While researching his doctoral dissertation on congressional procedure in 1935, Floyd Riddick spent a year observing the workings of the House of Representatives. Most of the rest of his career he spent on the Senate side of the Capitol, as the first editor of the "Daily Digest" in the Congressional Record and as Parliamentarian of the Senate. As Parliamentarian, he sat immediately below the presiding officer in the Senate chamber, providing information on precedents and advising other senators on parliamentary procedure. In his interviews he talks about Senate filibusters and the efforts to change the rules of cloture. He also discusses the censures of
Joseph McCarthy
and
Thomas Dodd
, the contested election between
John Durkin
and
Louis Wyman
, and the preparations for a planned impeachment trial of
Richard Nixon
.
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