Visiting Capitol Hill 2024

I spent a full day on Capitol Hill in December 2024, working through the self-guided exhibitions in the morning and the guided tours in the afternoon. The guided tours gave me access to parts of the building that are normally closed to visitors, including both chambers. Somewhere along the way, I managed to get an International Guest Pass, which let me sit in on a Senate hearing before I left.

The exhibitions were more striking than I expected. Before I got to any of the exhibits, the building had already made an impression. Everything about it, the scale, the architecture, the iconography, felt intentional. It was designed to inspire a certain kind of awe. The building communicates permanence and authority. The conventions that hold it together are more fragile than the stone it is built from. They exist only as long as people agree to observe them.

Sitting in on the Senate hearing was different from anything I had read about congressional procedure. What struck me was how much of it ran on convention rather than written rules. The way debate proceeds, how disagreement gets expressed, and what counts as acceptable. None of that is in any rulebook. Those norms are invisible until they break down, and the last few years of American politics have made that very visible. Watching a functioning hearing with that context in mind made it feel more fragile than I had expected, and more worth protecting.