What do members of Congress really do, anyway?
What have they done traditionally? True, staffs are bigger now–but much of life on The Last Plantation is the same as 50 years ago. What values, if any, are shared by those on work in Capitol Hill?
The Brookings Institution first published “The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It” by Charles L. Clapp in 1963 (507 pages, Anchor). Congressional fellow, policy wonk and former Capitol Hill aide, Clapp was one of the first Washington “old hands” to study and write about the way a legislator actually thinks and works–as opposed to “how Congress works” generally–in the American Congress.
