Rolled votes, DC realities, and sweater days with Rob Bishop

You wrote a book.

We have a copy here that's pristine.

Mine is dog-eared and annotated at home.

This is things I learned in Congress that they never taught in school.

Tell me about the book.

Why did you decide to write the book? Was it just to get a bunch of stuff off your chest as you left Congress?

Now, this is weird as well.

So when I went back to Congress, I had been teaching AP government for almost a decade.

And I went back there, and as the first week, I was watching what was going on on the floor, and the first thing I was thinking, oh, you

never get away with this in Utah.

They don't do these things.

Utah's a whole lot nicer than this.

You cannot say that in Utah, which is true.

But then as I stayed there a while, I realized that what the textbook had me teach about Congress was not what I was doing in Congress.

The textbooks were simply wrong.

And I don't blame them.

Congress is, like McCullough said, Congress is like a river.

It's always flowing.

It's always changing.

By the time a textbook goes through all the steps it has to do to be approved and printed and passed out, it's out of date.

It's a lot like legislation.

Yes.

So I realized, you know, I was having my kids telling, learning what Calendar Wednesday was.

We never used Calendar Wednesdays.

I mean, it was there, but...