Bums of the Year Congress.

By STANLEY W. CLOUD

LIKE FISH IN A BARREL, CONGRESS HAS ALWAYS BEEN TOO good a target to miss. From the very beginning, the tendency of the nation's lawmakers to posture or steal or make damn fools of themselves has been an inspiration to reformers and parodists alike. In 1794 Thomas Jefferson, who was easily shocked by the depths to which other politicians could sink, denounced the "shameless corruption" he had witnessed in the First and Second Congresses. A century later, Mark Twain, who was not so easily shocked, insisted there was no such thing as a "distinctively native American criminal class, except Congress." In 1906 Henry Adams, whose own father and grandfather had served in the House of Representatives, somewhat disapprovingly quoted a Cabinet member as follows: "You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!"

In the past, such attitudes have reflected little more than a healthy American desire to show politicians who, finally, is boss. But after a couple of centuries of scandal, public opinion now seems to have taken a more sinister turn. Thanks in no small part to the remarkable log-rolling exhibition that the 102nd Congress staged during 1991, many Americans have gone from merely harboring negative thoughts to a profound sense of contempt for the legislative body. The dangers are manifest. Voters are staying home in droves at election time, which only enhances the formidable benefits of incumbency, and they are increasingly likely to embrace quick-fix "reforms," like term limitations, whose eventual effects can only be guessed at. It is one thing for citizens to indulge themselves in democratic uppityness; it's quite another to sink into sullen discouragement.

And yet why not? What's to be said in defense of an institution that prates endlessly about equal opportunity, fair employment and freedom of information, then excludes itself from most of the laws that would help achieve those goals? How can there be anything but contempt for politicians who decry the projected $365 billion federal deficit even as they pour more and more dollars into their pet programs? Is there a case for the Keating Five and the way those purblind Senators opened their doors to convicted savings and loan rip- off artist Charles Keating -- not to mention the purblind way in which the Senate ethics committee investigated the offense? Will anyone speak up for Senators and Representatives who run against Congress back home but who are all too eager to rejoin the club once they are safely back inside the Beltway?

Maybe it takes one to know one. Only a chronic rubber-check artist, after all, is likely to applaud the sweetheart deal Congress cut for itself with its own private bank. And only sophists are likely to go along with the argument that accepting bundles of money from political-action committees is not tantamount to taking bribes. Congress's refusal to consider real reform of its campaign-finance system makes sense only to other professional politicians, for many of whom retention of power is the paramount goal.

"Now just a doggone minute! Point of order!" the florid gentleperson from Sticksville declaims from the well of the House. "It's not easy being Congress!" Yes, yes, everyone knows what a trial it is to make ends meet on $125,100 a year when you have to maintain two homes and attend a dozen boring receptions a day. And everyone knows how the folks back home talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to taxes and spending. (They hate taxes, except those imposed on someone else; and they hate spending, except when it benefits themselves.) And yes, only a fool would expect 535 individual politicians to coalesce into a body capable of national leadership. That is, after all, what Presidents are for.

Those arguments are wearing thin in the face of so much arrogance, so much corruption, so much abuse of the system. In the 1980s a cowed Congress followed Ronald Reagan down the path to Reaganomics -- unprecedented growth purchased with unprecedented deficits. George Bush, after a little trimming here and there, has charted much the same course. Now the country is being asked to pay the price. Meanwhile, Congress remains more concerned with protecting itself and its prerogatives than with helping solve the nation's manifold domestic problems.

But Pogo was right: the enemy is still us. Or as Alexander Hamilton put it when he defended the concept of a House of Representatives: "Here, sir, the people govern." If Congress isn't good enough, neither is whining about it. If voters in a democracy don't like what they have, the only real solution is to vote for something -- or someone -- else.