by Karl Kurtz
We're back! Last week's highly successful NCSL annual meeting in Boston and the run-up to it have meant that The Thicket has languished for a while.
Here are some notes that I stored up from the meeting but didn't have time to post last week.
- The meeting was a huge success, setting a record with over 9,000 participants. You can find summaries and videos of some of the major sessions on our annual meeting web page.
- One of the most popular events was the general session at which the historian David McCullough spoke. His theme was "For the last 25 years we have been raising a generation of young people who are historically illiterate," and he went on to emphasize the importance of history education in preparing young people for citizenship. Connecticut blogger Aldon Hynes has a nice summary of McCullough's comments in "At home, thinking."
- The lively panel discussion between former presidential advisers David Gergen and Andrew Card, moderated by NPR's Mara Liasson, is summarized in Experts Discuss What Makes a President Great. Minnesota Senate staffer Peter Wattson, though, wonders (in an email message to me) if Card's inclusion of George Washington on a list of unpopular presidents who were later vindicated by history is proof of David McCullough's assertion about the public's ignorance of history. Peter points out that Washington twice ran for president unopposed.
- A search on "ncsl" in Technorati reveals a large number of bloggers covered our annual meeting. My colleague Bill Wyatt will post a more thorough summary of media coverage later in the week. But in a quick perusal I spotted postings from Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, as well as various industry or organizational blogs.
Arkansas House majority leader Steve Harrelson posted videos of the business meeting debate on rail regulation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech, Secretary Michael Chertoff's remarks and the excellence in legislative leadership award given to North Carolina Speaker Joe Hackney on his blog, Under the Dome (see multiple entries for Wednesday, Aug. 8). The photo at right of Rep. Harrelson wielding a "YouTube minicam" was posted by Sunfell in Live Blogging NCSL.
- One of the sessions in Boston was an expansion of a program on new ways to communicate with constituents that we had done at our Spring Forum in April. Aldon Hynes has a good summary of this popular session in his blog, Orient Lodge.
- I enjoyed moderating a session on "State Legislature: A Conversation about the Making of a Documentary" with renowned film maker Frederick Wiseman on his documentary about the Idaho Legislature that we have written about several times in The Thicket and reviewed in State Legislatures Online. Wiseman was engaging and interesting to talk to, and Idaho Sen. Denton Darrington, added valuable context as one of the participants in the film. To the main criticism that Alan Rosenthal offers in his review of the film that it doesn't capture much of the strategizing, bargaining and negotiation that occurs "between deliberation and decision," Wiseman said, "I didn't know about those meetings. I would have tried to film them if I had known about them."
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