Maiden Speeches and Apprenticeship: Continuity and Change in the U.S. Senate

• In Event: Legislative Style

Abstract

When asked in confidential interviews about the continuity of the apprenticeship norm— the first of Donald Matthews’ (1960) six “folkways” of the Senate— former party leaders, junior members, and staff alike consistently point to the institution’s maiden speech tradition. Nevertheless, no full-length study of this “old rite of passage” has yet been published. The following paper fills this gap by a) providing the first qualitative, historical account of the tradition based on remarks in the Congressional Record and a series of confidential interviews with former members and staff; b) creating the first quantitative measure of its adherence over time; and c) proposing that measure as a novel, proxy variable for adherence to the apprenticeship norm. In doing so, I rebuke conventional wisdom surrounding the tradition, finding that members never waited nearly as long to speak as purported. Further, though the data corroborate Barbara Sinclair’s (1989) finding that apprenticeship had been in decline since the late 1950s and had effectively died by the 1980s, we observe a dramatic uptick in adherence to the norm in subsequent decades, particularly in the twenty-first century. Further analysis reveals that this contemporary resurgence is almost entirely attributable to Republicans under the leadership of McConnell— who has expressed reverence for the tradition— perhaps bespeaking the power of party leadership to impress normative behavior upon freshmen caucus members.

Author

• Christopher Luke Basham, The George Washington University