A professor of law and taxation. Test test p. The book manuscript, the applicants of national the United States and the 20th century. An Important Mission of the center is promoting the senate and the house of representatives and advancing the history of congress. This Research Series helps us engage fully that the mission is being done. For those that have written significant books ons history of congress. Today we hear about a very significant book on the history of congress. Charles stewart gave a marvelous talk. Electing the senate and direct democracy before the 18th amendment. And the battle over who would succeed the speaker of was finally dieing down and charles graciously agreed to return to discussion the history of the speaker of the house. He has given todays talk, the enticing title speaker battles, then and now. It was coauthored with jeffrey jenkins. Bidding for the senate and the rise of government. Charles along time friend of the center is the distinguish ed professor at m. I. T. Hoe is also a fellow. There is also a wonderful dex book and the indecember pensive volume of committees and the United States congress. Thank you very much for being here today with us, charles, and letting us host you. We should have a few minutes from q and a after the presentation. Before you ask a question, please raise your hand so we can pass the microphone and you can be heard. Thank you, charles. So thank you, richard. It is great to be here. Again, as richard was saying a few months ago i was going to be giving a talk about Senate Elections right as john boehner was swept off of the stage and i suggested to richard that well, maybe we should talk about speaker elections. But you can come back next year, and when i was here last time i had to say that, and i will repeat it this time, that it is a thrill to be here. My first book was about budget reform and it was written in this building into this was in the early 1980s back when you got off as i mentioned last time, you just high tailed it as fast as you could across the street. It was a very different neighborhood 30 or 40 years ago. So in any case it is really great to be here if is also really interesting in these talks to be reminded that although in my life as a congressional historian i do my work because i love the stories and i find it really interesting. And i have helped to build a sub field of congressional history in the field of political we love these stories and they have not been told. We can complain about history, some of us, these days if we would like. But the neat thing is i discovered that the books have become relevant. We talked about the passions of the 17th maemt, and how elections happen, and when i got into that project i didnt realize there would be a so it is a, might be a current topic. So i started to think about writing about the leadership, and there was other interest that i was talking about and they have some currency itself, so what im going to be talking about is how and why do they and im going to talk about the book that was done for us. And while i would have preferred a play by play announcement, it turns out that that it might be useful to the degree to which they share features with the past and to the dreen to which they really, one could easily make bad comparisons to the past as well. So my interest in and by the way, i should just note that for those of you really interested in this, and we talk about boehner retaining his seat. And the older stories that i will be telling you about. So if you just koogle them you can find these on the Washington Post site. So my interest in speakership battles and interest in elections came as a student. But i discovered there had been battles before the civil war for the speakership. This is the cover of the book. This is the celebration in the election of nathan yen banks. And i discovered that it is quite common not only to have uncertainty about who the speaker might be, but there could be battles on the house floor, and it just seemed really cool. Exactly the sort of thing you want to take on after ktenure, not before. So i started to piece together the history, and it turned out that it was not as exciting of an election at Nathaniel Banks. So it turns out that it used to be very, very common not just the famous cases of nathanian banks, but very common to have multt pl ballots for elections and real hon toast goodness fights. And i will come back to that. Then when i started the speaker of the house, fast toward to the senate for some of you this is more pleasant. But when i started the project if you were to fastforward to the present you would see a different story. You would see a kabuki theater set of performances on the convening of every house of representatives every two years where someone leading the Majority Party will nominate someone for speaker and someone would nominate someone for speaker, and there would be a vote and surprise surprise, the ds would vote for the ds and the rs for the republican, and everyone would go off and have drinks and celebrate and be happy. Rather what would happy is a series of resolutions that are in short order. The officers of the house, and very soon after that the committees. Very, very simple. And there would be caucuses ahead of time to nominate the two parties, but it would be two leaders, but it could be well known who they would be. And if there were disagreements, and there have been disagreements and fights for leadership, but they have all been contained within the party, within the caucus. So once the caucus decides things move on. That was the world basically for everybody in this room, in our life times, that was basically the story. Nancy pelosi getting closer to our book being done, a decade later, she started to run into trouble and i will come back to this, i hope i will have time,ly have time, i will make time for it, but many of you recall that after the hit that the democrats dook in n 2010, and in the run up to that election, there was active talk among many democrats, especially democrats, that nancy pelosi has to go. There was a rebellion in the party that she survived bun null the less if the democrats had held the house in 2010 the story could have been very, very difficult. By the time we finished, john boehner had been speaker and storm crowds were on the horizon. Here you go, here is you know, his second election as speaker. And other people got a bunch of votes so the whole world this was even before last year when a Tea Party Group started to circulate a petition to declare the chair of the house vacant. So this was, it didnt happen, of course. Paul ryan got to be speaker. But that would have been quite different. A lot of work had been done behind the scenes. There was a big chance that if ryan had not taken the position it could have been chaos. We have not seen that in awhile. So it is a new world and what i want to come back to is the degree to which the really old world can help to inform the new world. Okay . So very quickly let me give you a overview of what happens in this book which, by the way, is the last 450 book ever to be published in Political Science. We start in the earliest years with the speakership being decided in contests that are quasi partisan. Political parties grew up in the early period of the republic. But in the earliest few decades,ly give some specifics in just a bit, there was not caucuses in the way that we understand them now. And so there is often times uncertainty even when one of the parties had a majority. But who would the speaker be . And once they were decided it was not determined who would be on the committees. Obviously and early in the period speakership contests became structured around partisanship and around idol y ideology. So this is late when the really fun fights happen. So in these circumstances there are still informal caucuses. It was not always clear what the expectations were. And none the less, it became partisan. The really important thing, what most of us lived through, this, because after the civil war there was interesting timing. Organization in the house became very, very regular. It was regular in a way that jeff and i refer to this as a cartel. By which not only did the Majority Party control the offices, but they expected to control the house. And that defended on there being certainty that they would go to the defense of the speaker. That was a world that was built up in the period from the civil war up until the speakership. And basically a three decade period. So it grows and matures. So we discover in the process that the speaker interprets the sorry we look at a knock down drag out fight about the speakership. What we is it covers is that there was other offices, and they were as important as the speakership and in some ways more important. They include the printer, the clerk, the sergeant at arms, and the chaplain. So there is a lot of interesting stuff. So we talk about the government, and the conglomeration of offices are the eye of martin van buren. So it is not just speaker. This is not a vision test. This is a table of contents, there is a bunch of appendices, so those that look at the book that are interesting in the era, we have blow by blow chapters. And we talk about these fights, and if youre interested in, you know, all of the balloting and the houses that i told you about, we have the numbers and the sources. We have gone through and collected sources and numbers. About where all of the speakers have come from. Relying an data sources. The various recordings, the journals, the debates, as well as the party and other nupss in this period. So it is primarily a documentary study. So let me just very quickly ly probably skip over the Political Science part, doing an over view, another slightly more detailed overview of the speaker and the elections, they are probably talking at clerks and reactions. They talk about the problem that john boehner had. And why study this is there is a number of questions about studying speakership fights. Some of them are just purely historical. Just empirical interesquestions are interesting. There are still questions remaining about the evolution of party government. Parties are not in the communication. And nitting that together i have, by the way, one of my little movements being part of the presidency. And i want to build. I think there is meat here. And finally this is the political sciency question. But it is a really hard question. Embedded in how we elect speakers is a type of election that were about to see in cleveland. And that Election Form is majority requirement. Okay . So entry barriers. How do those get resolved if no one has a majority. Speakership is the same thing. To get elected you need a majority of the chamber. Anyone can be nominated. You can vote for anybody, there is a dead llock, how do you resolve it. A couple possible unifying stories. Let me give you more of the pathology of the period. You can sbraek it down, the first period is the preinstitution period. There is usually one or two ballots. This is the number of ballots, we dont know, its not even in the journal how many ballots. So we know who the speakers were, instoformal nomination. I would not say it is lackadaisical, but after the 12th congress. So henry clay is one of the great monumental figures in the institutional develop m of the house of representatives into clay comes in and makes a number of institutional changes to turn the house into kind of a version that are standing committees, strong speaker controlling the floor, those sorts of things. During this period claye allows people to see the mavalue of a strong providing officer. However, clay is able to get elected speaker because of the personality, maybe, i dont know. There is a lot of reasons. He always gets elected peaker so easily. He comes and goes. He has gamblining debts. And when he leaves he leaves for instance in the middle of the 16th congress and taylor is elected and it takes 22 ballots to elect his replacement. Clay comes back and barber, the next congress, 12 ballots. Taylor, again, two ballots. So you know there is no guarantee that things will be resolved really quickly. Before 1839 ballots for speaker was secret ballot. In 1939 the house starts voting the way they do now. They do a vote check. Live voice, out loud. And that changes a lot. If youre party leader you can observe this. And this period is one that has the many, many deadlocks. Some of the most famous ones. So you can see when gcob was elected, 133 ballots. And on and on, okay . Twice the 31st congress and the 41st congress, probably the only time in American History, you can recall if you read your constitution that the house could not do that, right . They cant adjourn unless the senate says its okay. So they never but imagine th this, on what became the civil war. After the civil war, it didnt really change. You dont see many of these speakers, no more multiballot affairs. They start to nominate speakers at formal caucuses. It becomes a biden caucus. Then there is a question about whether or not the new arrangement would stick and it does. And were off to the races. After 1991, so, just to talk about the tran six for a second, speaker reed with an important moment in history of congress when speaker reed basically codifies by force of personality, theory of government, and they really koz if i the floor by the Majority Party leadership. So you know have this mindlbund. They work out their problems privately. They come to an agreement about who will lead. The van kicked get good compete assignments and that is basically the form and the system that we still have right now. So after 1891 it is pretty much one ballot when there was a progressive stallworth split. Nine to elect gillett. That is seen as being the most par tloallel to what boehner experienced. But other than 1923 caucuses have made nominations and they have gone through with the Majority Party winning, okay . What is this . This is not from oklahoma these days. These just a visual in the book. Let me explain it to you. You dont need to know the details to get the importance of the visual. This line right here reflects how many seats Majority Party has in the house of representatives from the First Congress up into the 112th congress. The solid line is the fraction of votes received by the top vote getter. The first round of voting for the speak er. That indicates that much times they could not get a ma yourty vote for a single person. You notice that things start to get calm around 1870. And fact that you dont the line not getting up totally to one is not because of defections, but usually because of absences. Things like that. This is a slightly different graph, but this is the boehner problem and the ryan problem that kind of put it in context. It is the biggest die vvergence. So this is a big deal. A really big deal, okay . Im going to skip over, and you can just believe many that they were really important and interesting. Or you can buy the book and find out about that. Thunder sr. Is a visualization to kind of show visually where the conflicts are. So each column is a congress from the first down to the 115th. And this row is oops shows us what happened . Oh. There we go. When speaker elections kind of blew up when clerk elections blew up, when print e elections blew up and you can see this comes up to the 1850s and then lots of blowing up. All up and down the line starting with the 37th congress. Only one colored, and thats, cell, and thats 1923. So things are really, really different. I will also skip over voeche, except if you want to read the slide you may while i talk. This is a great example of unintended consequences and reforms in congress in history. The intention of veev avoeche over come reneging on elections in the election of subsidiary officers. Clerk and printer, when this really became an issue. So van buren and other Party Leaders decided solution to reneging on promises was to open up voting in public. So we can observe. In the short term it worked wonders. We got really a high spike in Party Loyalty in these elections. A problem. So the newspaper editors also started this thing and citizens started noticing. Right at the moment that the nation is beginning to get divided along slavery and other issues. It and so back in the olden days, you might be, if you were from the south, you might be able to vote for someone from the north. And then claim to your constituents, hmm. Must have been somebody else that voted noor g ed for that g. It wasnt me. In a heightsed ideological environment, much, much harder to put together coalition in parties and becomes a hoa s a w other thing. Except for getting data. I like getting data. Over 115 elections for speaker in american politics. There are 9 that i think are particularly worth noting. Im not going to go through all the details here. But just note that just really, really quickly theres a couple of general patterns here. The first one that i would note is the election of 1839, which took 11 ballots over two days and Robert Hunter ended up being elected speaker. The story here was that going in to the election nobody quite knew which party had a majority, to begin with. But layered on top of this, there was an infamous disputed election in new jersey, which elected their members at large. And it would be the outcome of this, that disputed election that would determine whether the whigs or democrats had majority. It took two weeks just to decide what to do with that disputed election. The democrats eventually won that fight and then it took another two weeks to decide who was going to be speaker. Okay. Hunter, who gets elected, gets elect because democrats although they have majority are not very good at counting votes. So hunter was a whig. Although the democrats had a majority. So this is the outcome here, simple vote counting problem. For 1849 and 1855, these are the real donnybrooks. 61 ballots over three weeks, hal cobb eventually elected. 34th congress, 113 ballots over two months. And in which Nathaniel Banks was elected. The gist of these elections were that all of these these two were three cornered affairs, and if other congresses had been basically closely allied, or the numbers close, they also would have been three quarter affairs by which i mean there were whigs, or some opposition to democrats. You had the democrats. Then the free soil party. Antislavery, and then the democrats and whoever was opposed the democrats had northern and southern wings. So you would basically have this divisions between par