RUNNING IN PLACE: Life Inside the Modern Senate

by James A. Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1986

Starting in 1981, Miller served for over two years as a special assistant to Senator Howard H. Baker (R., Tenn.). He here offers an insider's account, at once discerning and disheartening, of a single workweek (April 25-29, 1983) on Capitol Hill. The author focuses on his former boss, the Senate majority leader for the 99th Congress, and two other senators--Christopher Dodd (D., CT) and Alan K. Simpson (R., WY). Three staffers also figure prominently in the narrative: Baker's chief counsel; the staff director of the Senate's budget committee; and a savvy young woman hired by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D., NJ) to show him the ropes during his freshman year. Though nearly three years past, the five-day span logged by Miller was punctuated by legislative infighting over issues that remain evergreen, e.g., tax reform, intervention in Central America, and amendment of immigration statutes. Behind the scenes, Baker (who has since retired to Tennessee) lobbies doggedly for a budget resolution that will satisfy both the defense-minded White House and his increasingly independent colleagues. By week's end, when lawmakers invariably flee Washington, Baker has not made much progress on any front. Among other distractions, the ambitious Dodd (chosen to present the Democrats' response to President Reagan's mid-week address to a special joint session of Congress on Central American policy) demands and gains a time-consuming secret session on Nicaragua. The ability of the Senate to accomplish anything under the 18th-century rules still in effect is a tribute to its members' capacity for political compromise and accommodation, says Miller. But rituals and privileges that once made the upper chamber the world's most exclusive club, he observes, also explain its frustrating latter-day tendency to tread water. Nor, the author concludes, are prospects for decisive, principled action enhanced by a fast-rising crop of media-conscious newcomers looking to make names for themselves. Miller's sharp eye for detail sheds a great deal of light on how the Senate functions--or fails to on many occasions. An engaging and all too instructive text on the institution that may itself be overdue for reform.

Pub Date: April 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION