| 1At the Thicket, we know legislative junkies. So to help you get your daily fix of news and opinion about legislatures and state politics, here's a bipartisan list of some statehouse blogs. Suggestions? |
No big screen TVs, but you don’t have to stand in line overnight for some great Black Friday deals at the NCSL Bookstore. From Friday through Sunday, take 50 percent off all items in the NCSL Bookstore (excludes Mason’s Manual and StateConnect).
Order as usual and use the promo code THANKS at checkout in order to receive the discount.
Happy shopping!
by Pam Greenberg
The Atlantic magazine’s new photography blog, In Focus, last week featured “America:
50 States in 50 Photos.” The photos from mid 2012 "… are simply interesting,
noteworthy, beautiful, or otherwise caught my eye.” says the collection’s
editor, Alan Taylor.
Beach visitors watch the sunset in Dauphin Island, Alabama, on August 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Dave Martin). The Atlantic.com
The photos may not represent the whole of any state, as
Taylor says, but luckily for us,
some photographers and writers in recent years have attempted to collect a bit
of the character of our states. The 50
States Project, which ran January through September in 2009, featured
images from 50 photographers from across the U.S. The photographers were
asked to produce images that represented their own style and the states’
“people, habitat, landscape, industry, and entertainment.”
Another 50-state collection, the book “State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America,” features essays of 50 writers from 50 states. Editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey explain the idea behind the book:
This book started with a hunch and a conviction. The conviction was the easy part: that despite drive-time radio and the nightly news and the Sunday paper, despite all the books and blog posts, the documentaries and songs, America and the lives lived here remain strangely and surprisingly underdescribed.”
They go on to explain that the fifty states “…bound together today as tightly as any confederation on earth—somehow stubbornly resist blending into a single undifferentiated whole.”
Each state’s essay seems to affirm that theme, including the the Texas piece, with reflections about the state’s politics, capitol building, and reputation as “a state more independent than the rest.” The South Carolina essay begins with the famous quote of state legislator James Louis Petigru, who opposed secession in 1860, saying: “South Carolina is too small for a sovereign nation and too large for an insane asylum.”
Time for an armchair road trip?
by Karl Kurtz
...[T]he original state legislatures were the models for the Congress created by the Constitution. It is true that several of the most influenctial voices in the writing of the Constitution disparaged the existing state legislatures. Yet, in every elemental characteristic--number and name of houses and the relationship between them, the legislatures's ability to name its own leaders and adopt its own rules, and the power of the executive veto--the Congress under the Constitution closely resembled the original state legislatures. It bore no relationship at all to the Congress that existed under the Articles of Confederation, which was a unicameral chamber that fused legislative, executive and judicial powers, and granted each state, not each legislator, a vote....
This is a provocative paragraph from the introduction to University of Missouri Prof. Peverill Squire's new book, The Evolution of American Legislatures: Colonies, Territories, and States, 1619-2009. Squire goes on from this teaser to summarize two evolutionary lines of legislatures in the United States--one that was highly successful and adaptive and the other that was not--in this schematic drawing.
Evolutionary Line 1 encapsulates Squire's compelling case that the 13 colonial legislatures, themselves highly original institutions, shaped and influenced the Constitutional Congress and that these two models together evolved into the territorial legislatures and their successors, the state legislatures. Each of the boxes in this chart receives detailed analysis in Squire's book.
Historians, political scientists and serious legislative junkies will love this book. Drawing on mountains of obscure primary and secondary sources and a comprehensive review of secondary sources (the bibliography is 70 pages in length), it covers not only our modern 51 American legislatures but an approximately equal number of colonial, confederal, territorial, and even the most arcane provisional legislatures. There is no other comparable scholarly work that looks at institutional change in American legislatures on such a grand scale. It is impressive in both its broad brush strokes and its convincing detail.
This is primarily a scholarly work, but Chapter 7, "The Professionalizing of Legislatures Since 1900," should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the institutional characteristics of our state legislatures today.
by Karl Kurtz
I love the subtitle of the book, Fifty State Capitols: The Architecture of Representative Government, published last year by a former Oregon legislative staffer, Jim Stembridge. In an interview in USA Today about the book, Stembridge says:
...[S]tatehouses are bona-fide tourist attractions — working museums of regional art and history. "They don't have water slides or video games, but they are great...."
In the interview, Stembridge includes the capitols of Utah, Maryland, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Virginia and Oregon among his favorites, with capsule descriptions as to why he likes each of them.
Those are certainly some great state capitols. But, as an NCSL staff person who has been to all 51 U.S. capitols, I long ago learned that the best answer to "Which is your favorite capitol?" is the one you are standing in when asked the question. Everyone loves their own capitol and thinks it's the best.
Stembridge's book joins a fairly long list of celebrations of the history and architecture of America's state capitols. Here are the ones we have copies of in our office (in order of publication date):
Henry-Russell Hitchcock and William Seale, Temples of Democracy: The State Capitols of the U.S.A, 1976
Eric Oxendorf and William Seale, Domes of America, 1994 (see also "More on Statehouse Domes")
Charles T. Goodsell, The American Statehouse: Interpreting Democracy's Temples, 2000
Francis Pio Ruggiero, State Capitols: Temples of Sovereignty, 2002
Susan W. Thrane and Tom Patterson, State Houses: America's 50 State Capitol Buildings, 2005.
A rose from The Thicket to Bruce Feustel
by Karl Kurtz
In an article in the July issue of State Legislatures magazine, "What Legislatures Need Now," Brian Weberg and I address the institutional challenges facing state legislatures today. In the article we compare the contemporary problems of legislatures to the prescriptions for change offered 40 years ago by an influential book, "The Sometime Governments," published by the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures. The book is long out of print and has no online presence. Here's what we say about it in the article:
The Citizens Conference on State Legislatures was a private nonprofit organization formed in 1964 to improve state legislatures. With a major grant from the Ford Foundation, it launched a 50-state study of legislatures in 1969 and published “The Sometime Governments: An Evaluation of the 50 American Legislatures” in 1971.
Based on criteria for “functional, accountable, informed, independent and representative” legislatures, the book evaluated state legislatures and ranked them from one to 50. The rankings caused a considerable stir among state lawmakers, and were an effective call to action: No state wanted to remain ranked in the bottom half of the list or to be below its neighbors or rivals.
The book contained both general recommendations for all states and specific recommendations for each legislature. The recommendations focused on such things as the length of the session, number of members, committee organization, facilities and staffing. They were highly prescriptive and specific.
Unfortunately, there wasn't room in the magazine article for excerpts from the book's 73 general recommendations to the states. Here are nine samples, using the numbering from the book:
1. Reduce the overall size of the legislature…. Although size reduction in a legislative body is extremely difficult to achieve, it has been done in some states … and needs to be accomplished in others …. There should be 100 or fewer members in the lower House. The combined size of both houses should be between 100 and 150.
by Karl Kurtz
Former NCSL staffer Cindy Simon Rosenthal has recently published a book on Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Ronald Peters, Jr., her colleague at the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma. I haven't had a chance to read Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics yet, so I'll rely on a review by the University of California's Marc Sandalow from the San Francisco Chronicle:
...University of Oklahoma political scientists Ronald M. Peters Jr. and Cindy Simon Rosenthal take a scholarly look at Pelosi's leadership skills in "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics," the latest biography of the first female speaker.
Peters has been studying speakers for 30 years. Rosenthal has written extensively on women's political leadership and is now the mayor of Norman, Okla....
Peters and Rosenthal view Pelosi in the context of a "New American Politics" that places a premium, they argue, on partisanship, money, organization, technology and diversity. These are elements that define success for a 21st century politician, and the lens through which they assess San Francisco's congresswoman. Their conclusion: Pelosi "is the prototype for the era."
The authors' expertise offers credibility to the notion that Pelosi is among the most powerful speakers ever. She is far more involved in party operations: raising money, developing messages, recruiting candidates. And she has effectively used "control, compromise and sequencing" to move her agenda through the House.The book will appeal more to scholars and students of Congress than those with an interest in political personalities, which should be apparent from the 22 graphs and charts (Table 3.2: Successful Motions to Recommit.)
Whoa there, Marc: Legislative junkies in The Thicket want to see that table on motions to recommit.
Cindy worked for NCSL in the late 1970s and early 1980s, serving at one time as editor of State Legislatures magazine. She left NCSL to go to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma and went on to have a distinguished career on the faculty of the Carl Albert Center, not to mention her two terms as mayor of Norman.
by Karl Kurtz
I have recently completed writing a chapter on state legislatures for the 2010 edition--the 75th anniversary--of the Council of State Governments' Book of the States. This work occasioned a thorough study of the first 1935 edition of that venerable reference work. It's a slim volume (181 pp.) compared to the modern 600+ page tomes, but it contains some fascinating information and enabled me to write about "75 Years of Institutional Change in State Legislatures," forthcoming later this year.
That first volume was published jointly by the American Legislators Association, which was founded in 1925, and the Council of State Governments, formed in 1933. The driving force behind the two organizations was Colorado State Senator Henry W. Toll, who served as executive director of both. Eventually the activities of the American Legislators Association were merged into those of CSG, and the ALA ceased to exist.
The scope of my article did not allow me to capture some of the more interesting or humorous tidbits contained in the 1935 edition. Here are a few of those nuggets.
The initial volume of the Book of the States has a marvelous dedication:
To the tens of thousands of American citizens who, as state legislators, have given more honest and competent service to their government than their constituents will ever know.
One of four (!) forewords to the volume ("a symposium of forewords") contains this prescient comment:
This volume is nothing but a lick and a promise. It is the meager and unorganized beginning of a periodical publication which may eventually become a very useful reference work.
Continue reading "Learning from the 1935 Edition of the Book of the States" »
by Tim Hodson
There is a new addition to that small genre of mystery novels set in state capitols and involving legislatures. Fair, Balanced …and Dead is the first novel by Steve Swatt, a long-time political reporter, now retired, for a Sacramento television station. Swatt is following the path of John Feinstein (Running Mates) and Tony Hillerman (The Fly on the Wall) both of whom were political reporters whose early novels featured political reporters investigating murders. In Swatt’s case, of course, the hero is a TV reporter confronting both deadly political games and a news industry increasingly disinterested and disdainful of political coverage.
A veteran U.S. Senator has died and the Republican Governor of California must select a replacement. Various candidates emerge but the strongest are Johnny Callahan, the young charismatic Speaker of the state Assembly, whose conservatism is tempered by pragmatism and an acute awareness of being a Republican in a Democratic majority state, and Harold Barnes, an older legislator who is the champion of the right.
Allegations of a sex scandal involving the Speaker surface and TV reporter Jack Summerland is forced by a ratings-driven station to report the story. The story proves to be untrue, embarrassing Summerland but allowing Callahan to appear the aggrieved victim. More damaging stories follow leading Summerland to investigate the allegations, their source and a body found floating in the American River. Dirty tricks by Barnes? Machiavellian tactics by the Speaker’s staff? Ancient grudges? The work of a group of Southern California millionaires anxious to launch Callahan on a path to the White House?
I'm always looking for support of my theory that state legislatures, and indeed all levels of government, need to do a better job of promoting the value of their institutions. To accomplish this, I suggest such crazy concepts as engaging the media, putting public information staff at the policy table, increasing communication staff and even considering public awareness campaigns and advertising.
That's why I was attracted to the title of a book, Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy, written by two colleagues at the Harvard Business School. John A. Quelch and Katherine E. Jocz (whose last two names resemble the tiles I usually pull in Scrabble, without the vowels) successfully make the argument that a "citizen can learn from the consumer and government can learn from marketers."
They suggest that "just as our economy and society have evolved, so should our democracy." The two present data and theories to support their arguments. Their style is more academic than the people who I believe need to embrace their recommendations -- public officials, agency heads and public information staff -- care to plod through.
Still, they make critical points on why marketing is important to democracy. Whereas government agencies and legislatures could once command the attention of the media, the landscape has changed dramatically. In the media, there fewer news organizations and reporters covering government. And there is more competition for time and space. There are very few corporations or advocacy groups that don't employ public relations strategies to get their messages across. And then there's that age-old problem of everyone railing against the institutions.
"If political players -- including the two major U.S. parties and individual politicians -- were marketers, they would collectively worry about building the public's faith in their institution. They would want to convey value in what government delivers to citizens...But politicians, for whatever reason, have done very little to market government. They are as likely to campaign against the idea of government as to campaign for it."
Another benefit of marketing, the authors say, is that it helps advance good public policy.
"Good marketing can assist public policy objectives that involve changing citizens' attitudes and behaviors....However, politicians recoil at the word marketing (despite marketing themselves) and habitually underfund marketing programs that come up for budgetary approval. Often the solution to society's needs is a matter not only of inventing programs or products but also of delivering them and educating people on their use."
Public officials are very reluctant to engage in public relations strategies because of the associated costs and perceived perception that taxpayers will find such expenditures unworthy. However, I tend to agree with Val Marmillion, of Marmillion + Company, who has told NCSL audiences, "If you aren't controlling the message, then someone else is controlling it for you."
Quelch and Jocz rightly argue that marketing just for marketing's sake is not the right thing to do. "Marketing at its best is not only image-polishing: it is also a matter of improving substance." And politicians often don't help the cause, they say. "...Corruption scandals involving politicians and government officials taint the entire institution. Ultimately, if citizens lose faith in the possibility of good government, they are not likely to demand good government and not likely to get it."
