What Grownups Look Like

On Janury 12, 1991, House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) and Republican Leader Bob Michel (R-IL) spoke about the impending Gulf War.  Click for video of their remarks:

• Tom Foley
• Bob Michel

 

Lyndon Johnson's Johnson

Robert Caro was recently on the Colbert Report...and ended up discussing President Johnson's Johnson... Click here to see the video of Caro's interview (it gets interesting at 5:07).

How we broke the Senate without breaking any rules

Ezra Klein wrote an interesting piece in The Washington Post highlighting the Senate's tendency to "run on norms rather than rules."

He cites Gregory Koger's new book "Filibustering," which explains "how and why obstruction has been institutionalized in the U.S. Senate over the last fifty years, and how this transformation affects politics and policymaking."

Klein explains, "We’ve broken so many norms in recent years that the Senate of today bears little resemblance to the Senate of 1983, much less the Senate of 1953. But because there was never a formal fight over a rule change, and because the changes came gradually, we didn’t notice. Now it’s too late. The norms that once protected the Senate are largely gone. And we haven’t erected new rules in their place."

The Mighty Wurlitzer

After it was mentioned in class today – and with the discussion of unpublicized acts of courage  - I thought I would share some more information about Professor Elliott, Sr. This comes from Hugh Wilford’s very interesting biography of the CIA and its role in American culture, The Mighty Wurlitzer.

“Kissinger had been put in touch with the Office of Policy Coordination by Harvard professor William Y. Elliott. An all-American tackle at Vanderbilt, poet of the southern Fugitive school, and Roosevelt braintruster, Elliott had done his best academic work, on European political relations, in the 1920s, thereafter living off his reputation as the “grand seigneur” of Harvard’s Government Department and trusted counselor of six U.S. presidents. […] In addition to regularly advising Frank Wisner, Elliott helped the CIA by sitting on the board of the émigré organization AMCOMLIB, overseeing student front groups, and steering promising Harvard graduates toward secret government service.

[…] It was Elliott who provided the future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State [Kissinger] with his principal power base at Harvard – and Launchpad for his rise to global celebrity – in the shape of the university’s International Summer School.”

“The Senate is actually going to vote for a bill.”

The title of this post is a quote from Senator Durban, joking today that C-Span watchers were going to see something "historic" and "precedent-setting" in the easy passage of a bipartisan bill to tax online retailers. According to this New York Times article, the Republicans were split on the Internet sales tax bill, also called the Marketplace Fairness Act, with antitax group against it and Republicans prioritizing "Main Street businesses" in favor of the bill's passage. Since bipartisan legislation is becoming rarer and rarer, as per our class discussion today, we should note such accomplishments when they occur. It will be interesting to see what happens to this bill in the House. I also thought it was notable given our simulation strategies that the New York Times reported: "Its sponsors intentionally kept the bill simple — just 11 pages in length — to ease passage."

From Ben Tillotson: Another Special Election Upset in MA?

http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/05/polls_ed_markey_has_single-dig.html

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican candidate for Senate in MA, has been polling only slightly behind Ed Markey, the Democratic favorite. Gomez's rise in the polls has been surprising because until recently he has been an obscure political figure. There is a lot of speculation that this could be another Republican upset like Scott Brown's victory in 2010, but there's a couple why I think Markey will pull through:

-He's a much better candidate than Martha Coakley  

-Gomez is pro-life, Scott Brown said he was pro choice and the Warren campaign still was able to successfully attack him for being anti-women

-Gomez has never held public office before, and is running largely on his military record. This record is very impressive and commendable, but I'm not sure how successful this strategy will be in MA. 

- Ben Tillotson 

Congressional History: Quickly, Quickly

Some artifacts of congressional history, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Robert A. Taft on labor law reform (Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose) :




A timeline of campaign finance reform and Wisconsin Right to Life and Citizens United
A timeline of congressional reforms.

Polarization of House and Senate.
Polarization of leaders

Trends in Congressional Approval