history in the lawmaking

What happens when a policy wonk gets an idea?

One thing I've learned about public policy in the short year that I have given any thought and time to it is that law makers are not coming up with many new ideas these days. Most politicians are very knowledgeable about history (as they should be; as we all should be; as I am not) and also have access to interns who can dig into history if they themselves are unaware of certain issues.

I have no idea if the following is a true representation of what happens on the inside and I don't really want to know but please indulge me:

A situation arises.

A politician is concerned.

Said politician sends an e-mail to his research gopher regarding the situation and requests that said gopher gathers as much information pertinent to said situation as time allows and then some more. If the politician is lucky, the gopher has skills and a penchant for reading seemingly unused texts at the library and can find obscure sources via the internet and pull together a rough history of how similar situations were handled in the past.

Once their is a large enough history to reveal that there are three or four logical, plausible ways to handle the situation at hand, the politician asks for more.

The gopher gets to it again but not as hard because there were very big, very important things that the gopher decided to withhold because this gopher's skills are self-assuredly top notch. After sitting on these resources long enough to read the paper and check the blogs, the new bomb-shell is dropped on said politician.

After all of the possible ways to handle the situation are in line, the politician starts a delicate process of elimination. Whichever ideas seem like they could possibly be effective but will certainly be embraced by politicians on the other side of the aisle are put into the "find miniscule flaws and blow them out of proportion" pile and whichever ingenious Acme schemes are left that haven't been used in a while are put into a hat.

Once a plot is picked from said hat the politician sets about writing legislation. If this politician is from Colorado the proposed legislation will receive little attention during session and said situation will be reviewed next year.