Robert Klotz, PhD

207-780-4193

rklotz@maine.edu

Portland Campus, Payson Smith 100E

Fall 2024 Office Hours: Mondays 2-5 pm

Education

PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 1998
MA, Washington University in St. Louis, 1994
BA, Indiana University, 1990

In the Media

His article using Thomas Brackett Reed to illuminate modern electoral politics was published on November 1, 2022, in the Made by History section of The Washington Post.

Political Science College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Robert Klotz is an Associate Professor of Political Science. He joined the University of Southern Maine in 2001.

He is the author of the biography Thomas Brackett Reed: The Gilded Age Speaker Who Made the Rules for American Politics (University Press of Kansas, 2022). Famous for epigrams such as defining a statesman as a successful politician who is dead, Thomas Brackett Reed (1839-1902) transformed parliamentary procedure through the Reed Rules and established the institutional foundation of the modern Congress. A statue of Reed on the Western Promenade is part of the Political History Trail in Portland.

Professor Klotz’s broader research focus is on political communication in the Gilded Age and modern times. His article, “The 1891 McKinley-Campbell Ohio Gubernatorial Debate and the Draw that Still Splits America,” was published in the fall 2020 issue of Ohio History (available here by going to pages 32-46). His first book The Politics of Internet Communication (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) explored the historical intersection between politics and the World Wide Web. In addition to articles in Political Communication, PS: Political Science & Politics, Information Technology & Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and other journals, he has a chapter on Super PACs in Fixing American Politics: Solutions for the Media Age (Routledge, November 2021),

“Compared to the fictional House of Cards, Reed’s leadership is more quorum count, less body count, but it is still marked by dramatic episodes of power politics. The Reed Rules are literally guidelines for parliamentary procedure, but they also are figuratively an approach to politics. Reed’s leadership is power politics for partisan ends. To understand the hyperpartisanship of modern American politics, it is necessary to understand Reed and how he transformed American politics. The rules of American politics are the Reed Rules.

— Preface, Thomas Brackett Reed (2022)