Congress

It's funny, I'm feeling a little bit better, and it is mostly because of this book on Congress.  We've been studying voting behaviour and everything so much that it is nice to jump to a topic I really like.  And although I'm only around 20 pages in so far, I like this author's style and main assumption: that all Congressmen seek out reelection as their first priority.  Though there are plenty of people who argue that politicians can be either policy-seeking or resource-seeking first and foremost, they can't actually get to those other two goals without first getting elected and staying in office.  Plus, it seems as though Mayhew is going to focus on the individual rather than on the party, which makes sense given the U.S. context.  Maybe if we jumped to a European country it wouldn't make as much sense, but since U.S. Congressional elections are very individualized (as in, the individual matters more than the party in elections, hence why we often get the "I hate Congress but like my individual Congressman" in the U.S.), it seems like it is the best way to go in formulating a theory.

Only problem I'm finding in reading this is that...I'm afraid of not finding anything to criticize, aha.  I need to write a response to it by Sunday at 3, so I'm going to need to find something!  But Mayhew is so good I've read him before, wahhhh.  But I am still early in the book (which isn't very long, so that is helpful at least).  I'll have to go over how my professor wants us to respond to these.

I haven't gotten an article to review for my Methods class, but now maybe I can look up Mayhew's other works and pick something from him.  I'll apologize profusely for not having something by today, but I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do.  There is an article by Boix about party strategies in proportional representation systems that I was thinking about reviewing, also.  And I found an article about party response to mass media as a possibility.  Basically I still need to figure it out.  There was another about party extremism in majoritarian vs. PR systems but it must be in the one fucking journal that Binghamton wouldn't let me access online, so I might just skip that one (even though I was very "HOLY FUCK YEAH" when I read the abstract, wahhh).  Or I could get my lazy ass to the library and find it in print form but aha that's dumb.  

Also since we have two reviews, maybe I'll try to force myself to do one in American government and one in Comparative.  Yeah, that might be best.

Ha, you know...sometimes I forget about things in my field that I really enjoy, because I spend so much time stressing out about my work and everything.  It is a nice reminder that this actually is something I love.


I'm listening to The Bouncing Souls since I found them via the site I found Sticks and Stones and they are fantastic so far.  Though I have a shit ton of other bands I have to listen to also, aha.  I'll get to them as soon as possible.