For this week's complex picture of a troubled political system in the heat of a budget crisis, TIME focused on Congress and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. To flesh out the picture, our Washington Bureau filed thousands of words to New York, where National Editor John Elson oversaw the project. Senior Writer Ed Magnuson handled the main story on Congress, and Associate Editor Walter Isaacson the portrait of Baker. Senior Congressional Correspondent Neil MacNeil, who has been covering the House and Senate for 33 years, and Correspondent Evan Thomas, who began his assignment on the Hill just last October after two years covering the Supreme Court and the Justice Department, teamed up to do the congressional reporting.

Says MacNeil, who joined TIME in 1958 after nine years with United Press: "Through two wars, recessions, recoveries, rascalities, occasional heroics, investigations, lobbyings, election campaigns and immense amounts of legislation, it has been a great experience, if only because of the extraordinary cast of characters prancing across the congressional stage."

As for Thomas, he did not need very long to get the general picture on the Hill. "On my old assignment," he says, "it would take months to know anonymous Justice officials and court clerks well enough to get them to say much. On my new beat, there are 535 Congressmen and more than 20,000 staffers, and just about all of them like to talk to reporters. Nowhere is democracy more open than on Capitol Hill, though I'm still trying to figure out whom to believe."

For a cover image, TIME invited Senator Baker, an enthusiastic amateur photographer, to try his hand at a self-portrait. At first reluctant, Baker fell in with the idea after MacNeil mentioned some people who have had self-portraits on TIME'S cover--including Marc Chagall, Thomas Hart Benton and James Thurber. "What company to be in!" said Baker. TIME'S Washington Bureau then dispatched Photographer Roddey Mims to Baker's home town of Huntsville, Tenn., to help set up the shooting. Armed with tripod and timer, the Senator went through twelve rolls of Kodak Ektachrome ASA-64 film in his 2 1/4-by-2 1/4 Hasselblad, while Mims backed him up with Kodachrome in his Nikon motordrive. As the shooting proceeded, Baker began to relax. "This is the most fun I have had in two months," he told Mims. In the end, Robert Grossman's airbrushed caricature beat out the Senator's efforts for the cover. But readers can see one well-focused result of serious self-photography on page 16.

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