The poisoned Congress.

W

THE RECENT arrest of Senator Bob Packwood (R., Ore.) within the hallowed halls of Congress's Upper Chamber signals an escalation from virulent partisan feuding into open war. It happened on February 24 in the early hours of the morning. Frustrated by Republican-led filibustering against a measure calling for campaign finance reform, Majority Leader Robert Byrd seized upon obscure Senate rules allowing the Sergeant-at-Arms to compel absent senators to come to the Senate floor. Byrd's motion to nab the Republicans passed 45 to 3, and the Senate police quickly fanned out, armed with warrants for the arrest of all 46 Republican senators. Several empty offices were checked before the first senator-Steve Symms of Idaho -was spotted. But the fleet-footed Symms eluded his would-be captors. Packwood was not so lucky. Because a cleaning woman ratted on him, the Sergeant-at-Arms and two aides caught the hapless Packwood hiding in his office. They forced the door, wrestled him under control, and brought him to the Senate floor. Despite the good-natured joshing over Packwood's arrest -he and the Sergeant-at-Arms held a news conference the following day and largely tried to laugh off the incident -it reflects an increasingly bitter mood on the Hill.

One reason, of course, is perennial (actually quadrennial). Ever since Harry Truman was elected by running against the "do-nothing 80th Congress," political strategists have tried to stage election-year confrontations within Congress between the party controlling the White House and its opposite number. And why not? Congress is highly visible, and while both presidential tickets slug it out on the stump, too often the result there resembles a food fight: lots of slapstick, and no winners.

Legislation, on the other hand, is the tangible expression of political power. It serves to focus differences between the parties. It defines winners and losers among both constituencies and legislators. In other words, it gives point to political drama.

There are, of course, deeper reasons for the poisoned congressional atmosphere than the mere fact of a presidential campaign, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are confronted with an ineluctable reality: they must share power. Since the change in control of the Senate in November 1986, this sharing has been especially tense. It began with Senate Republicans, under the leadership of the acerbic Bob Dole, refusing to cede office space to incoming Democrats until the last possible moment at the end of the session. Senator Byrd retaliated by cutting, as deeply as his powers permitted, Republican staff, office space, and perks. The Iran -Contra hearings before committees of both Houses of Congress accelerated the deterioration, as jubilant Democrats tried to go for the jugular. Senator Warren Rudman (R., N.H.), a leading Dole backer, attempted to bridge the partisan gap by joining with Senator Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii) in the public castigation of the Reagan Administration. But the effort backfired. His fellow Republican committee members would have none of it.

The toxic atmosphere has also permeated the House. Majority Leader Tom Foley has started refusing to inform Republican Whip Trent Lott of upcoming votes until as little as 24 hours beforehand. This has two unsettling effects: not only are House GOP insurgents barred from forming effective counter-strategies through lack of notice, but it also makes the scheduling of out-of-office engagements and travel practically impossible for fear of missing key votes.

And the partisan warfare will not be kept within the halls of Congress itself. Watch for the Democrats to put on Mr. Reagan's desk a flock of bills as veto bait: minimum-wage increases, health-insurance reforms (such as the Kennedy proposal to make health-insurance coverage mandatory for employees of small businesses), child-care grants, mandatory leave for new parents.

This array of choices is not coincidental. At a recent Democratic conference at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, some 130 Democratic Members of Congress attended three days of meetings on the theme, "Our Family, Our Future." Democrats are aiming to use family issues in 1988, and Congress will be the staging ground for symbolic confrontations in the competition to seize the family banner on the campaign trail.

SENATOR ORRIN HATCH (R., Utah) has decried the partisan deterioration of the Congress and Packwood's arrest in particular, saying it makes the U.S. "look like a banana republic." One could argue that Hatch is exaggerating. After all, Congress has a long and glorious tradition of bareknuckle politics. We are still a long way from the dog-fights that occurred in the Congress before the Civil War. Congressmen then expressed frustration by caning their foes. Viewed in this perspective, Packwood's arrest can be viewed as just another example of the extent to which members use power to prevail. When partisanship is missing on Capitol Hill, the logic goes, it means that the differences between the political parties are so narrow as to no longer matter.

Well, maybe. But many observers (including this one) think that in this particular congressional cycle, healthy partisanship has degenerated to an unhealthy meanness. Maybe that's one reason why so many senators are retiring. Partisanship is one thing, poison another.