Richard F. Fenno, Jr. 1926-2020

 
This book embraces the six-year term, 1981-1986, of Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania. The story begins and ends with an examination of his election campaigns, but it focuses on the adjustment experiences of his first two years in the chamber. For much of that period, the author, Richard F. Fenno, lived in Washington and was able to follow Specter's governing activity at close range, particularly the events connected with the career-criminal legislation that forms the centerpiece of the book. The discussions of his campaigns also were formed by personal observation.

The dominant perspective, therefore, comes from over the shoulder of Arlen Specter and in that sense is necessarily a limited one. The view is enlarged, however, as readers will soon discover, by the members of Specter's staff. The account of the senator's major legislative efforts relies heavily on the observations of staff members who were involved in the legislative process. The perspective of the book is, most accurately, the perspective of the Specter enterprise--Specter and his closest aides. In fact, the increased influence and size of senators' staffs are among the most important features of the contemporary Senate.

Fenno's scholarly attention to the adjustment experiences of Senate newcomers helps readers to understand the Senate and the careers of its members, and the transition from the activity of campaigning to the activity of governing provides a good vantage point from which to study both. This books shows the individual and communal forces that coexist in the Senate, the electing-governing rhythm by which the senators live, and the interplay of these forces on a politician's career.

Review: The Senate Quintet
The Making of a Senator: Dan Quayle.
The Presidential Odyssey of John Glenn.
The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan Budget. Learning to Legislate: The Senate Education of Arlen Specter. When Incumbency Fails: The Senate Career of Mark Andrews.

Bryon E. Shafer. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 1. (February, 1994).

In magnitude alone, the collection is prodigious, having no obvious counterpart in modern political science. It will come as no surprise that the individual pieces are also models of scholarly presentation. Each is carefully organized to develop its argument. Each is open and self-conscious about the evidence going into that argument, as well — mirabile dictu — as the evidence which is missing. And each is fluently written: These books are "crafted" in the very best sense. Together, they constitute an ambitious example of what direct observation and elite interviewing can produce. Together, they offer an imposing overview of the political life of the penultimate elective elites of American politics, U.S. senators. What these books produce in intellectual terms is equally impressive. At their most immediate and accessible, they provide detailed exposition of some of the central processes of the American politics of our time. Yet while doing so, they employ a carefully specified conceptual framework, running across — and unifying — the entire project. As a result, they exemplify, in much more implicit fashion, a notion of political causality and a view of explanatory mission which are integral to the basic methodological choices of political science. Finally, in a fashion encompassing but going beyond all this, they offer succeeding generations a rich and nuanced picture of contemporary politicking: They are — as political history, too — a landmark.

…

That five contemporary and coordinated volumes, executed in this way and with this reach, are likely to sustain their landmark status long after other contemporary works have passed from the scene. Which is to say: It is a reasonable guess that Dick Fenno has written a central part of the story of the politics of our time. In other words, when political historians need to go back, for a sense of the dynamics of American political life, for the fabric of practical politicking in the late-twentieth century, they are likely to be drawn to the Senate Quintet.