What the hell do Congressmen want?

This simple question struck me as a conclusion as I was walking across DuPont Circle's park: What the hell do Congressmen want? All my long pondering about congressional motivations and congressional goals culminated in the simple realization that rank-and-file Congressmen are inscrutable. They do not want to play the hero, as the president usually does (or as their presidential-aspiring colleagues may). They do not want to go down in history for changing one issue (though there are some exceptions to this one). They do not (only) want to do what is good and right and true for their constituents.

Congress is insufferably noncommittal. As John Hart Ely raises in his book about war powers, Congress often shrinks from accountability. Therefore in the vast majority of cases, the most important victory is saying a lot while committing oneself to nothing. This, however, belies the theory that Congressmen simply want power. They in fact step back from the wheel quite often.

Oft-cited as it is, surely re-election cannot be their only motivation...

But after Yale-In-Washington met with former Senator Trent Lott a couple weeks ago, I'm beginning to think that Congressmen simply want to succeed in the social hierarchy that is the U.S. Congress. The ceremony is so formal and elaborate, the accommodations so opulent, the traditions and rules so clear - and all topped by an overwhelming sense of importance and purpose. With those conditions at stake, who wouldn't want to get re-elected, or simply to rise in power within Congress?

Sitting across from Lott as he rattled on stories of his exploits with procedure and persuasion, I had to restrain myself several times from asking the incoherent question, Did you often (or ever) step back and remember why you were in the Senate? Of course the people of Mississippi were constantly on the tip of his tongue, ready to be personified in every one of his public comments, but were they ever at the front of his thoughts?

Of course these are gross generalizations. But there is something disturbingly insular about most Congressmen's descriptions of their house and their role. It is almost as though Congress were not a forum, or an instrument of good governance on the ground, but a community, or an end in itself...