Educational Media Reviews Online

Nineteenth-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck supposedly said something along the lines of, “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” Filmmaker Neil Cox apparently doesn’t believe this, because he shows us the Kentucky General Assembly’s lawmaking process in his video Statecraft.

As many as 1000 bills can be introduced during a twelve-week session of the Assembly. The video focuses on three: a bill that would reduce environmental regulations and penalties for large-scale confined-animal farming (so-called “factory farms”), one that would improve early childhood development programs in Kentucky, and finally, one that would increase insurance reimbursement for mental health care.

In each case, we see legislators and lobbyists who are in favor of the bill plot strategies to gain supporters and get the bill passed in the House and Senate and signed by the Governor. On the other side, legislators and lobbyists who oppose the bill are seen as they work to defeat passage or at least modify the bill so it is more to their liking.

Both sides argue their positions on each bill, and no judgments are made in the video as to which side is right. The focus is on the process, and there’s very little rancor. The harshest words spoken are by the Democratic Governor of Kentucky, who made the early childhood development bill a centerpiece of his administration. When the Republican leadership in the Senate proposes a bill that would eliminate funding for many of the elements in the bill and do away with statewide standards for early childhood workers, the Governor is heard saying in his office that he considers it a personal attack on his administration, since Republicans know how important the bill is to him. Yet later in the video, the Republican Senate leader says he went to the Governor and told him he didn’t want a fight. The end result is that the Governor gets the early childhood bill passed that he wants, without any of the amendments originally proposed by opponents.

The mental health insurance reimbursement bill is also passed by the Assembly and signed into law by the Governor. The bill relaxing regulations on factory farming follows the most complex route of the three. Opponents stop a vote in the full House after it passed its committee vote, so supporters attach it as an amendment to an existing bill in the Senate. After this amended bill is passed in the Senate, it goes back to the House, where it finally dies when no vote is called on it before the end of the session.

The sometimes tortuous path that a bill can take through a legislature can be confusing to those outside the process. The video’s narrator does a pretty good job of taking us through the steps and indicating what’s at stake in each bill. On-screen notes identify persons or terms that are mentioned in conversations among lobbyists and lawmakers. Still, it can be a task to keep up with the significance of what’s being said.

It appears everyone associated with this video wanted to portray the legislative process in a positive light and show that the people involved in it are honorable and have good intentions, and that honest disagreements can be resolved amicably. The more cynical view exemplified by the quote attributed to Bismarck doesn’t get any notice here. (Of course, any participants in legislative skullduggery wouldn’t want their actions recorded on camera, anyway.)

Statecraft is issued in two editions, one intended for use in high schools and the other for colleges. The college version was the one reviewed, and it’s recommended for political science classes.