Sixty years ago, fashionable liberal opinion was in despair over congressional dysfunction.

In 1963, eminent political scientist and Democratic activist James MacGregor Burns published “The Deadlock of Democracy.” The book was a historically grounded lament over the way that conservative committee chairmen in Congress continually stymie the agendas of activist presidents like John F. Kennedy.

Burns viewed both the Democratic and Republican parties as divided between their forward-thinking presidential wings and their hidebound congressional wings.

Two years later, Democratic Rep. Richard Bolling of Missouri, a protege of legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, entered the fray with the book “House Out of Order.”

Bolling argued the House was a “shambles” because of troglodyte Southern committee chairmen empowered by seniority.

The 1960s are now, of course, regarded as the glory days of an activist Congress. The same year (1965) that Bolling published his screed, Lyndon Johnson signed both the Medicare bill and the Voting Rights Act.

Many of the problems that both Burns and Bolling cited have been solved by the ideological cohesion of both parties in Congress.

Congressional Democrats, despite foot-dragging from the likes of retiring Sen. Joe Manchin III, are in accord with the Biden administration on most issues. And, particularly in the House, Republicans are little more than vassals of Donald Trump.

But what is stunning is how, by almost every standard, Congress has declined as a serious legislative institution since........

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