Kyle Wingfield

Columnist

WASHINGTON – Campaign promises, like that late-night visit to the fridge when you have a slice (or two) of leftover pizza and then (why not?) a few spoonfuls or (OK, fine) a bowl of ice cream, tend to hit differently in the cold light of day.

Especially when things don’t go well for the people who made those promises. For months before Election Day, Democrats promoted changing the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, which is most commonly used to prevent a vote on bills with only narrow support by requiring 60 senators to agree to a motion ending debate. Elissa Slotkin, the party’s Senate nominee in Michigan, declared herself “loud and proud on reforming the filibuster.” Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks pledged to “vote to abolish the filibuster” if elected to the Senate. And of course, Kamala Harris supported ending the filibuster to allow a vote on abortion protections. Unlike Harris, Slotkin and Alsobrooks won their races this month. But suddenly, their party’s attitude toward the filibuster seems best summarized by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Seattle Democrat, in comments to a Huffington Post reporter: “Am I championing getting rid of the filibuster now when the (GOP) has the trifecta? No. But had we had the trifecta, I would have been.” You might call Jayapal a hypocrite, but such hypocrisy is widespread in our nation’s capital. If only taking the long view were just as common. As it happens, I was in town this past week for an event honoring someone whose career reflects a greater commitment to upholding institutions such as the filibuster, despite the short-term benefits of choosing a different path.

Sen. Mitch McConnell will have led the Senate Republican Conference for a record 18 years when he steps aside in January for Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, recently elected to succeed him. The American Enterprise Institute presented Mc-Connell with the Irving Kristol Award at its annual dinner, and he took the occasion to discuss the importance of protecting institutions.

The Kentuckian’s message is worth considering, whatever your opinion of him “Enduring ideas come before enduring institutions,” McConnell said. “This truth is inescapable. And it ought to be self-evident. But what it most certainly is not is self-enforcing. Institutions worth preserving have to be defended.”

Among the institutions he mentioned was the filibuster, which he said helps “preserve minority protections in the Senate” and ensure “the Senate’s promise of unlimited debate.”

While both parties have chipped away at the filibuster, particularly regarding judicial appointments and budgetary matters, it endures for most other types of legislation.

“It’s been quite evident to me that a credible check on majority rule was worth preserving even when it didn’t serve my party’s immediate political interests,” Mc-Connell said. “Because wild swings in policy with every transfer of power don’t serve the nation’s interest. For consequential legislation to endure, it should have to earn the support of a broad coalition.”

As he noted, “power is fleeting.” That is why so many senators, when their party wins control, are tempted to remove the restraints. But that is also why the rest of us should oppose their urges.

The House was established as the federal body closest to the people – and therefore most prone to gyrations in the popular mood. The executive branch was not designed for legislating, but through the expansion of the federal bureaucracy that’s what the president has gotten – and so a change from one person, or party, to another spurs the “wild swings in policy” McConnell mentioned.

So far, the Senate has held out. Short-term frustrations, for each party in its turn, come from this stubbornness. But that’s the point. The Founders didn’t invent the filibuster, but they did want to make it difficult to change federal law.

No doubt, some Republicans will soon be just as frustrated by this difficulty as some Democrats were in recent years.

Let’s hope they are not too far removed from minority status to forget why they defended it then – or that they could be out of power again in no time.

Kyle Wingfield is the president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.