As Rob Bishop elaborates in the beginning of his Congressional memoir, what he thought he knew about how Congress operated was different from reality. He admits that he had been teaching from textbooks for nearly three decades that just didn’t get it right–he says that his book, THE THINGS I LEARNED IN CONGRESS THEY NEVER TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, is intended to set things straight.
As readers will discover as they go from chapter to chapter, it can be a messy and a hard-to-understand process. Apparently, it’s been said that… “to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.” That phrase led to the now famous aphorism attributed to the 19th-century German statesman, Prince Otto von Bismarck… who supposedly said that “laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.”
There is even debate among bloggers about the prince that’s been going on for at least 100 years. A 1933 textbook (Government in the United States by Claudius P. Johnson) reinforces Rob’s cynicism about such sources and adds even more fuel to the fire. Johnson wrote that “I think it was Bismarck who said that the man who wishes to keep his respect for sausages and laws should not see how either is made. With reference to the laws, a knowledge of how they are made may increase our respect for them and their makers; and if it does not, we are at least able to express our dissatisfaction in an intelligent manner.”
The tale also recounts a proposed duel between Otto von Bismarck and the German scientist Rudolf Virchow. According to a Berlin journal, Bismarck took offense at language that Professor Virchow had used in a debate in the Reichstag (their parliament at the time). The learned doctor was at that time engaged in investigations relating to trichinosis. He is said to have thus replied to the messenger who bore Bismarck’s challenge: “My arms; there they are–those two sausages. One of them is full of trichinae; the other is pure. Let his Excellency breakfast with me. We will eat the sausages; and he shall take his choice of them.”
So, now we can see with clarity just how messy the making of laws can be, that the innocent sausage, previously used as just a metaphor, has now become a weapon. And, that should give any reader, even more reason to study what Rob has written about Congress, government and the similarity to stuffing seasoned pork meat and other delicacies into pig intestines and then allowing it to cure.
It is a disgusting business, isn’t it?
Editor, GM Jarrard