Running in Place

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Miller, a former aide to thenSenate Majority Leader Howard Baker (and now a CBS News producer), here offers a highly revealing diary of a week in the life of the U.S. Senate. Based on a journal kept during his two years at the Senate, the book focuses on three major issues before that body in late April 1983Central America, the federal budget and immigration reformto show how lawmakers and staffers actually function in the ``bloated, overburdened, and increasingly polarized'' Senate that has emerged in the past decade. Against instructive accounts of the daily rounds of ``emblematic'' senators (Baker, a Republican from Tennessee; Alan K. Simpson, Republican from Wyoming; and Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd) and of aides from other Senate staffs, Miller argues that the Senate is now a ``conglomerate'' in which younger, bolder members place personal ambitions above party discipline, hindering government and threatening a ``legislative crisis.'' (April)

Library Journal

Miller portrays the Senate as an institu tion in the ``throes of traumatic change.'' Upon his arrival in Washing ton to become special assistant and chief speechwriter to Senate majority leader Howard Baker, Miller believed the Senate to be ``an exclusive club . . . of respected, gray-haired elders . . . who managed the Senate with a common ethos.'' His experience proved otherwise. The activities of three senators and three staff members during a typical week illustrate a legis lative body that is tremendously over burdened and legislators who are in creasingly self-serving and publicity seeking. A well-written, interesting ac count for both public and academic li braries. Kathleen Hoeth, NYPL