Heading for Congress
The campaign’s over. Time to govern. The differences between the black-and-white rigors of an election campaign and the nuanced work of being an effective lawmaker were brought home to two dozen incoming congressmen this week, in the biennial Bipartisan Program for Newly Elected Members of Congress, held at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Sixteen Republicans and eight Democrats spent four days at Harvard, getting to know future colleagues and listening to authorities on a variety of key topics on which they’ll soon be drafting legislation, debating, and voting. Todd Young, a Republican who will represent Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, said he often attends conferences with the expectation that networking will be valuable but that little new will come from presentations. This time, he was pleasantly surprised not just at the quality of the discussions — often given by leaders in the fields — but also at the balance of perspectives, with...