But I would eagerly read a post describing how this change came about and what downstream factors it impacted.
I cannot recommend more strongly the first three chapters of Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate on this subject. It gives a full political history of the senate, and essentially its fall from grace, starting as the most powerful single component of the US government, hailed the world over for being the most competent and thoughtful political organization on the planet, to its ineptitude becoming the butt of jokes on TV and barely being considered during the signing of routine treaties.
Caro is extremely comprehensive and will write small mini-books on the history of every significant institution or person LBJ ever touched. That means that The Master of the Senate begins in like 1810 and gives a complete history of the Senate up until LBJ is elected into the body.
I cannot recommend more strongly the first three chapters of Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate on this subject. It gives a full political history of the senate, and essentially its fall from grace, starting as the most powerful single component of the US government, hailed the world over for being the most competent and thoughtful political organization on the planet, to its ineptitude becoming the butt of jokes on TV and barely being considered during the signing of routine treaties.
The Master of the Senate covers the 50s and early 60s? I thought the seniority system in congress was younger than that.
Caro is extremely comprehensive and will write small mini-books on the history of every significant institution or person LBJ ever touched. That means that The Master of the Senate begins in like 1810 and gives a complete history of the Senate up until LBJ is elected into the body.
I’m reading Caro’s Path to Power now, and he says seniority system was well established in the house by Johnson’s arrival in the depression.