There was an air of a lost era, of the days of the Roosevelts and Henry Stimson, about Senator Claiborne Pell, who passed away a few days ago, and who Tim Fernholz eulogized appropriately the other day. Like his colleague John Chafee -- who was several degrees below Pell in the social register but still far above the rest of us Joe-the-Plumbers, he developed an unbreakable bond with the working-class, Catholic voters of Rhode Island. I noticed something interesting in Pell's obituaries, though which is relevant as we consider questions like whether Caroline Kennedy is qualified for the Senate: All of Pell's major accomplishments, including Pell Grants, the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the bill that led to the creation of Amtrak, occurred in his first term. The creation of Pell Grants is traced to a study Pell sponsored in 1963, his third year in the Senate. And on his election in 1960, Pell had no experience in elected or high office -- he had been a foreign service officer. This is an example of why I think the idea of "experience" is overplayed when we talk about Senate appointments. The Senate is an entrepreneurial instititution, and there are lots of ways to get things done, from sponsoring reports to drafting bills that go nowhere to forming bipartisan alliances to broker deals. There's no established way to get things done, and unlike the House of Representatives, you don't have to serve time on a committee in order to get your ideas heard. Pell is hardly alone in being more effective as a young and inexperienced senator than later, when he was more embedded in the trappings and responsibilities of the place. (Later still, in his last term, he was quite ill.) Pell's passing also reminded me of one thing that President Obama could do that would honor his memory but more importantly, would be very good public policy: Reverse the 1993 law, sponsored by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, that denies Pell Grants to people in prison. With a stroke of President Clinton's pen, the entire edifice of prison-education programs, proven one of the most effective ways of reducing recidivism, was wiped out. This would also be an opportunity for Obama to make good on the promise of bipartisanship, since there are many Republicans who have come to recognize that the lock-em-up-and-give-them-nothing frenzy of the early 1990s was tremendously short-sighted. 99.5 of people incarcerated will be released, and it is in everyone's interest to ensure that they are able to make a living and fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. -- Mark Schmitt
