A Capitol Kind of Rivalry : HOUSE AND SENATE <i> by Ross K. Baker (W.W. Norton: $19.95; 210 pp.; 0-393-02706-6) </i>

“House and Senate” is the closest thing to a readable political science text that you will find these days. As a narrowly drawn study of whether the two houses of the United States Congress are different or similar, it is typical in theme of a genre replete with narrowly drawn studies. Ross K. Baker finds that the House of Representatives and Senate are sometimes similar but mostly different, a conclusion so self-evident to the average reader of the Constitution and the daily newspapers that one must ask why getting there took him 210 pages. But he spices it up with enough insights, asides, and quips that political science undergraduates, destined to be his principal audience, will find it a revelation. Compared to the rest of the literature, it is positively Byronic.

If to make these general criticisms of political science is to question the whole field’s raison d’etre, then, as an undergraduate victim of the abysmal science, J’accuse. Many a student has plowed through complicated texts or journal articles only to discover finally what is axiomatic to old pros like John Sasso and Lyn Nofziger: “Most elections hinge on the state of the economy,” or “Incumbents will eat their young to be re-elected.” Even from the likes of Prof. Baker you can get a windy belaboring of the obvious in some passages, along with chapter titles that sound like rhymes from old Motown songs (“Convergence, Divergence, and Persistence”).

Most political practitioners, proud of learning by doing, are as contemptuous of political scientists as composers are of music critics. On the other hand, if we were all instinctual geniuses, we wouldn’t need our outstanding system of colleges and universities. And even if a veteran surgeon can point at an artery and say: “Just cut that one, piece of cake,” baby docs must still log some book time before slicing and dicing. So too, I suppose, must tomorrow’s political science teachers.

Still, expect to have your suspicions confirmed rather than your horizons expanded by “House and Senate.” Twenty pages in, Baker quotes Champ Clark, speaker of the House from 1911 to 1919, as saying congressmen liked to become senators for these reasons: “First, the longer term; second, their votes are more important; third, patronage; fourth, participation in treaty-making; fifth, greater social recognition.” And that, it turns out, is just about it even nowadays. We also learn that most reporters and editors prefer to cover senators; that senators generally must be lobbied one-on-one rather than in groups; that senators, being fewer, serve on more committees so still tend to specialize less than representatives. And we learn that the late Sen. Frank Church of Idaho was so contemptuous of the lower house that en route home each evening he went out of his way to avoid driving past the House office buildings, which when you think about it was carrying a thing a bit too far.

The non-specialist should not and would not turn to “House and Senate.” It is not a survey book on the Congress but a study of Baker’s thesis that the difference built into the two houses by the Framers have managed to endure in spite of television and various other modern evils. In a brisk concluding chapter he shows, through an analysis of the 1986 and 1988 drug bills, how the House will respond quickly to the demands of the rabble while the Senate puffs its pipe and takes the ostensibly more responsible long view--”long” as in roughly six election-free years.

If the solons of the upper house indeed envision themselves as more statesmanlike than their House colleagues, an unnamed lobbyist tells Baker the real reason why: “More often than not (senators) don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Yeah, you need to talk in concepts--what’s good for America--but I don’t think that’s because they have any deeper feelings for America than the guys in the House. I think it’s just because they don’t know the details as well. You can’t talk to them any other way.” The extensive interviews that Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers, conducted with members, reporters, and lobbyists give “House and Senate” far more of these real-world touches than most comparable tomes.

There is still too much jargon about “electoral environments,” “the ecology of the House and Senate,” and “the attentive elites.” Baker also has the scholar’s irritating proclivity for dropping a quotation from another writer into his text without attribution, leaving the reader to scurry to consult the footnote to learn who’s talking. But then, every few pages, he takes a deep breath and produces some inspired writing. “The House leader,” he writes, “ministers to a flock; the Senate leader more nearly resembles the chaplain in a medieval court whose ministrations were highly personalized and phrased with the delicacy and diplomacy that acknowledged the power and vanity of his communications.” That kind of prose could get a man drummed out of the American Political Science Assn. if he is not careful. “Let’s have less poetry next time, Baker,” they will say, “and more charts and graphs.”

Again, this book is about the dynamics of bicameralism, not “Congress Today.” But to appeal to a broader audience, which Baker and his publisher clearly hoped to do, I would have taken on some currently hot congressional issues. We learn that House members are more closely attuned to the wishes of their districts than senators are to those of their states, but we don’t learn whether Baker believes it is entirely fitting that House members have managed to parlay their big staffs, gerrymandered districts, and extensive prerequisites into almost guaranteed reelection. Something on the growing influence of political action committees and their campaign contributions would have been germane.

And, yes, what about ethics, both financial and political? In an interview with Baker, former Sen. John Culver of Iowa argued that senators are more accommodating of one another’s political needs than House members. “There’s the feeling that if I get it through the Senate and write my press release,” Culver said, “I’ll drop it in (the) conference (between the House and Senate) because I’ve done my thing politically.” The man was saying that a senator would gladly take the credit for some measure without ever intending to make the effort to enact it. The remark’s blithe hypocrisy is unremarked upon by the author, but the reader catches a glimpse of the Congress he has come to know so well--a place where the real political science is the perfection of the fine art of protecting every member’s self-interest no matter what.