Can there be a doctor in the House (or Senate)? Legislative professionalism, boundary work and the case of Senator Tom Coburn, MD

• In Event: Rhetoric of Washington's "Hill": Organizational Rules, Agencies, Presidential Initiatives, and Signing Statements

Abstract

In 2005, Senator Tom Coburn, an obstetrician, was told that seeing patients violated Senate Rules. I argue that the debate over a potential exemption reveals that professionalized legislatures result not from individual opportunity-cost decisions but from “boundary work.” The Congressional Record’s transcript of the debate is used to illustrate how citizen-legislators become discursively and materially barred from professional legislatures. I offer implications that the rhetorical construction of a professional legislature has for understanding legislative service.

Author

• Benjamin Bates, Ohio University