Today is a historic occasion. The proceedings of the United States senate are being broadcast to the nation on television for the first time, not that we have operated in secret until now. Millions of americans have set in the galleries and observed Senate Debates during their visits to washington. But today, they can witness the proceedings in their own homes. We might say that the nation is tuning in late. Woodrow wilson said that the informing function of congress should be preferred to its legislative function. Today, as the u. S. Senate comes out of the communications dark ages, we create another historic moment in the relationship between congress and Technological Advancement in communications through radio and television. That was june 2, 1986, 30 years ago this month, and the occasion was the first day of permanent television of the United States senate. We are going to use the opportunity of the 30th anniversary to look back at the senate and how it is changed in the era of television. We have two guests that have been with the senate for 40 years and their careers there, though now retired, they span the age of the television before senate and after, so they are ideally suited to help us understand how the institution adapted to the coming of Television Cameras. Let me introduce them to you. Alan frumin is a Senate Parliamentarian emeritus, and as i mentioned, he spent 40 years in the Parliamentarian Office rising to the chief parliamentarian position. Thank you for being with us. Mr. Frumin i am delighted to be here. Don ritchie has set down at our table many times. Historian emeritus, again, 40 years in the United States senate and served as the chief historian from 2009 to 2015, and has written a number of books. Nice to see you and thank you for being with us. Mr. Ritchie thank you. The senate had been debating this idea of opening itself to cameras for a long time. The house had proceeded it in 1979. What took them such a long time to say yes . Mr. Frumin the constitution does not require the senate to do its business in public. For the first six years, the senate met entirely in secret. The house had a gallery on day one because they were all running for reelection. The house was really primed when television became available. But the senate, because the rules are very different and allows its members to speak as long as they want, they were more reluctant to consider that, so it took several years to persuade the senators to go along. As soon as the broadcast media evolved way back in 1924, some senators have the idea that putting it onto the airwaves would be a great idea. What happened to those early efforts . Mr. Ritchie they had a huge microphone they were going to put into the chamber. They had experiments to see how well it was going to work. The technology was not there at the time, but as a result, members were very conscious about communicating. Members like to communicate with the public, so whenever there is a new form of technology, often members want to try it, but then there are the traditionalist that say the institution would never be the same if you brought in new equipment. One name that will be familiar to cspan viewers is claude pepper. Began hee television , was a member. He thought it would be a good idea to televise the proceedings. What were his contributions to this whole debate . Mr. Frumin he was gone from the senate by the time i arrived. Since he was the only individual who traveled from the senate and to the house, he was willing to leave the more traditionally bound institution, an institution that was much more reluctant to adopt 20th Century Communication opportunities, that he was happy to move over to the house side, a body that was much more in tune to the popular will of the people, and so somebody more willing to open the doors decided that the door s would more likely be open on the house side. I am not surprised that he traveled in that direction if that was his attitude. A good number of the old line senators were against opening the doors to the cameras. Why is that . Mr. Frumin why is that . The senate is by constitutional design a reflective body. It is designed to slow things down. It is designed for contemplation. It is designed for compromise. I think a number of the senators who have been around for a long time felt that those characteristics were not necessarily photogenic and that the very nature of the body might be compromised when the cameras started to roll. In the 1970s, the senate experimented with onetime special event coverage. Two dates i have in mind from that Senate Historians office, the 1974 swearing in of Nelson Rockefeller, and then in 1978, a debate over the panama canal treaty. What was behind those shortterm experiments . Mr. Ritchie we are getting ready to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974, and they did not know he was going to resign, so the senate prepared for an impeachment trial. Looking over the wreckage of 1868 when they impeached andrew johnson, they realized that was the first time they handed out tickets to the galleries because everyone wanted to be there. Well you couldnt really impeach a president and not allow the American Public to watch it, so they agreed to bring Television Cameras and for the president s impeachment trial, but that summer he resigned. The cameras were still there in december of 1974 when Nelson Rockefeller was sworn, and so that was the first event in the Senate Chamber. They immediately took the cameras out, so there was no more televising. And then in the late 1970s, the panama canal treaty was being debated and it was a very big significant issue at the time, huge amount of interest in it. The senate allowed National Public radio to come in and to broadcast. I remember sitting in the staff gallery. Right at the front was someone doing the playbyplay and introducing who was speaking at the time. The senators would speak, but nobody knew who the voices were. She would do a little introduction and then setting next to her was the woman doing sketches of the senators so they could have sketches of the evening news that night. That was the type of primitive broadcasting that was coming out of the chambers in the 1970s. After the 1980 election, republicans gained control of the senate and howard baker became the majority leader. He was so interested in televising the senate that it became first revolution he introduced as majority leader. First, can you speak to the issue andst in this what happened to his initial efforts to bring in cameras in 1981 . Mr. Ritchie he liked new developments and innovations, but he was one of the first leaders elected in part because he looked good on television. The party was thinking in those terms, that they needed somebody to be the face of the party. And so senator baker would have been a perfect person to present his partys agenda at the time. Reagan had just become president. But the old line senators, the democrats had been running the senate for the last 26 years, and a senator from louisiana said it was a terrible idea, that if they were to give senators Television Time they , would not get anything done here. In the senate, people get up and who knows, they will be speaking tomorrow on this, so you had the resistance. Senator byrd was initially one of those that was a traditionalist, institutionalist, and he just did not know what the impact is going to be. I remember at that time, they sent some staff around the world to talk to parliaments that had televising, and the secretary of the senate went to the israeli convention, which was being televised to see how it went and one of the members took him aside and said, whatever you do, do not let the cameras into your chamber. Because once they come in, you will never get them out. From a procedural standpoint, what really was the process for the decisionmaking on cameras . Was it always having to be introduced by the majority leader . Did it need anything more than a simple majority of votes . Can you just talk about it in terms of the process of getting it done . Mr. Frumin let me go back to howard baker. You mentioned when he became majority leader in 1981 he led the charge in favor of television. He loved technology. He was a camera bug. He loved showing off his cameras. He was very much interested in computers as well. He was a handson technogeek. He deftly wanted television in the senate. Of course, he had to fight with resistance on both sides of the aisle. And it was left to his successor, senator dole, to navigate those waters as majority leader with senator byrd, the minority leader at the time. Byrd was, i think, more reluctant, more a creature of the old senate. Dole readily embraced his predecessor bakers interest in and respect for technology. They did go back and forth, and the parliamentarian at the time, bob dove, went back and forth, being in honest broker between the two leaders in trying to satisfy their wishes that the newly televised senate, were it to occur, would be more a somewhat more streamlined senate. There were a number of changes that were discussed. Ultimately most of them were left by the wayside, on the cutting room floor. The one major change that was made, a major procedural concession, was to take the post cloture 100 hours that had been added to the rules in 1979 to reduce that 100 hours to a more manageable number. And at the time the two leaders , asked what was the most number of hours used in a post cloture filibuster since the rule change occurred in 1979 . 100 hours were available. He came back to the office and said we had to do some research, what is the most amount of time . Hat has been use post cloture and we discovered that 30 hours had been used by Mark Hatfield filibustering an attempt to reinstitute the draft, and that was the longest amount of time that had been used in a post cloture filibuster. Dole went back to them and said, 30 hours . And they said, 30 hours it is. It has remained 30 hours since then. 1986 was when this first discussion and when the senate accelerated, and senator robert byrd of West Virginia is really key. You said he was in institutionalist. Can you tell us of any back stories about how he changed his mind . Mr. Ritchie a number of senators were becoming concerned that house members were more recognizable than senators were because people were watching on cspan, but they cannot see the senate. Senator byrd was not a Great Television watcher. Apparently, he did not have Satellite Television at home. One of the stories i heard was that he was traveling back to West Virginia to give a speech and he was staying in a hotel that had satellitetv and he watched the house of representatives on television and he was rather stunned because he thought they were just showing clips. He did not realize it was gaveltogavel, and he was very impressed with what he saw. He began to think about what the senate would be like and begin to adjust to that. I think that combination plus the younger members coming to him and saying, look, when al gore got elected in 1984, he was the very first representative on tv in the house and now he is in the senate and not on television, so you get this pressure from the younger members to the senior members saying it is time for us to modernize. Al gore in particular, who was the first to speak on the floor in 1979 in the house of representatives when it went on camera, very technology oriented. He was one of the first senators to speak in 1986 as well, so he was pushing senator byrd. We also have a bit of a story we have been telling over the years about senator byrd. That probably that same trip home, he was introduced in his home state of West Virginia as speaker of the house, who was tip oneill,to also with a big white mane of hair and was concerned the senate was being left in the dust. Can you verify the story . Mr. Ritchie i have heard that, too, but i do not know what the what invading factor was. So, he still needed votes. As you mentioned, there were a number of oldline senators. Did he basically say to them, stay out of the way as we move forward. How did he get to yes . Mr. Frumin he was good at changing minds, and once his mind was changed he could be very persuasive. Again, i think he realized and he convinced his caucus that this was inevitable and that in order for the senate to function, that this body conceived in the late 18th century needed to adapt to the 20th century, that it couldnt simply remain hidden from the public. You asked about the vote necessary. All resolutions in the senate require a simple majority for adoption. Those that amend the standing rules of the senate require a higher number of for cloture. Cloture is difficult to attain. On questions to amend the standing rules, it requires two thirds. Dole and byrd knew they needed this number. Senator byrd can be very persuasive, and bob dole on his side of the aisle was very also very persuasive. When the votes happened, they decided on a twostep process, one with the june 2 date. They envisioned that this a was trial period. What happened . Mr. Ritchie a month later, they would see if it really changed things and give them a chance to step back, but within the month everybody liked it so much, everybody was on camera. It hadnt changed the institution. The world had not collapsed around them. It would have been very hard at that point to pull the plug. There are only a handful of senators who are still in the body today who were there in 1986. When i looked at the list one of them that surprised me is senator Chuck Grassley. He voted against the initial trial period and the permanent. He is very camera friendly. Do you have any sense of what his concerns were back then . Mr. Frumin people were afraid if you gave senators unlimited Television Time, they would take it and that nothing would get done. There is a sense about grandstanding. The senate talks about workhorses and show horses. Senator grassley had been a workhorse. He spends time in the committees and gets things done. Although he does get up in front of the cameras when he does want to promote something. There are some people who spend more of their time in front of the cameras and microphones than they do in the committees, and there was real concern that this would change the nature of the senate over time. I think, pretty quickly on, they realized they were used to tv cameras. Tv were in the committee rooms, in their home states. Deal toot that big of a have it in the chamber. One senator was john glenn who went to the floor that day when the cameras first arrived doing a bit of a display about how he thought the senate would change. The used makeup, talked about cameras, talked about a resurgence of blue shirts and ties and in fact, did you see that in the chamber . Where people changing their attire and how they came to the senate floor on their arrival . Mr. Frumin yes. I think senators realize this d this was a time for them to look their best. This was not really a question of showing up for an interview somewhere. This was where they went to work on a daily basis and the cameras would be there. And the cameras would be on them if they wished that to be the case, and so it was important that they looked their best, so i believe it was not proliferation of blue shirts and red ties back then, and i think to a certain extent, that remains the case. Senator glenn may have made light of the incoming era of senate television, but he was not shy to use it. Does it ever close its doors . Mr. Ritchie they can have a n executive session if it is dealing with something of a classified nature. Nowadays, dont they move down to the Old Senate Chambers . Mr. Frumin first of all, let me correct some nomenclature. Executive sessions are sessions for the considerations of executive business. Those are treaties and nominations. The doors are open for legislative and executive business. The proper term is closed session, and the standing rules permit the doors to be closed for really any purpose. It takes one senator to make a motion to close the doors and another senator to second that motion, and with that, the doors are closed. They do that in frequently. Mr. Frumin it is infrequent. It is seldom done as a surprise. This is usually done in advance when the senators have notified the leadership why it is that they ask the doors to be closed. As don has pointed out, they go down to the hall of the old Senate Chamber, which is a more suitable venue for confidential business to be conducted. We mentioned that senator Chuck Grassley was one of the senators back in 1986 who voted against it and it is still in the senate. Another of those was Mitch Mcconnell. He voted against the initial trial period, but later voted yes to make them permanent. He talked about that with us in an interview at his office recently. Lets watch. Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell, on june 2, the senate will be marking the 30th anniversary of its permanently televised sessions. There have been a couple to experiments over the years with special events, but on june 2, 1986, it became daily gaveltogavel coverage. You were here then. Do you remember the discussions leading up to it and how contentious they were . Sen. Mcconnell i do. I remember thinking it would be a big mistake and voting against it, but i have to confess, i was the one who made the mistake. I think it has been extremely important to have the senate televised and have cspan do that, and i am sure i have made a number of mistakes in my political career, but voting against having cspan televised the senate was one of them. The institutionalists were worried the senate would change as a result of the cameras. That is what held it up for those many years. Howard baker, your predecessor, it was the first piece of legislation he put in as leader, and it did not go anywhere for years because of all these concerns. Has the senate actually changed . Were the worriers correct . The American People are in tired to see our debates. And frankly, our