A bit on may 19th a professor of law and taxation at the university of virginia law school, and a former chief of staff of the joint committee on ten sanction will speak about his research and that committees records and history of the joint committee. And on may 26, we host another professor of Political Science science he will discuss her research on a book manuscript about the politics of National Identification documents in the United States, in the 20th century. An Important Mission of the center is promoting Scholar Research in the records of the senate, the house of representatives, and advancing the stony of the history of congress. This researcher top series helps us gauge fully that mission is being met, and we do so by regularly hosting scholars who have conducted research in the house of the senate record, or who have written significant books in the history of congress. And todays a much anticipated talk, we hear about one of those very significant looks on the history of congress. Our guest charles stewart, had marvelous research top last november, on a book that he coauthored with Wendy Schuller electing the senate in direct democracy because before the 17th amendment. At the time, the battle over who would succeed the speaker was a finally dying down in the agreed to return it here to discuss the history of electing the speaker of the house. He has given todays top enticing title, speaker battles, then and now. The top informed by a book called fighting for the senate, the house in the rise of Party Government. Which i highly, highly recommend. Charles, longtime friend to the center, is a distinguished professor of Political Science at mit. Where he has taught since 1985. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of arts and sciences. In addition to the two books have already mentioned, charles is also the author of a wonderful textbook analyzing congress. And it did with theresa nelson, the indispensable to volume communities and the United States congress. Thank you very much for being here today with us, charles. And letting us host to. We should have a few minutes for campaigning after the presentation but before you ask a question please raise your hand, so we can passed a microphone and you can be heard. Thank, you charles. So thank you. Its great to be here. Again, as richard was saying, a few months ago when i was gonna be giving a talk about, actually a more recent book, which im not sure about Senate Elections before the 19th amendment. Right as the john boehner was eventually swept off the stage, and i suggested to richard well maybe i should talk about speaker elections. And he said no, wanted to talk about the senate and advertize . But, you can come back next year. Thats one im doing here. And, when i was here last time, i also just had to say that repeating this time its a real thrilled to be speaking here. Richard didnt mention like my first book, which was about budget reform in history, the history of budget reform, basically was written in this building when i was a graduate student first as a dissertation, and then later on. So this was in the 1980s, but when you got off. Last time we get off the archives eventually stopped, you would go just fast as you could across the street. Because it was a very different neighborhood 30, 40 years ago, than it is today. You couldnt go across the street and sit in front of a bakeries and eat croissants and all of those sort of things. I think it was to canadians who upped the quality of the neighborhood on the street. So in any case, its really great to be here. Also, really interesting, in these talks to be reminded that although, in my life as a congressional historian, i do my work because i just love the stories, and i find really interesting. And they have helped to build a sub field of congressional history with a few of the Political Science, which you will discover is quite different than when it would look like if it were in the field of history. We study these things because we love them, there is Great Stories they have not been told. And history this days is about political institutions, we can complain about the history. Some of us on the field is, stay if we like. But the main thing is that ive discovered this book actually become relevant. So i was talking about the passages of the 17th amendment, how elections happened before the 17th amendment. When i got into that project, i didnt realize that they would be for movement, actually to repeal him in tenth amendment, and go back to state legislation. In fact, ted cruz favors renewing the 17th amendment. So its become a current topic. But likewise, i first started thinking about first running about the speakerships, with various interests. And some other that i will talk about. In i have some currency itself. So when im gonna be talking about is speaker battles or how and why did the party stop airing their dirty laundry on the floor, and why doesnt he just . Today i must even him talking about the book. That richards and so nicely advertised for us. And then i realize i was putting together the top and although i would much prefer to kind of do the play by play announcement for more recent speakership battles. It turns out that since no one knows the old battles, time it might be useful just to give the Historical Context and come back at the end, and see a bit about why they agreed to which current battles over the speakership share features with the past. And the degree to which in fact they are really a bad comparisons to the past, out well. So my interest in oh and by the way, i should note for those of you who are really interested in this. Jeff jenkins and i have to monkey cage blog posts in the last year. Where we do try to bring together to fight over maine or to retain his seat. And these older stories i will be telling you about, if you just google monkey cage stewart speaker can find this on the washington post. So the speaker should battles, as well as im interested in the senate battles. And i became interested when i started reading a little bit into the history of congress. So there wasnt a lot about the history of congress when i was back in, school but i discovered that there had been battles before the civil war for the speakership. This is the picture from our color of the book. This is a celebration in the election of nuts annual banks, the speaker in 1855. And i discovered it was quite common, not only to have uncertainty about who this speaker might be incumbent on congress. But there could be battles on the house floor that would go on for days, and weeks, and months. And this just seemed really cool. An exactly the sort of thing that you want to pick on, after you get tenure, not before. So i got tenure, and i got to do these fun things. And, i started to piece together, the history in project maduro was their first one. Turns out although it wasnt nearly a 60 or exciting as an election as a dangle banks. Nonetheless a very great speaker, had to endure a multi ballot contest to be elected. So it turns out that he used to be very very calm, not just a famous case of nathanael banks. Very calm in the antebellum period to have multiple ballots for election, into have real fights. And ill come back to that. And when i started, coincidence, the speaker of the house when i started this project in fast forward to the president. Although maybe this might be for some maybe this would be more pleasant. But when i started the project if you were to fast forward to the president , he would see quite a different story. He would say almost a come bulky theater set on performances upon the convening of every house of representatives every two years. Where somebody leading the Majority Party would nominate someone for speaker, and somebody from the Minority Party would not need a speaker. And there would be a vote and surprise, surprise all the democrats would vote for the democrat enquirer had the majority and chamber would win. And everyone would go off and have, drinks and celebrate and be happy. Well actually, there is a resolution that would ensure, no longer the printer, allow the officers of the house, and then very soon after that, very very simple. And that there would be caucuses ahead of time, to nominate the two parties. There will be, leaders but they will be very wellknown for these nominees would be. And, if there were disagreement, and there have been disagreements and fight for the leadership of the party. But theyve all been contained within the party, within the caucus. So the caucus a site, that was the world basically for everybody in this room, in our lifetimes, that is basically the story. Nancy pelosi, getting closer to actually our book being done, a decade later. Pelosi began to run into trouble. And welcome back to this, i hope all have time. In fact, i will have time, only time for it. That many of you will recall that after the show lacking the democrats took in 2010, and actually in the run up to that election, there was active talk among many democrats, especially involved democrats, that nancy pelosi has to go. And up there was a bit of a rebellion within the realm democratic party, that she survived in nonetheless, if the democrats had help the house in 2010, history couldve been very, very different. By the time we roll into finishing our book, john boehner had been elected speaker and strong clouds were on the horizon. And as they mentioned several times, here you go here is his second election as speaker. And we see that he had a bunch of votes, and nancy pelosi had a bunch of votes. And then a bunch of other people get a bunch of those. And all these stories are next to republicans. So this oldworld has been gone to fray. This is even before last year, when it keyport group within the tea Party Started circulating a petition to declare the chair of the house vacant. And basically to depose boehner. This of course didnt happen, paul ryan got to be speaker. But nonetheless, that wouldve been routine quite different. If lying, and you all would recall, the speculation about ryan. And although a lot of work happen behind the scenes, there was a big chance that if brian hadnt taken the position, it couldve been chaos. We havent seen that in the long run. So its a new world, and when i want to come back to at the end of this top is the really old world, cant help to inform the new world. So, very quickly, let me first just give you an overview of what happens in this book. Which by the way its probably the last 450 page book ever to be but lift in Political Science. [laughs] we start in the earliest, years with the speakership being decided in contest in a quasipartisan. By which i mean, Political Parties grew up in the early period of the republic, but in the early days, the earliest few decades ill give some specifics in just a bit. There werent caucuses, in the way that we understand them now. There oftentimes uncertainty, even with one of the parties had a majority. Whoever the speaker would be. And once the speaker was decided, it was not necessarily determine who would be on the committees, who would be a position to cheddar. Eventually, and early in the antebellum period, speakership contest became structured around partisanship. And around ideology. And this is kind of in the late antebellum period, we are really fun fights happen. It is circumstances, that are still informal caucuses. They are not the type of caucuses we have right now. It wasnt always clear, whats the implications of the speaker being chosen were. And it certainly was not an expectation of the caucus nominee would be supported by everybody in the party. Nonetheless it became partisan and the the really important thing this is the world many of us of live through, all of us above through this. Because after the civil war, very interesting timing during a civil war after the civil war. The organization of the house became very very regular. It became regular in such a way thats, jeff and i referred to this as a cartel. By which not only did the Majority Party control, not only all of the offices but that expectations fell from that. The Majority Party would actually control legislation in the house. That depended on there being certainty that the majority caucus would come to the defense of the nominee as speaker. And once that happened, the world was really different. That is the world that may or may not be and this is a world that was built up, in the period from the civil war up until the speakership of one of the most famous speakers. For those of you who are professional congress geeks, speaker read. Basically in that three decade period. Grows up, becomes really mature in the early twenties. And then one last thing, we discover in the process that the speaker was the tip of the iceberg. Just in terms of the story. One of the things we did not expect, we thought we were telling a bunch of knock down drag out rock him saw come robots fights about the speakership. When we discovered about the antebellum period, there are offices and oftentimes those offices were as important if not more important to members of the house and the speakership. In many ways, maybe more important for the development of parties and the speakership at those times. Those include, the printer. Those include the clerk, the sergeant and arms and once there was a fight on who the chapel was gonna be. From the chapel deposed in a partisan. Theres a lot of interesting stuff, especially antebellum. This is where we talk about the development of Party Government, this conglomeration of offices, in the antebellum period, are in the eye of martin van buren. Who is americas great party thinker. He has a theory about how you can get all these things together, and he can control national politics. So its not just the speaker, its everything. This is a vision test, i used to be able to read this. There is a table of contents in the book, there is a bunch of upended sees, so for use of you who by the book, not only do we have blow by blow chapters, really focusing on the precivil war and then we have postof the war. One chapter for post civil war period, that tells you something about these fights. We have a bunch of upend in seas, so if you are interested in all the balloting, or all these offices that i just we have the numbers. We have sources, likewise. We have gone through, we have actually collected sources and numbers about the caucus battles. So where the speakers came from, etc. Its all in there. Relying on a bunch of data sources, instead of historical ones. The various recordings, the journals, the debates as well as the party and other newspapers. Primarily a documentary study. Unfortunately, not too much in the archives. So, let me just quickly, and this is the rest of the top. I will probably skip over the Political Science part, it was not important. Ill do a slightly more detailed overview of the speaker elections probably jump over talking about voting and get to nine critical elections, which i think help inform how we think about the problem that john had. And that ryan has had. So why study this . One of the things i just want to know is, there is a number of questions intellectually about studying speakership. Speakership fights. Some of them we can just call them purely historical. A lot of really interesting as a threat of questions. There are larger issues as well that i have already talked, about for instance, there are still questions remaining about the evolution of Party Parties are not in the constitution, as you know. They have to be built, and then that together, i have by the way one of my little movements being a fan of the presidency, is that there is something in american politics known as the president ial synthesis of american politics. I want to build the congressional synthesis of american politics. I think there is meat here for the building of that congressional synthesis. And finally, this is kind of like the Political Science in question. But its a really hard question. Embedded in how we is the type of election that we are about to see in cleveland. And that Election Form is, majority requirement. No entry barriers, how do those get resolved . A convention in cleveland, how does that resolve . Speakership is the same thing. To get elected speaker, you need a majority anyone can be nominated. You can vote for anybody. There is a deadlock how do you resolve . Its a really hard question. As well as practically. Couple of possible unifying stories, i will skip over that. You do want to see Political Science. You probably want to hear more about let me give you now a little more of a chronology of the period. We break down the period into one two three four five periods. The first period up to 1811 is the preinstitutional period. It is the period of johnny limburg, and as with speaker vinyl. There is usually one of two ballots, always have some speakers for a while. This is a number of ballots, we actually do not know. It is not even in the journal how much were in the ballots. Newspapers have accounts, so we have the number of ballots, who the speakers were. Informal nomination, sometimes the Majority Party gets a speakership, sometimes not. I would not say its lacks a days ago, but its not as high powered and as focused as it becomes later on. Especially after the 12th congress of henry clay. Henry clay is one of the great monumental figures, not just in American History, but in the institutional death that lippman of the house of representatives. Clay comes, and become speaker, and makes a number of institutional changes to turn the house into kind of a protocol incipient version of which we see now. By which we mean, committees, standing committees, strong speaker controlling the floor those sorts of things. During this period, clay allows people to see the values john presiding officer, and speaker should becomes more valuable. Individual politicians met for the party. However, without very strong clay is able to get elected speaker because of the force of personality, maybe i dont know. Theres a lot of reasons, actually i still am kind of puzzled. Clay always gets elected speaker so easily, he comes and goes. Yes ga