GovTrack Reads discussion

Hi all,

It's August now and time to get some discussion started. Hopefully everyone's started 1st Congress, even if they haven't finished it.

To begin, why don't we all share what has struck each of us the most about the book (however far in we may be)?

I'll get the ball rolling...

I'm up to Chapter 10 myself. One thing that has struck me and on which I go back and forth every page is whether the book highlights more how much or how little things have changed since the 1st Congress.

Bordewich relies on standard documentary sources: newspaper articles, personal letters and diaries, public addresses and government records. The humans comprising Congress and the Executive branch, being largely still the same now as then, engage in political maneuvers, snide asides directly & in private, get into fights and turn petty grievances into the basis for larger principled stands (see the story of Sen. Gunn of Georgia & President Washington's nominee for federal naval officer in Savannah). All very much in line with current events.

However, every time I think "same as it ever was", I promptly decide that no, the mechanics of communication now make things quite different after all. Not only is modern writing and speech less formal and more direct than that of the 1780s, but the presumption that political figures operate in public and immediately in a way they did not & could not do so then makes all the difference.

It's not just that Presidents can now tweet out to millions immediately what might otherwise be a passing irritation rather than venting to diaries finally published post-presidency or posthumously; it's that this fast & informal communication happens at the same time as other very formal modes of political communication such as scripted press releases and/or news conferences. Or, as another example, journalists will often report one version of a story based on sources from a politician's office that bear little or no resemblance to what that politician says in prepared remarks on her/his chamber's floor in support or opposition to a bill.

Absent the infrastructure of the internet & broadcast/cable television, none of this would be possible. Does it materially alter how well we govern ourselves? Or how strong or weak a given branch is with respect to the other branches of government? I have no answer in mind - like I say, with every new page, I flip sides again.