Age: 48
Hometown: Oak Park, Ill.
Education: B.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in history; M.A., Trinity International University, Deerfield, Ill., in history; Ph.D., University of Chicago, in American history
Last job: Associate university historian, University of Illinois at Chicago.
{mosads}Favorite piece of congressional history: If I limit it to my time working here, I think the most important story was in May 2006, when, for the first time in American history, an executive-branch agency raided a congressional office. That reminded me of Jan. 4, 1642, when King Charles I entered Parliament with soldiers to arrest members, a breach of legislative prerogative which led to the English Civil War. Our Founders knew that history, and our Congress is a descendant of that English Parliament. In response to the FBI raid, the House Speaker and minority leader joined together in a rare statement defending constitutional separation of powers and the independence of the legislature.
Tips for conducting historical research: The oral historian needs to reach beyond the initial interview, to delve deeper by opening the member up. It takes a significant amount of homework to know just what to ask a member during an oral-history interview, and this prior preparation, along with having certain “memory triggers” handy, will allow the subject to recall significant events.
Current lawmaker or recent event you think will stand out in congressional history 50 years from now: The passage of the healthcare reform [bill] is a truly historic remaking of a significant part of the American economy, and it will also serve as one of the most important examples of how the House and Senate, along with the executive branch, used the strengths of each institution to work toward passage.
Most embarrassing moment on Capitol Hill: In my first year here, I had to answer questions about a scandal involving a former member. I was very careful, but all of my delimiting wording was stripped away, and the reporter quoted me out of context, and indeed attributed some of his words to me! Of course this went out over the wires and was published worldwide, even in Pravda! So no matter how careful one’s answers are, one can still be misquoted.
Interests outside of work: Family, bicycling, canoeing and studying the history of central Europe.
Fred Beuttler is a veteran of academia, and he brought that point of view with him when he joined the House’s Office of the Historian nearly five years ago.
“[In the House] you’ve got different departments and different expertise, broken down by committee, and the members know quite a bit — like longtime professors — which is interesting and appealing,” said Beuttler, a former university historian.
Beuttler had the chance to work on the history of Congress with House Historian Robert Remini, who was one of Beuttler’s colleagues at the University of Illinois.
Beuttler still finds ways to maintain his ties to higher education. He teaches an American history class at George Mason University, and he is scheduled to give a congressional tour to a group of University of Texas alumni who’ve asked him to talk about famous Texans in Congress.