JAMES STEWART turned the filibuster into the ultimate symbol of the little man battling heroically against the Washington machine. In Frank Capra's 1939 classic Mr Smith Goes to WashingtonJefferson Smith, before collapsing exhausted, magnificently holds the Senate floor for longer even than record-breaking arch-conservative Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who fought the 1957 Civil Rights Bill for an extraordinary 24 hours and 18 minutes.
Or in 1935 there was Louisiana’s Huey Long, who, in a 15-hour monologue, read into the record the US constitution, large chunks of Shakespeare, and recipes for fried oysters and Roquefort dressing.
("Filibuster", from the Dutch vrijbuiterfor pirate, was used from the mid-19th century to describe politicians whose interminable speeches were seen to hold a Bill, and colleagues, hostage.)
It’s rare enough these days for a senator to do it the old-fashioned way, but in December Bernie Sanders, the Senate’s only socialist, spent eight hours berating the plan to extend Bush-era tax breaks. In truth, however, it was unnecessary – in 1975 the Senate had decided to allow individual senators to block action on a Bill merely by anonymously invoking the right to filibuster. The word then became synonymous with a pernicious bureaucratic mechanism, the “hold”, that required a 60 per cent super-majority to break, and has contributed to a growing legislative paralysis. In 2009-10, with Democrats in control of the Senate, Republicans launched a record number of filibusters, requiring more than 90 “cloture” votes to guillotine debate.
This week, however, in the face of a revolt from backbench senators and a public increasingly disenchanted by the dysfunctional Senate, Democratic and Republican leaders have reached an important agreement to limit the use of the filibuster and speed up business. The anonymous “hold” has gone, and leaders have reached an informal understanding to sharply limit the use of cloture votes and procedural obstructionism. Senators will also relinquish the right to force the reading out loud of lengthy amendments to laws and, importantly, to have hearings on some 400 of 1,400 presidential appointments currently requiring their approval. Both were little more than exercises in political foot-dragging.
More’s the pity, however, that they did not embrace a simple rule change proposed by a group led by Tom Udall of New Mexico. It would have restored to the “filibuster” its original meaning by requiring senators to hold the floor to keep it going. À la Jefferson Smith.