Former Congressman Jim Talent began his stint as a professor this week, when his Poli. Sci. 456, “Thinking Like A Congressman,” met for the first time.
Talent initially designed the course as a seminar for 12 students. At one point, however, more than eighty budding politicians were either enrolled or waitlisted. The enrollment limit was upped to twenty, and twenty-four students attended yesterday’s class.
This is “a course on how to be a congressional staffer,” explained Talent’s spokesperson, Rich Chrismer. It will cover the basics of work in Congress, such as how to write press releases, minute-long speeches, constituent letters, as well as the unspoken rules of The Hill. It will also offer the opportunity to “think like someone on the Hill,” as Talent told his students.
“Congress is a culture all its own,” Talent said. “The balance of protocols, informal understandings, and politics” is something not easily taught by a textbook, he said, “most of what’s on paper is at best irrelevant on how the Congress really works.” This is why the only text for the course will be William Strunk’s and E.B. White’s famous The Elements of Style. Talent’s emphasis on writing relates to his view of clarity. “If you’re not writing clearly, you’re not thinking clearly,” he said.
One of the major draws of the course for many of the students was the offer of internships on Capitol Hill. With Talent’s connections and experience in Washington, he expects to easily place all his students with some sort of politician this summer, on both sides of the aisle. Personal interviews will be used to match students with offices. The details of the internships, all unpaid, are still being worked out with the university.
The offer of the internships is not the only draw, nor is it a required component of the class. Several students hope the course will give them a real-life look into politics. With the help of the experiences they expect Talent to relate and the insights he could share, these students hope to decide whether politics is really what they want to pursue as a career.
On the first day of the class, Talent was light-hearted but firm. He spoke of the grading option, offered only as Pass/Fail, in this way: “Three months ago I lost a close election for Governor, and if I can go through that kind of trauma, I can fail somebody from a course.” Attendance and participation will be the main components of the grade
For his first lecture, Talent covered the important duties of a freshman member of congress. These include sticking to campaign promises, realizing the things they can do on their own and those for which they need support from their party, and remembering to keep their integrity first and foremost. As a general guideline, Talent said, “there should always be a set of things you are willing to lose an election for-if not, get out before it destroys you.” Like a choose-your-own-adventure, students were presented with various situations and asked to make decisions, after which Talent would tell them what the likely career and political outcomes of their decision would have been.
Talent realizes the purpose of this class is to share his experiences, which is why he “will not discipline [himself] much in these classes” in regards to strictly following the course schedule, which was included in the syllabus. Although he “may go off on some story,” he said, he is attempting to give “a flavor of how Congress really operates, how Congressmen and women really think.”
When the announcement was made that Jim Talent, an alum of WU, had been named an Honorary Professor and was planning to teach this spring, there was concern that the class would be more of a soapbox for Republican ideals than an educational experience.
Yet Talent is not the first Congressman to teach at WU. Senators Eagleton and Danforth have both taught here. Indeed, Randy Glean, liaison between Talent and WU, said that “it’s typical that politicians invariably go to universities” after their term is up. And in regards to the potential political bias, Glean said it is better that they “teach to their expertise.” In fact, politicians are often “safer than other professors whose bias may not be known ahead of time. They can surprise you.”
Talent has tentatively agreed to stay at WU for at least two years, pending a decision in regards to the political race in 2002. He will most likely teach this course again in Fall 2001 and perhaps also in Spring 2002. During this “enforced time of being on the sidelines,” Talent would like to “expand his role” at WU; that may depend on how this course goes. As he said, “you never stop learning, your views never stop evolving, and a university setting is the perfect environment for that.”