Part 1 Chapter 1 Summary

Four semicircles of identical mahogany desks tell the story of an institution. Viewed from above and behind from the public galleries, the desks look like schoolhouse furniture, spindly, unsubstantial and set in a gloomy, colorless, cavernous chamber. Viewed from the perspective of a senator addressing the body, however, they gleamed in a setting that evoked the majesty of the Roman Senate and rang with the rhetoric of great senators, debating the preservation of the union in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution entrusted to the Senate responsibility for restraining the Executive Branch by approving (or rejecting) appointments to office, judging those impeached by the House, advising and consenting presidents on treaties they had negotiated and broadly restraining the tyranny of the people. The Senate was designed to serve as the new...