Wednesday Workday

Hello readers! Today was a busy day, tomorrow we are on the Hill, and it is late and I’m tired, so this will be a quick little recap of our day.

The day started by talking with Drew Spencer, part of the legal team for the organization FairVote, which explores legislative options to solve problems with our system of electing representatives and executives. He largely argued against winner-take-all systems and advocated for a new system known as Ranked Choice Voting. I wish I could explain to you the advantage of the latter in the context of establishing a less polarized Congress, but I’d be writing this all night.

We then moved to a panel of RNC staffers, giving us a contrast to the opinion of the DNC we got earlier this week.

Today at lunch, I MADE EYE CONTACT WITH BEN BERNANKE! I freaked out, and I’m not sorry about it. He’s incredible.

Anyway, moving on. Possibly the highlight of the week so far was the afternoon’s meeting with Norm Ornstein, the non-partisan congressional scholar for decades who wrote the book, literally, on polarization titled It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (written with his frequent collaborator Mann). Reading this book before the seminar started, I loved being able to pick his brain on the asymmetric polarization in Congress now, and why he believes that right now, Republicans are mostly to blame for polarization of the elites.

To cap off the day, we had a networking-type dinner with DC alumni who came and spoke with all of us students to talk about how they got to where they were and what they would do if they were in our shoes.

Sorry for the lack of pictures today, it was all just so interesting!

Until tomorrow,

Reed Timoner, American Politics, ’19