How You Can Become Parliamentarian

I was reading Gregory Wawro, Sarah Binder, Steven Smith and Gregory Koger’s Senate testimony earlier today when I came across the comments of Robert Dove, a former Senate parliamentarian (Wikipedia entry here).  What is a parliamentarian, you ask?  The parliamentarian is a non-partisan congressional figure who advises lawmakers and interprets the rules and procedures of the House and Senate.  Dove, currently a professor of political science at George Washington University, had a number of excellent anecdotes about efforts to reform the filibuster; that is, “excellent” if you’re into that kind of stuff.  I wondered: How does one become a parliamentarian?  Slate.com, it turns out, had an article a while back aptly titled “How to become a parliamentarian.”  I’m not kidding, it’s an interesting read.