Congress Wasn't Always This Awful: A former Senate staffer reminds us of a time when lawmakers actually got stuff done.

• Author: Drutman, Lee
• Position: ON POLITICAL BOOKS - When the Senate Worked for Us: The Invisible Role of Staffers in Countering Corporate Lobbies - Book review

When the Senate Worked for Us: The Invisible Role of Staffers in Countering Corporate Lobbies

by Michael Pertschuk

Vanderbilt University Press, 224 pp.

There was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when the U.S. Congress held hearings, drafted legislation in committees, and passed public-spirited bills into law with bipartisan support. Those of us who see this as the model for how Congress should operate often harken back to the mid-1960s through the late 1970s as a kind of golden age.

Michael Pertschuk was there for all of it. He arrived in Washington in 1962 as a junior staffer and worked his way up to staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee before leaving in 1977 to chair the Federal Trade Commission. His new book, When the Senate Worked for Us, is a memoir of his time as a staffer, and its thesis is straightforward: Congressional staff are really important. It was staffers like Pertschuk and his colleagues who did the hard work of shepherding consumer protection bills into laws. Lawmakers themselves--well, at least Pertschuk's boss, Washington Senator Warren "Maggie" Magnuson--achieved their legislative legacies largely because their staff made it possible.

Pertschuk, now in his eighties, wants to inspire a younger generation. "I have been saddened," he writes, "by how few look to government as the answer for themselves or for the country.... My fondest hope is that this book will awaken the interest of young people to the potential rewards of working in the federal government."

Pertschuk's stories do make being a congressional staffer seem exciting and rewarding. But they also reveal a political environment that was very different from today's, one in which hard-charging do-gooder staffers had far fewer obstacles in their way, and in which a jovial but somewhat checked-out senator was comfortable delegating considerable policy development to a remarkably independent staff with little concern for fund-raising or the party brand.

So many of the details seem implausible in today's Washington. But the comparisons are useful, because they remind us how much work it will take to build a Congress that can work for us again.

The book's key story begins in 1962, when Magnuson, then fifty-seven, narrowly won reelection to his fourth term, receiving only 51 percent of the vote against a weak challenger. This put a scare into the senator--who had won his previous reelection with 62 percent of the vote--and his staff.

Jerry Grinstein, the hero of Pertschuk's story, had been working as staff counsel for Magnuson on the Merchant Marine subcommittee, but in early 1963 got a promotion to staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee. His assignment was to find a way to use Magnuson's committee chairmanship to propel him to a strong reelection in 1968.

Grinstein's plan was to make Magnuson into a consumer champion. In the past, the senator had run as a bring-home-the-bacon kind of candidate, touting the federal dollars he had directed to Washington State's dams and ports. But this was the early 1960s, the age of John F. Kennedy, and voters seemed to want something newer...