As someone who's interested in the workings of the US government, I think one of the more interesting phenomena we've witnessed in the last 10-20 years is the demise of the seniority system in Congress. Of course it's not completely dead in the Senate, and the Democrats continue to hold to it (much) more than the Republicans do. But if you cracked open a US government textbook from the late-1980's on how Congress is organized it would be glaringly out of date.
I bring this up because we are the verge of leadership elections in the US House, and I haven't seen it noted that neither of the men who are likely to be the next Majority Leader and Majority Whip (Roy Blunt of Missouri and Eric Cantor of Virginia) have been in Congress for even 10 years. In fact, Cantor was only elected in 2000. For comparison's sake I'll note that Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) has served longer in the House than either of the likely future leaders. Back in the days of Jim Wright and Bob Michel that would have been close to unimagineable.
Posted by armand at January 13, 2006 10:48 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics