Cabinet confirmations just the latest example of Members surrendering responsibility and power 

Many Americans have been shocked recently as Republican senators set serious concerns and supinely vote to confirm patently unqualified and inappropriate nominees for the most powerful positions in government.

For secretary of defense, a philanderer with a reported (and unrefuted) drinking problem and a well-documented disrespect for females in combat.

A political henchman who promises to settle political scores against political enemies of the president as director of the FBI.

An intelligence czar who distrusts the spy agencies, traffics in whacko conspiracies, and considers Edward Snowden a brave whistleblower.

A secretary of health who distrusts medical research and spent a decade undermining public confidence in vaccines.

A budget director who believes the president has the power not to spend what Congress has appropriated and spend what it hasn’t.

In the past, these are people would never have even got a serious hearing from senators who took seriously their role as a check on presidential power. Now, they are hailed as “disrupters” and rushed through to confirmation without so much as a serious background investigation. The widespread view is that this display of political cowardice stems from the increasingly tribal nature of American politics and well-founded fear of political retribution from President Trump and the MAGA mob. All true.

But just as important, this lack of will is the natural result of having spent the last two decades handing their power and prerogatives over to party leaders. It is now leaders, not members, who decide what issues committees will take up and what legislation they will report to the legislative calendar. It is leaders and their staff who script the daily talking points that Members are meant to parrot. It is party leaders who decide what bills are actually debated and voted on by the full House and Senate and what amendments (if any) will be debated and voted on. And it is party leaders who use all the carrots and sticks at their disposal –committee assignments, campaign funds, scheduling accommodations, and legislative requests—to keep Members in line and ensure party unity.

The days when legislation bubbles up from members and committees are long gone. Congress is now a top-down institution based on a mutually beneficial division of labor. Members spend their days raising money, attending to the parochial interests of their districts, going through inconsequential legislative rituals, and never straying far from the party line. In return, the job of leaders is to ensure that Members can go home for four-day weekends and frequent recesses while doing whatever it takes to get their members re-elected and win the majority in the next election. To a greater or lesser degree, Members have settled into a comfortable arrangement in which they let their leaders make all the tough decisions in exchange for a high probability of getting re-elected to a job they find increasingly unsatisfying.

Having long since gotten out of the habit of exercising power and independent judgment and into the habit of putting party over country and politics over governing, Senators can easily rationalize a vote to confirm almost any nominee of a president of their own party. They might express reservations in public or in private, hoping the nomination will be withdrawn. But if the ultimate leader of their party demands their vote, they are programmed politically, psychologically, and institutionally to give it.

For Congress, the decline in its power and independence is of a piece with its inability to resolve the major problems facing the country. Dysfunction and disempowerment spring from the same source and are mutually reinforcing, creating a vicious cycle of institutional decline. The cruel irony is that by failing to save Trump from his worst instincts and ideas—Republican senators and congressmen will only increase the odds that he will fail spectacularly and bring them down as well.

Steven Pearlstein is a Senior Fellow at Penn Washington. He is also the Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University and a former Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post. The views expressed here are his own.