PUBLIC INTEREST IN the workings and effectiveness of the U.S. Congress, the country's freely elected legislature, has increased markedly in recent years. Before the 1970s many Americans paid little attention to the body that made their laws. Typical were the attitudes expressed in a 1963 survey that found the average voter knew little about his or her legislator's activities and usually nothing about that person's voting record. And approximately half of the people surveyed admitted that they had known nothing about either their members of Congress or their opponents during the preceding congressional election. Occasionally there were exceptions to this rule. When dramatic events, such as wars, economic upheavals, scandals, or other crises, briefly thrust the national legislature and its members into the spotlight, public interest in Congress rose temporarily. During these times public approval of the legislature varied, depending on how Congress dealt with these crises. But...