Kelly teaches creative writing and literature at Oakton Community College in Illinois. In this essay, Kelly explains why Anderson was right to keep Alan McClean's relationships with Congressman Gray and his daughter in the background of the play, while another writer might have made them the focus of the story.

In the earliest versions of his satirical drama Both Your Houses, Maxwell Anderson left his protagonist, Alan McClean, the high-minded outsider bent on reorganizing the political structure of the House of Representatives, incapable of taking any definitive action. Alan sees his deepest beliefs violated by those around him, and he knows that he can impose some measure of honesty, but he also knows that doing so will endanger Simeon Gray's career. The play was more centered around human relations in those early drafts than it is in the final, published version. McClean's bond with Gray and Gray's...