No, the fact is that Washington is and always has been irretrievably bogged down in process. And process doesn’t generally make for electrifying prose–unless you’re a fan of the novels of C. P. Snow, which describe the intestinal workings of inner-sanctum power struggles conducted by micro-megalomaniacs.

photo credit: Sjors Provoost

The days of the Georgetown hostess are gone; the hostesses themselves are gone, too. Their reign began to close years ago, when senators started canceling dinners to appear on shows like Nightline. (There’s a prefiguration of this in Larry McMurtry’s neglected 1982 Washington novel Cadillac Jack, in which a character pontificates on world-shaking matters of which he knows little.) The Washington pundit is also a thing of the past: it’s been a good while since any insider columnist had the kind of access or influence that Ben Bradlee enjoyed with John F. Kennedy. And the British Embassy, while it still stages some of the best dinners, is not the brokerage of influence that it once was. Yet–if we except the intermittent efforts at describing catastrophe or conspiracy, themselves mostly falling short of observable reality–this is the sort of stereotype in which the model remains confined.

“In Search of the Washington Novel,” by Christopher Hitchens, City Journal, Autumn, 2010

For books about Washington, see “Political and Government Classics” from TheCapitol.Net.

You can also see our faculty’s favorite books and movies about Washington on Hobnob Blog’s Faculty Favorites.

Congress receives more than 86.9 million pieces of snail mail annually, and more than 200 million emails each year. How effective are these communications? Joshua Tauberer, the creator of research tool GovTrack says that in his personal experience:

[…] what Congressional staff say is that two things happen with letters and other communications. First, Representatives and Senators use the information essentially like a poll: They tally up responses and use the totals to guide their decision making. Second, on rare occasions they use some letters as case studies in speeches on the floor, to support their point with a little personal touch. A letter turning into a case study is especially rare, especially in terms of the volume of communications received, which means by and large the actual personal content of messages (beyond what can be tallied) is pretty much unread. Moreover, your personal communication is worthless in isolation. As part of a movement, when the tally will add up to something, it might have an impact. I’m sure there are some representatives that take tallies seriously, but I don’t know how many. No House staffer says they actually read the letters carefully: They are frank that they don’t have the resources to do it.

Below is a list of tips for contacting Congress

1. Each U.S. citizen has only three legislators in Congress: the two Senators who represent your state and whichever Representative is elected from your congressional district.
2. Constituency matters. Include your mailing address, especially your zip code, to demonstrate you are a constituent of the Member of Congress to whom you are writing. Don’t waste your time writing to a Senator or Representative who is not one of your three legislators.
3. Members of Congress have both limited time and limited staff. On average, each Representative has a staff of 15 and each Senator has 34 people on his or her team.
4. On that note, be brief in whichever form of communication you decide to pursue. Aim to make each letter only one page in length.
5. Address only one topic per letter or phone call. (Don’t write or call about every single bill, however.)
6. Be courteous.
7. Telephone calls are usually not answered personally by the member of Congress, but by a person on his or her staff. Ask to speak with the aide who handles the issue you are calling about.
8. Be specific and reference the specific bill you support or oppose rather than a general issue. Mention bills by their number.
9. Explicitly state something along the lines of, “I support/oppose (S.___/H.R.___),” and the reasons for your support or opposition.
10. Write about a particular bill when it is about to be discussed in committee or on the floor.
11. Whichever mode of communication you use to contact the office, ask for a written reply that includes your legislator’s position.
12. GovTrack also says that, “Writing in a form letter provided to you by an advocacy group will probably have very little effect. Especially if it is a fax. Faxes are quickly discarded. Members’ staffs notice when they receive hundreds of the same letter, and they don’t count these letters as important as personalized messages.”
13. Use the following formats to address your written correspondence and snail mail envelopes.

Letters to Senators:

Honorable [Full Name]
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator [Last Name]:

Letters to Representatives:

Honorable [Full Name]
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear [Mr. or Ms.] [Last Name]:

Some resources for contacting Congress are listed below:

• Our comprehensive Congressional Directory 2010 lists members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, complete with color photos and a fold-out map of Capitol Hill. It’s even wire-spiral bound for flat-fold reference and durability.
• Find out who your U.S. Representative is at http://www.house.gov/writerep/.
• View a complete list of Representatives at http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html.
• Find out who your U.S. Senator is at http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm.
• View a complete list of Senators at http://www.senate.gov/senators/index.cfm.
• View a searchable directory of congressional telephone numbers at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt.
• You can call the Capitol Switch Board at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Congress member by name and state.
• USA.gov, the official web portal for the U.S. federal government, has compiled contact information including phone numbers plus email and postal addresses for key elected officials on their Contact Government page. In addition to info on Congress members, the list also includes data for state governors and legislators, as well as the President and Vice President.

You can also contact your Congressperson through Twitter using 2gov. The site has a feature called “Tweet A Message to Your Representatives,” which will do just that: identify your district’s Representative, send a public Twitter message directed at him or her, then send a professional report to his or her office that compiles all of the tweets. You can choose to send the message anonymously or to authenticate it with your full name and street address to prove you are a registered voter. (Your address isn’t publicly shared.)

2gov is “a social lobbying platform for registered voters,” created by USA.gov co-founder David Binetti and run by Votizen, Inc. You can follow the site’s Twitter updates at @2gov, although there have been no new tweets since May.

Source: “Communicating with Elected Officials,” Congress.org
Source: “Tips for Contacting Congress,” American Foreign Service Association
Source: “Tips for Communicating with Congress,” GovTrack.us
Source: “FAQ: How to Contact Congress,” TheCapitol.Net
Source: “What’s the Deal With…Contacting my Representatives or Senators?,” TheCapitol.Net
Image by Drama Queen, used under its Creative Commons license.

Legendary political journalist Daniel Schorr passed away on July 23 at a local D.C. hospital after a brief illness. Schorr worked in the broadcast and print journalism industry for more than 70 years and was an author of non-fiction books, including his own 2001 memoir, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism.

Schorr described himself as a “living history book,” and rightly so. In his career, he covered the erection of the Berlin Wall, the Marshall Plan and other reconstruction across Europe after World War II, the creation of NATO, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, the launch of the USSR’s Sputnik satellite, the Cold War, and more. In 1955, he had persuaded Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev to sit for his first television interview, with Face the Nation.

Schorr’s critical coverage of President Richard M. Nixon has landed him a place on the former commander-in-chief’s infamous “Enemies List.” Schorr won Emmy Awards in 1972, 1973, and 1974 for his reporting on the Watergate scandal, but he said that his presence on Nixon’s list was “a greater tribute than the Emmys list.”

As a young reporter in 1953, he caught the attention of Edward R. Murrow and became one of his handpicked protégés at CBS News, where he covered events on Capitol Hill and in the State Department for 24 years. Before his death, Schorr was the last of “Murrow’s Boys” to be alive and active in journalism.

His career at CBS was cut short after he leaked to the Village Voice a 1976 suppressed report by the House of Representatives. The report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence under Otis G. Pike (D-NY) discussed alleged illegal assassinations by the Central Intelligence Agency. Schorr was nearly jailed for contempt of Congress by refusing to name his source for the report. The House ethics committee voted 6-5 to forego a citation against him, however.

After working at CBS, he became the first employee hired by Ted Turner for the newly formed CNN, as a senior news analyst for six years. He then spent the next 25 years as a senior analyst for NPR, where he has ended his career. His last broadcast aired July 10.

In NPR’s obituary of Schorr, David Broder, political reporter and columnist for The Washington Post, said:

I think he’s unique in the sense that he’s been at the center of so many different stories, both here in Washington and overseas, for so long. He kept his perspective so well and does not ever exaggerate what’s taking place, but really let you know why it’s important.

Also see TheCapitol.Net’s media training courses and the Media Relations Handbook, by Bradford Fitch.

Source: “Daniel Schorr, Journalist, Dies at 93,” The New York Times, 07/23/10
Source: “Journalism Legend Daniel Schorr Dies At 93,” NPR, 07/23/10
Source: “Daniel Schorr dead at 93,” Radio Business Report, 07/23/10
Source: “CBS, NPR and CNN Newsman Daniel Schorr Dies at 93,” Media Bistro’s TV Newser, 07/23/10
Source: “Daniel Schorr (obituary),” The Telegraph, 07/25/10
Image by Current, the magazine of National Public Radio, used under its Creative Commons license.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites.”

Brad Fitch (bio), author of Media Relations Handbook, shares his favorite books and movies. (You can see some of Brad’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Book

The Day Lincoln Was Shot (Jim Bishop, 1955). The first time I read this book it felt so much like fiction that I found myself hoping that President Lincoln might not get killed in the end. (Sorry if I spoil it for you, but Old Abe doesn’t make it.) This amazing depiction of one of the most important 24 hours in American history includes rich descriptions of Washington in 1865. You’ll “see” streets that are not much different from today, and get a feel for 19th Century political intrigue in a post-Civil War capital. Plus you’ll hear the story of how a band of terrorists cooked up a plan to kill the president and his entire cabinet — and nearly succeeded.

Favorite Movies

• Mr Smith Goes to Washington The classic tale of good versus evil, innocence versus indulgence, Jimmy Stewart versus Claude Rains. Inspired by the real life Senator Rush Drew Holt of West Virginia (whose son now serves as a congressman from New Jersey), this is the quintessential Washington movie.

• Advise and Consent This sometimes overlooked movie of Congress probably best portrayed the personalities that inhabited that Great Body of the Senate in the middle part of the 20th Century. Great acting by Henry Fonda, as an embattled Secretary of State Nominee; Walter Pigeon, portraying the Sen. Everett Dirksen-like character; and the great Charles Laughton (yes, the Hunchback of Notre Dame) in his last movie role. It also has the historic value of being the last film the Congress allowed to be shot on its premises — it disrupted government so much they wouldn’t allow filming on Capitol grounds in the future.
• All the President’s Men Bob Woodward should be paying royalties to Robert Redford for ensconcing Woodward as the archetype journalist-hero. What most people don’t know is that this film almost was never made. Robert Redford funded it with his own money.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Jim Bayless (bio), a veteran legislative and regulatory attorney who has lived in Washington for more than 25 years, shares his favorite books and movies. (You can see some of Jim’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Books

• Manhunt, a thrilling, detailed account of the assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and his several co-conspirators, aiders, and abettors and the frenzied chase and capture.

• Team of Rivals, a masterpiece of how Abe Lincoln prevailed against his much more qualified rivals for the presidential nomination and integrated this extraordinarily accomplished group of political adversaries into his own Cabinet.

Favorite Movies

• Mr Smith Goes to Washington-a Frank Capra-produced classic starring Jimmy Stewart and portraying the fundamental role and operation of the U.S. Senate.

• Advise and Consent (1962)-a classic political novel portraying zealots in the president’s party resorting to blackmail to insure the approval of their nominee for Secretary of State; demonstrates the advise-and-consent role of the U.S. Senate; starring Henry Fonda.
• The Seduction of Joe Tynan-another portrayal of the ideological and moral conflicts of being a member of the U.S. Senate; straining his already part-time family life. But it could be a big boost to his career, so he takes it on. Starring Alan Alda.
• No Way Out-a tense thriller starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman; a tale of national security and blackmail filmed at the Pentagon and elsewhere around Washington.
• Executive Action (1973)-A group of powerful and wealthy men hires mercenaries to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
• All the President’s Men (1976)-True story of how two Washington Post reporters uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Nixon; starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Peter Loge (bio), a public affairs professional, shares his favorite books and movies. (You can see some of Peter’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Books and Movies

My taste in DC fiction tends to run to campaign ads and public assurances of 100% support.

One terrific political thriller that takes place largely in Washington is Executive Actions by Gary Grossman – among other things there is scene in one of my favorite restaurants, Tabard Inn.

Of all the DC-centric movies, my favorites include The Day the Earth Stood Still, a classic for so many reasons, and Strangers on a Train, which is a terrific film. I like The American President mostly for the joke about getting lost in Dupont Circle.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Jill Kamp Melton (bio), a communications consultant, shares her favorite books and movies. (You can see some of Jill’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Books and Movies

As for books and movies, my taste is back in the 19th century. I love anything by Jane Austen and have watched ALL the versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma many times. The novels by Catherine Cookson that have been made into movies by the BBC for TV are also compelling.

The only modern movie I have liked recently is The Devil Wears Prada, because of the fashion angle. In addition, seeing the personal price that is paid for someone to sacrifice ethics and relationships for position and power could be seen to echo DC shenanigans.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Michael Koempel (bio), a senior specialist in American National Government for the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, shares his favorite book and movie. (You can see some of Mike’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Book and Movie

There are many good books and movies about Washington, but my favorite book and movie about Washington are the same: Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent. The book, and the movie on which it was based, was written by someone who knew the Senate and Senators very well and respected the institution and its people, captured the essence of congressional politics in a real way, successfully invoked the political backdrop prevailing at the time (anticommunism; there’s always a political backdrop), was based loosely on a real event, and, in the case of the movie, was wonderfully cast and directed.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Claudia Thurber (bio), a veteran of over twenty-two years of federal government service, shares her favorite books and movies. (You can see some of Claudia’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Books

I am addicted to mysteries so I will limit my selections to those. (There are many good novels, but I will leave those for someone else to mention). There are many good writers who have set their mysteries in DC. Two of my favorites are: David Baldacci’s The Camel Club and George P Pelecanos’ Right as Rain and The Sweet Forever. Pelecanos is not for the faint of heart. His books are gritty and disturbing, showing a side of DC that few of us know. Nevertheless, I like him!

Favorite Movies

As to movies, there are many good ones set in DC. Here are a couple of my favorites: Mr Smith Goes to Washington; All The President’s Men; No Way Out and, of course, The Exorcist, which has always given tourists something to look for in Georgetown!

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.

We asked our faculty and authors to share with us some of their favorite books and movies. Their responses are posted in “Faculty Favorites: Books and Movies.”

Bill Noxon (bio), a public relations practitioner, shares his favorite book and movie. (You can see some of Bill’s favorite things about living in our nation’s capital here.)

Favorite Book

The World is Flat– My favorite book (recently) was Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” I was interested in it for a couple of reasons. I read many of Friedman’s columns in the New York Times about the changing nature of the world economy, as well as science, technology and education. He quite often cited our National Science Foundation statistical studies and analyses in building his individual columns. The book dramatically yet eloquently stated a view he championed for years that the rest of the world is slowly catching up to the United States in innovation, wealth generation and in some ways, passing the U.S. in educational achievement. The reality of this “flatness” is in this growing global economy and interaction, and the challenges we have in maintaining world leadership in areas the U.S. often has taken for granted until the dawn of the new century we are now in.

Favorite Movie

Schindlers List– My favorite movie is no longer new. But it left my wife and me speechless as we left the theater. Schindler’s List left an emotional impression on me about the realities of the Holocaust, and as I recall the evening we first saw it, not only did it leave us speechless, but as we looked around, we saw an entire theater empty with almost no sound, as though we were caught in a stuper that rendered us totally overcome by the horrors of the time, seeing it in ways we had never seen or known about previously. The end of the movie, where former Holocaust survivors get together, and stories were shared, drove home the emotional experience to a level that seems indescribable, even now.

For more, also see our Political and Government Classics page.