for and win re-election. Not only did he become Dean of the House, but he ended up being a member of Congress for nearly 60 years, the longest tenure in the history of the United States. Mr. Dingell retired in 2015.
He was unique only in that he served longest. But it’s easy to immediately think of several examples of members of Congress who ran way past their sell-by date: Mitch McConnell freezing up in front of the cameras and his questionable ties to China; Dianne Feinstein, with her own curious relations with China, being AWOL or incoherent long before leaving office by the handles; Keating Five stalwart John McCain, also out only via coffin. On and on the list goes.
That is to say nothing of the curious personal financial gains of long-standing members, whose personal accounts resemble the trajectory of the national debt during their tenure – up, up, and away.
Mr. Dingell retired on his own accord but his second wife, Debbie Dingell, an heiress to the Fisher Body fortune and a former lobbyist for General Motors, ran for and won his seat. Should Mrs. Dingell win re-election this week, January 2025 will mark the 92nd year in a row that either John the Elder, John the Younger, or the Widow Deborah has held a single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The House of Lords of the United Kingdom cannot match that retention rate, and it is unbecoming of a representative republic that should not have anything resembling a ruling or governing class. The framers of the Constitution did not envision such concentration of power in individuals in any branch of government for any extended length of time. If they had, they never would have bothered George III in the first place.
Political careerism and the advantages of incumbency that result in concentrated power necessitate the need for an Article V convention to consider a constitutional amendment that places fixed limits upon service in Congress.
The Potomac state of mind is one that favors the governing class, money, and power players that have infiltrated and taken root in the federal city. The longer they stay the more isolated they become from their constituents and the more insulated they are from the laws and regulations that the federal government imposes upon us.
The Potomac state of mind that was articulated perfectly by Mr. Dingell needs to be changed.
We know that those of that mind who live and work in – and for – Washington, D.C., won’t change it. We are the ones who can – and must – change it for them by doing what George Mason and the founders asked us to do when power becomes so concentrated:
Activate Article V to propose that career politicians return to their states and towns, find other ways to serve, and thus get a promotion.
