There’s a book on former Rep. Ryan Costello’s bookshelf in Pennsylvania that he keeps meaning to read — a 450-page treatise on lawmaking called “The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It,” by Charles L. Clapp.
It came out in 1963 — more than a decade before Costello was born — and lays out everything from the committee system to leadership to getting reelected to congressional life.
Costello, 49, a Republican who served Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District from 2015 through 2019, sometimes muses about what a Part Two of that book would look like.
After all, he has experienced a good part of what it is to be a lawmaker today: the fundraising calls, sleeping in the office, the long hours and, particularly relevant to now, the government shutdowns.
Now, with six years’ distance from Co

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