The simplified contours of legislative life that I outlined in Chapter 1 are not alien to anyone knowledgeable about the modern Congress. The major actors and constraints that were discussed – constituents, rank-and-file legislators, committees, party leaders, the president, reelection, checks and balances, the state of the economy, and the budgetary problem – have all been staples of modern congressional scholarship. The theoretical tack I have taken in this study – that of constrained goal pursuit by rational politicians – is more controversial, even if it is becoming a very popular direction to take.

What is open to dispute, more than the theoretical use of rational choice, is whether the legislative world I abstracted in Chapter 1 is plausibly relevant to the legislative world of the nineteenth century. After all, a century ago legislators eschewed reelection as a rule, political parties were dominant, autocratic Speakers ruled the House floor, national issues infused local congressional elections, and there was little of the structural complexity and differentiation that currently describe the modern Congress. What could be more different from the House of the 1970s and 1980s? Nevertheless, it is a premise of this study that these descriptive differences between eras are essentially epiphenomenal. It is important to pay careful attention to the changes in career opportunity structures, legislative institutionalization, and party power that have altered the description of the constraints that individual MCs have faced over the century.