Public anger heralds changes on Capitol Hill: Incumbents of the US Congress can no longer take their re-election

DESPITE his confessed abuse of the facilities of the House Bank, the Oklahoma representative, Mickey Edwards, must have reckoned he was safe. He was, after all, an eight-term Congressman; indeed, as Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, he had become one of his party's most influential voices in the House.

In his home state primary two years ago, no one had even bothered to oppose him. In general elections he customarily won 70 per cent or more of the vote. On 25 August, however, such eminence counted for nothing. Propelled by a tide of public indignation, four candidates ran against him in the Republican primary. When the votes were counted, Mr Edwards could finish no better than third.

There was but one consolation as he contemplated the wreckage of a substantial political career - dozens more of his fellow incumbents might meet a similar fate, come general election day on 3 November.

Perhaps the voting for the 103rd Congress will not quite go down as the political equivalent of Hercules in the Augean stables. But one prediction can be safely ventured: that the cosy world of Capitol Hill is heading for its most comprehensive shake- up in nearly half a century.

In the past, congressmen enjoyed rates of re-election comparable to the pre-approved Communist Party slate for the Moscow City Council in Brezhnev's day. In 1986 and 1988 almost 98 per cent of incumbents who ran were victorious; two years ago the proportion was 96 per cent.

Now, however, the new faces may well top the post-war record of 118, established in 1948. The reasons are various: the transgressions of Mr Edwards and scores of others, re-districting and the anti- incumbent mood rife in the land. Most depressing, however, are the gaps left by those who have departed voluntarily, in despair at the public contempt of Congress, and the failure of their institution to get things done.

For their woes, congressmen are not entirely to blame. True, they have created some mighty rods for their own backs. First was a 25 per cent pay rise voted through one dead of night in 1991. Then came the rumpus over free overdrafts at the now-closed House Bank, and a smaller scandal at the House Post Office. Both affairs were overblown. But the House leadership's sloppy handling of them kept the talk show hosts in jokes about 'checks and balances' for months.

Had government been functioning properly, such peccadilloes might have been shrugged off. But Congress cannot escape its share of responsibility for the 'gridlock' between a Republican White House and the Democrat- controlled legislature, and the dollars 400bn ( pounds 237bn) budget deficit and every other ill perceived to flow from it. The country is 'on the wrong track', say the polls.

Ask almost any American why, and he will put Congress at, or near, the top of his list of reasons. Hence the growing pressure for limits on the number of terms a representative may serve: three states have already passed such measures, and in November they will be on the ballot in a dozen more. As George Bush has found out, too, a desire for change, any change, is the only constant of this confused election year.

On top of all this has been re- districting, the regular 10-yearly rejigging of constituency boundaries to take account of new census data. On the basis of the 1990 census, fast-growing states such as California, Texas and Florida were awarded extra seats. Others such as Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, have lost them. Making matters worse have been other court-imposed changes, to reverse earlier gerrymandering or to create districts with large concentrations of ethnic minorities.

This process, too, has already claimed prominent victims, among them New York's Stephen Solarz, one of the Democrats' most respected foreign policy experts in the House. Like Mr Edwards, Mr Solarz had sinned at the House Bank. The killer blow, however, was boundary changes that left him in a near unrecognisable Brooklyn district where Hispanics were a majority.

Cruellest of all perhaps is the impending sudden-death shoot- out in Montana, whose two outgoing representatives must fight for the one giant constituency, covering an area the size of Italy, left by re-districting.

A few months ago, the upheavals seemed certain to produce a windfall of 40 or more extra seats for the Republicans. They, after all, had been the prime beneficiaries of re-districting, while the Democratic majority could be made the scapegoat for the shenanigans on Capitol Hill. Not surprisingly, Congress-bashing became a favourite Bush refrain. Elect a legislature controlled by the Republicans, he would say, and gridlock would vanish and government would work.

But so far and so fast has the President fallen that Bill Clinton's coat-tails are now stronger than his own. The simplest way to end gridlock, voters seem to have concluded, is to put a Democrat in the White House. Now the Democrats are expecting to lose, at worst, two dozen seats, scarcely denting their present 267-167 majority.

As for the Senate, where re-districting does not apply (each state has two senators), they may actually strengthen their current 57-43 majority. Of the 36 Senate seats at stake, the Republicans are vulnerable in at least four, the Democrats in only two. 1992 has been billed the 'Year of the Woman' - the four or five women likely to enter the Senate for the first time are all Democrats.

But this angry year is, above all others, no time to count chickens. The Congressional Quarterly magazine reckons that - unheard of in recent times - more than half all House seats are either open, or held by occupants who face real challenges. Small wonder then that America's legislators were so desperate on Tuesday to wind up the unlamented 102nd Congress and flee home. Moscow City Council rules no longer apply. This time they will have to fight.