Tommy Denton

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Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who died 45 years ago Thursday, once observed late in his life that the effectiveness, vitality and democratic responsiveness of the House of Representatives would suffer if one political party exercised control of the institution for too long.

Rayburn spoke from a uniquely credible vantage point. The Texan served in the position longer than any other speaker: 1940-47, 1949-53 and 1955 until his death in 1961.

Almost prophetically, he seemed to anticipate the nearly 40-year majority control that Democrats held in the House. That period finally broke under the electoral surge in 1994 to place Republican majorities in both houses of Congress during President Bill Clinton's first term.

In hindsight, the voting public years before should have considered more carefully Rayburn's keen, well-developed understanding of human nature and the exercise of power -- and heeded his warning about the consequences of allowing pent-up frustration to intensify over time.

By the time the very frustrated and angry Newt Gingrich and his cohorts seized control under the banner of their "Contract With America," the wave of ideological zeal swamped whatever vestiges may have remained for reasoned, bipartisan compromise.

House Democrats, after almost four decades in the majority, had grown accustomed to the perquisites of controlling legislative processes. Compromise, they determined, would come generally on Democratic terms.

Had the Republican revolution been led by the statesmanlike Minority Leader Robert Michel of Illinois, a spirit of comity may have had a chance. But he had faithfully sought to work with the Democratic majority, and as a result was widely respected, if not all that successful.

Gingrich and his followers were no longer content to groan under the yoke of minority status. They had a radical vision for America and were not to be denied. Michel retired from Congress in 1995.

In the intervening years, the nation has witnessed yet another case study in the consequences of failing to check, balance and otherwise restrain the exercise of political power. Gingrich, with all his genius and charisma, yielded to the temptations of omnipotence and betrayed his office, which he was forced to surrender in disgrace.

As the radical "contract" gained even greater momentum with the election of President Bush, the politics of America has become increasingly winner-take-all.

Bush's political adviser Karl Rove has done a damaging disservice to the body politic by attempting to establish a permanent majority that would impose a special-interest-financed political will on the nation. That corrupting, scorched-earth campaign led to the series of arrogant abuses of power that so recently have tarnished Congress.

Rayburn understood power and knew the human proclivity for hubris, so he urged a free-swinging political pendulum to regulate an equilibrium that can accommodate a sound and reasonable middle course for the nation's politics.

Last Tuesday's election should elicit a huge sigh of relief among Americans, because it allowed that pendulum to swing once again toward the rejection of what has been developing into a perilous trend toward elitist extremism in authoritarian trappings. But the victorious Democrats should heed the same lesson, because the temptation will be great to mete out partisan vengeance and speed headlong toward the siren song of their version of excess.

In their book "Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy," Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that the very premise of a "permanent majority" is essentially un-American. For two centuries, the political center has kept most of the dangerous inclinations from gaining too much leverage.

The Founding Fathers' great republican experiment rested on the understanding that people of good faith would inevitably disagree, on some issues disagree fundamentally. Their common quest for liberty, however, depended not on the absolute triumph of one view but on their respectful fashioning of a consensus rooted in the common good.

The slash-and-burn politics of "total" victory is inimical to that balancing of interests, that reliance on a center that holds against contending extremes.

As the new Congress and the Bush administration confront the challenges before the nation in January, let the words of the late Justice Learned Hand inspire in them a sense of respectful humility:

"The spirit of liberty is the spirit you may not be right."

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.