>> good afternoon and welcome to the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas. i am the director here. we are delighted we have such an outstanding crowd and what is going to be a fascinating conference over the next two days. we also want to thank all of our visiting scholars for taking the time out to visit campus here and to be part of this. as those of you who have attended dole institute programs before no, we are a hybrid facility. we have a museum, we have a very impressive archive with all of up doles papers and artifacts and we conduct it very aggressive programming schedule that usually is focused on practitioners, but also we tried to do scholarly type conferences

from time to time. last fall, professor burdett plumas, who is not only a distinguished professor of political science, a good friend of the dole institute but, and this is required to be involved some time with the dole institute, a certifiable political junkie. he approached us about it very interesting idea. you've said you know, next year is going to be the 50th anniversary of bob dole's election to the united states congress and are you guys planning anything? i said as a matter of fact we are. we are planning our presidential lecture series which is one of our signature series on that topic. and he proposed the idea of doing a conference that focuses on the senate, and it just fit perfectly, a perfect way to conclude the series. so we were very excited about that and very excited about what burdett has put together. one of the things we have heard in the course of the series consistently is that the united

states senate needs more people like bob dole, like his career exemplifying bipartisanship, stability and a willingness while having strong philosophical beliefs, to reach across the aisle and try to work with others with different points of view. we heard from bob dole's biography. we have heard from members of his staff. we have heard from the first and until he recently retired only historian of the united states senate and finally we heard from one of his very prominent colleagues, former senator jack danforth. and it has been a very enlightening process. but now we get to hear from scholars come individuals who had the opportunity to stand back and take an objective and a look at exactly how the senate functions and exact way what can be done to make it function better. he gives me great leisure to present to you the gentleman who oppose this idea, the gentleman who organized it, who did all the work and deserves all the credit, president burdett

loomis. [applause] >> thanks very much, bill. bill's story is exactly right and bill couldn't have been more welcoming when i came to him and john earl, the associate director, with this idea. they basically said go ahead, run with it and we have. and i would like to acknowledge the support of the kansas management council. i approach them, and they also were highly enthusiastic about the conference, and so they too provided significant support. as bill noted, the 50 year career of bob dole and the anniversary of his initial house run triggered this, but i have

had talked about doing this for quite a while and this was just a great opportunity. because i think that, after all the dust has cleared, bob dole entered the congress as a house member, it exited as a presidential candidate and has had a fascinating post senate career, but in the end, his great legacy will be as a senator, as a committee chair and particularly as a leader. and so, it is worth considering the senate of the congress he entered in 19602 where it is today. i think it is particularly appropriate in that on the day of we hope, we think the final senate vote on health care reform, assuming the house doesn't screw things up, the

coincidence here is great. the interest in the senate is as high as it has been in a long time. so that serendipity has been terrific. finally, when i thought about this move from the more abstract to the specific, i started sending out e-mails, and i sent 10 e-mails out, and to the first 10 people that i really wanted to come, to present things. and, the 10 accepted. so, these are the people that i thought, and there are certainly some others without any question, but these are the people i thought would come together, cheerlead the leading scholars on the u.s. senate, to talk about various facets of this institution that is both

interesting, puzzling, often frustrating. and so, it is great to have them all here. we get to talk among ourselves, and i get to talk with you, another great audience from the dole institute. so, michael take it away. >> my name is michael lynch. i am a professor of political science at ku and i have the pleasure of having the chair to discuss this afternoon's panel. i would like to thank you all for coming and thank the dole center for putting this event on. my job today is pretty easy. i am going to introduce these gentlemen. they are going to talk a really long time and i'm going to make incredibly short comments about what they have to say and then we will turn it over to the audience and ask you if you have any questions you would like to ask. briefly, allow me to introduce each of our panelists. the next two days again, the

the next two days again, the a&@@ @ congress and another one called filibuster, obstruction and lawmaking in the u.s. senate. both of these book look historically at how the institution is change over time

and i think he is going to share some of that information today. both of those books one bisphenol price, which is the prize for the best book in legislative politics granted by the american political science association. after eric, alan abramowitz will be speaking to us about elections. he is an expert on american politics, specifically elections and very specifically senate elections today. he is the author of six books and countless articles. maybe most interesting to today's talk is a current book he is working on or i think he has now finished. >> it is out, available for purchase. [laughter] >> titled the disappearing center, engage citizens polarization in american democracy. he is going to paint a picture of how senate elections have changed over time and what the state of the electorate and senate elections look like today. finally i will reintroduce

burdett loomis, a professor here at the university of kansas. he is the author or editor of 14 books on american politics, an expert on congress and the senate, including an edited volume called esteemed colleagues, stability and the liberation in the united states senate. this was written a while ago. [laughter] and then he is currently working on a book about looking at the culture wars and the role of the senate in elections and electrics. with that introduction i turn it over to eric and i remind you that we have 15 to 20 minutes more or less per speaker, with no good way for me to stop you. >> thanks for the reminder. first i would like to thank burdett for organizing this. it is a great honor to be here and i thank the dole institute. is a great up tendency to talk about the senate vote today and from a historical perspective

and there is no more appropriate place than the home of top doles archives. i think one theme that will likely emerge from this conference is the idea that senate is something of a mess. i think that is probably a widespread, not universal view but widespread view among political observers, a combination of individualism, obstructionism and intense nasty partisan warfare that together, put them together, make it a different institution to govern and make policy. in thinking about what is wrong with today's senate, a lot of a lot of times especially journalists and political scientist looked at to mid century senate as a better time. the synod of the 1940s and 50s is an institution that in some ways worked well. to be sure there are plenty of them is wrong with the mid century senate so for example people senate democrats were

filibustering and killing senate bills in the 40s and 50s so the distasteful aspect but a lot of people point to the mid century senate, lyndon johnson senate as it is referred to often as a healthier institution in today's. one of the things that is interesting about the senate is it is really the first era for which we have both kind of journalistic and popular histories written and odder political scientist who actually studied it in person in observing what is going on and as a result of both of those things we have a pretty rich information age. we know a lot about the senate of the 1940s and 50s. i think from all of that observation, kind of consensus or conventional view of what that senate was has emerged from that literature so what i'm going to do today is talk a little bit about the stylized portrait, the conventional portrait and then i will talk a little bit about some things that i think the convention misses or under precise as an

wrap up on a quick reflection on what those underemphasized points might tell us about today's senate. that is my game plan. now, in terms of name-- main themes, i think of several things that emerge from these studies and from the popular writing. the first is the idea that members of the senate generally observed a set of why we shared norms of behavior. these norms were what it means to be a good senator and these were shared across party and across ideological groupings so ideas like apprenticeship. when you get to the senate you are supposed to sort of keep your head down and learn the ropes and then only after learning the ropes do you start talking a lot on the floor, sponsoring a lot of amendments. specialization, the idea focus in on a couple of various typically wear your committee assignments relate to and focus on those and not interfere whole lot in other policy areas, not speak about every single issue that comes up.

another norm was the idea of legislative work that you should be a workhorse and not a show horse. you get to the senate and you are a legislator first and a public figure second. another norm would be courtesy, the idea that you are not supposed to attack your colleagues in a personal way. finally reciprocity, the idea that you should show restraint in how you use your prerogatives and try to make bargains or deals with your fellow colleagues, again across party lines. what this does is add up to an institution where senators are understood to show a lot of individual restraint, so even if you might in a fit at home i going out in sponsoring hundreds of floor amendments to embarrass the other party or talking constantly about every bill that comes up, there is a sense that that is not really appropriate so i'm not going to do that, and i guess i would say that is probably a thought that wouldn't occur to a contemporary senator today.

[laughter] it is worth noting it is hard to show norms affect behavior but there is an important work i political scientist that do show that some of these norms at least had some bias of some of the folks in this room who you'll be hearing from tomorrow, document the extent to which apprenticeships seem to hold the junior senators really used to sponsor fewer amendments and be less active than that fades in the 1960s and 70s,. specialization, the idea of focusing on committee work was something you can see evidence forbade them and really fades away as we get a new breed of senators again entering the late 50s and 60s. so that is one primary theme that emerges. another is in terms of the filibuster in mid century it is a really different institution than it is today. today the understanding is you oppose the bill, you filibuster it and the result is the majority will need 60 votes to

defeat that filibuster. if you look at data in this period, the filibuster was quite rare. fewer filibusters than earlier in the 20th century and far fewer than what we have today, so this wasn't entirely due to self-restraint. it also had to do with a political stalemate at the time, were basically there is a conservative majority in the senate for much of this period so liberals couldn't push their programs to enactment and by the same token, conservatives didn't have as broad a policy agenda so there wasn't that much for liberals to filibuster. again this is something shown in a book by steve smith and sarah binder on the filibuster. that is the second game, this lack of use of filibustering. a third theme is the idea that the senate in this period is run by what was called the inner club, and this is a term made famous by a journalist for the

"new york times," william s. weiss who wrote a book called the citadel in 1957. the inner club where those members whose primary allegiance is to the senate first. the career senators and shun personal publicity and worked the insider game. people like richard russell of georgia as an example, lyndon johnson who really worked the letters of power internally and bargain with their fellow club members. and, those who don't abide by those norms don't amount to much in the senate according to wipe. just to give you a sense for how much this was part of the allure of the day, lyndon johnson as leader of the democrats, would give a copy of this book to each new senator and it would be signed by william s. white and lyndon johnson said they were cultivating this image at and johnson believe that senators who believe this would be more likely to defer to his leadership because that is how

you get ahead according to william s. white. the flipside of this inner club view was the idea that there are a handful of mavericks, independent like paul douglas of illinois who don't abide by these norms but are very much according to this conventional portrait, ineffective senators as a result. they don't amount to that much in the institution. a related aspect of this theme is the idea that the senate has really dominated by conservative coalition, a bipartisan coalition of southern democrats and midwestern and western republican, also some eastern republicans were conservative. and, if you look at the senate in that period, that they committee chairs, the most powerful committee chairs tend to be southern democrats and they often work closely with senior republicans on legislation so it is a very different world from today where the thought of senior democrat

and a senior republican having the same, very similar policy views and working as a team would we for into today's senate finally, this conventional portrait is i guess i would call at the johnson senate, the idea of lyndon johnson as a unique and important figure in the senate of the 1950s and it is a kind of amazing story when you think about it. enters the senate in january of 1949. two years later he is assistant leader. four years later he is democratic leader and six years later when democrats win back the majority, he is majority leader. the common portrayal is that the senate is really dominated by johnson, so there is a great kohl in a book by evans and novak on johnson about the johnson treatment, how he would persuade senators to go along with him. just to give you a flavor, his tome could be accusation cajolery exuberance, complained

in the hint of threat. he ran the gambit of human emotions. interjections from the target rare. he moved in close, his face is scant millimeter for mistarget, his eyes widening in narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling, from his pocket support clippings, memos and statistics, mimicry humor and the genius of analogy made it a hit not experience and rendered the victim stunned and helpless. [laughter] people talk about harry reid. [laughter] that is what they are imagining. scholars of the 1950s and 60s understood that portrait of johnson personally dominating was really overdrawn. it was in the story of johnson imposing his will. a lot of this insolence derive from the fact that he had an extensive communication network. he could talk to liberal democrats, conservative southern democrats, republicans and find out what it was each member wanted and needed an broker

compromises and deals rather than just bossing them around. it is also the case that johnson was help out a lot by the fact that this was a period of divided government when he was majority leader so he is leading the democrats, the moderate republican dwight eisenhower's in the white house and as a result of that, johnson wasn't really expected to pass the program while he was a leader and said he could kind of pick his spots and decide when to fight and win not, so really what he does is kind of cultivate this image of invincibility by avoiding the fights he was going to lose. and so, again, the portrait that emerges is an important influential leader but not a single-handed kind of dominance. now you can think of johnson in many ways personifying this conventional portrait of the midcentury senate. he is the insider, southern democrat articulating the view that you need to work with the inner club and abide by these norms to get ahead.

that raises the question, what is missing from his portrait. and i would like to point to a couple of things. what is this idea of the inner club where you get ahead by keeping your head down and waiting is kind of contradicted both by johnson's own story where he comes in and quickly rises to power, becomes the leader after four years and you might say he was so skilled that is just an exception. if you think about the most important republican of the era, bob taft, he has a somewhat parallel story. tapped enters the senate in 1939. his first year he gets 44 speeches on the senate floor. hardly keeping his mouth shut.