mistake, and i know lisa hinted at this, of having the federal government stepped in and mandate things, where over the last 100 years, state commissions have done it, and that is what we have universal access. that has been done by the state commissions and with the right charters, they can also achieve this transition. >> i think this is where the vision thing comes in. we don't need to know what color the cat is. it needs to catch mice. we already regulate gasoline based on performance standards. we don't tell bp which molecules we want in it. we tell them we want it to explode this way when it is in your engine and we don't want to fly all over the ground -- like the air and land all of the ground. there needs to be real-time pricing for consumers.

i am interested in utilities making nice red, but i am also really interested in enabling the ron popiel of the smart grid. isherman and the stovetop rotisserie. that is exactly what we want on the smart grid. we want the weirdest possible solution to air-conditioning that pulls an electoral load off the grid in the heat of the day. it is not necessarily going to be something that i come up with sitting in an office, and it is not right to be something to end comes up with sitting at the utility. it is going somebody sitting in a trailer saying, we can do this differently. here is how. that is the opportunity.

that is where the vision thing comes in. >> you started with subsidy. jim nailed it right. we need to move away from words like subsidy and instead and investing in our population and labor force and providing the incentive. one in the front. one in the back. >> we talked a lot about increasing the speed of innovation and ecosystems. how do we enhance, improve the speed of our monetary analysis and feedback systems, so that we can also avoid some of the problems like we have seen with corn ethonal. we introduce some of these new untested technologies. >> you could have imagined the price of tortillas will be affected by energy decisions in

the united states. >> actually, another example. we need to print think through e unintended consequences. you can't always identify them all. you need to have a little things in terms of solving it. take shell gas, which everybody calls the game changer. we don't quite know what the environmental impact is point to be of that yet. we know that water, from arizona y'all really know this. we have seen it all across our country. water could be the next oil in the 21st century. if shale gas takes an incredible amount of water with chemicals and the potential to contaminate aquifers, we might find ourselves champion shale gas as a game changer.

and at the end of the day find ourselves in the same trade-off. water versus fuel that we did with ethanol. so we really need to think your way through this and remember the lessons learned before. >> one of the things, i want to add, we have been urging the economic implications of every single project idea that they advance from science forward which is a new way of engaging in some of these things to catch some of that earlier. >> can i just say one thing? absolutely think, i spent three years on capitol hill. really inculcated this idea that you have to think about the whole system and the implications of technology beyond the immediate horizon. but we also are susceptible to the way that what is sort of the convenient way to think about things. the whole corn, ethanol causing corn prices to increase is one of those little ideas that just

as convenient and has stuck in our heads. every food economists that has looked at this problem has concluded that, in fact, those corn prices went up because of demand in china and india and the rest of the world, especially for their increase in need for meat and not for ethanol. it is an idea. it is often, often repeated, but i think especially with so many press in the room it is important to understand that that was not the cause. we absolutely need to pay attention to it. there are a lot of problems with corn ethanol. increasing food prices is not one of them. >> i read one other footnote. we bought sugar-based ethanol coming in from brazil, which would have been been a cheaper alternative and a better alternative. we continue to block it today. so to your point we need to look at this comprehensively and understand if our true mission is to wean ourselves from oil then why not sugar ethanol from

brazil? why block that? >> the reason -- >> i'm getting the signal. gary's comment is going to be the last comment. >> the reason is pretty straightforward. the whole corn ethanol episode has very little to do with energy policy. it is all to do with agriculture. the wto closing in on farm subsidies. there needs to be another way to deal with this problem, and that is the way it was dealt with. no energy person i know thinks that it had anything to do with energy policy. >> there is politics around agriculture in the united states? [laughter] >> none. >> i'm sure their lobby did not have any influence on it either. >> let's thank our panel this morning. [applauding] we will make sure that everybody we have there e-mail addresses

and so forth. you'll get the vid naudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> this weekend, from the virginia vessel of the book, the best-selling immoral life of henrietta lacks. also, "superpower illusions." the idea of inventing a white race in history of white people. i did entire schedule at booktv.org and paul was on twitter. >> now discussion on how the u.s. senate has changed by three political scientists, former senator bob dole was first elected to congress 50 years ago and the participants talked about how the institution has evolved since then. this is about 90 minutes.

>> good afternoon. we are delighted we have such an outstanding crowd out for what is going to be a fascinating conference over the next two days. we also want to thank all our visiting scholars for taking the time not to visit campus here and be part of this. those of you who have attended dole institute programs before know we are a hybrid facility. we have a museum, a very impressive archive with all of bob dole's papers and artifacts, and we conduct a very aggressive programming schedule that usually is focused on practitioners, but also try to do scholarly types conferences from time to time. last fall, a professor at loomis, who is not only a

distinguished professor of political scientisce but a certifiable political junkie. he approached us with a very interesting idea. he said next year is going to be the 50th anniversary of bob dole's election to the united states congress. are you guys planning anything? >> i said as a matter of fact, we are. we are planning our presidential elector series, which is our signature series on that topic. he proposed the idea of doing a conference that focuses on the senate. it just fit perfectly, a perfect way to conclude the series. we were very excited about that and very excited about what's was put together. one of the things we have heard about consistently is that the united states senate needs more people like bob dole, like his

career exemplified by partisanship, civility, and willingness, while having strong philosophical beliefs, to reach across all and try to work with others with different points of view. we heard from bob dole's biographer. we heard from members of his staff. we have heard from the first historian of the united states senate, and we heard from his very prominent colleagues, former senator jack danforth. it's been a very enlightening process. now we get to hear from scholars, individuals who had the opportunity to stand back and take an objective and analytical look at exactly how the senate functions and exactly what can be done to make it function better. it gives me great pleasure to present you the gentleman who opposed this idea, the gentleman who organized it, who did all the work, and deserves all the credit, prof. burdette lewis.

>> thanks very much, bill. billy's story is exactly right, and he could not have been more welcoming when i came to him and the associate director with this idea. i basically said -- they basically said go-ahead and run with it, and we have. 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.@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ my job today is pretty easy. i am going to introduce these jump, they are going to talk or really long time, and i am going to make incredibly short comments about what they have to say, and then we will turn it over to the audience and if you have any questions you would like to ask. i will introduce each of our panelists. the goal of the next two days is to talk about the senate for the last 50 years and how it has changed over time. to begin, professor eric

schickler is going to tell us where we started and give us an idea of what the u.s. senate looked like at the mid-20s century. like at the mid-20th century. he is a professor of political science at the university of california-berkeley. he has published extensively and american politics specifically on congress and american political development and he is well-suited to discuss the transformation of the senate and what the senate look like it mid century. he is maybe most well-known for two books he has written on the institutional development of congress. one called disjointed pluralism, institutional innovations in the development of the u.s. u.s. 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 i would like to point to a couple ofhi