Norman J. Ornstein

I didn't finish this book -- perhaps I will go back one day, but I wish to make two points. In common with many political writers, Mann and Ornstein (hereafter M&O) sometimes talk about the public, the American people, or the voters as if they were a monolithic, uniform group. There is no such thing. The "public" doesn't decide the election - contending groups of people do, and since the voters of each state vote only on their own Congressional team, results are extremely varied. If I think that some other state has elected a menace to the nation, there is little I can do about it. We are often asked why, if the "public" has such a low opinion of Congress, why don't we throw the rascals out? Why are do so few incumbents lose their re-election race?

According to a survey that I read a few years ago, while people may have a low opinion of Congress as a whole, they have a much better opinion of their own representatives and senators -- that's why they elected them. As to the apparent low rate of turnover, that's because judging turnover by incumbents re-elected fails to take into account retirements, deaths, and decisions not to run. The real turnover rate is much higher.

The reason that I stopped reading the book, however, is because I thought that M&O's discussion of Boehner, Obama, and the debt ceiling was biased. I recently read Boehner's memoir, which was only published this year, and so M&O had no opportunity to review his statements, and memoirs tend to cast the best light on their author. I think, however, that there is enough congruence between these two books to make some statements. According to Boehner, he spent a month negotiating the deal that M&O describe with various White House, and President Obama accepted the offer, and they shook hands on it, so Boehner thought that it was settled. This is from his memoirs. Both books seem to agree that he was confident that he had the 218 votes that he needed, although he had rebellion on the right. Republicans wanted cuts, Democrats wanted revenue. Then some members of the Senate came up with a proposal for considerably more revenues. Obama liked that better of course, and that's when Boehner felt that Obama betrayed him.He called Boehner and wanted to renegotiate House package. Boehner refused his calls for two days.

M&O wrote: "From his perspective, the president had put himself out on a limb to reach a deal, accepting painful changes in Medicare and other entitlements that his party stalwarts passionately opposed, and in return had been openly disrespected by Boehner." Let's be fair: since the authors single out Boehner for condemnation, let's look at this from Boehner's perspective: he was in pretty much the same situation with some of his party stalwarts. Speaking of disrespect, Obama told Boehner that he suddenly needed at least an additional 50% more in revenues, an enormous concession. If Boehner's refusal to call for two days was such a serious delay, what is trying to get a radically different package? Unlike Obama, Boehner couldn't act unilaterally -- he would need to get enough of his colleagues to agree to pass a different package than the one they had already agreed to -- perhaps he spent the two days negotiating with them and decided that he couldn't get the votes. He already had some of the more right-way chaos Republicans gleefully predicting that he couldn't get the votes for the first bill, and Boehner thought that even that might cost him his Speakership. Perhaps the House should have passed it's bill, and the Senate pass it's bill, and let the reconciling committee thrash it out.

It infuriates me when I've agreed on something with someone, and they decide that the agreement means nothing. One of my former friends is former partly because I'd invite her to do something, she'd accept, and then call me back in a couple days and want to make "minor" changes -- like a different time, a different place, and, oh yes, canceling what I had planned altogether in favor of something else, so I reacted very badly to this analysis. I just couldn't continue.

While I don't agree with Boehner's politics or desired policy, I think the analysis in this case is a bit warped, perhaps because M&O think that raising the debt ceiling should be simple and perfunctory. The reality is that it isn't.… (meer)

I shy away from books which are too political, too partisan, and as I began this book, I thought it might be one I wouldn't complete just for those reasons. It truly started off appearing to be very anti-Republican. However, in doing some of my own fact checking of some of the items Mann described, I found that the facts fit his description.

For example, when describing the Clinton years and the economic growth during that time, he credited Clinton and gave no credit to the Republican Congress. That just didn't sound right to me. What I remembered was Newt Gingrich claiming credit for the G.O.P. Congressional actions in spurring growth during the Clinton Administration. Checking into this, I found that Mann had a point, in that no Republican voted for Clinton's 1993 tax bill which reduced deficit spending by 500 billion (1/2 in spending cuts, 1/2 in tax increases). This set in motion continuing reduction in federal deficit, and ultimately resulted in a budget surplus.

Also, Mann talked about how the Republicans have set a strategy to simply oppose anything Obama supports, with the idea that this obstruction will doom the Obama Presidency, and people will return the White House to the Republicans. I questioned that claim in my mind. However, Mann did provides backup to his statements. As one example, he mentioned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell initially being supportive of an amendment intended to improve federal fiscal health. The proposal, a "Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action", was co-sponsored by the top Democrat and the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H. It would have established an 18-member bipartisan commission to study the current and future fiscal condition of the federal government and make recommendations about how revenues and expenses can be brought into line. Those recommendations would be fast-tracked to the House and Senate floors under a special procedure. This approach was supported by McConnell on May 12, 2009 in a Senate floor session to discuss the Medicare Trustee's Report, in which he said, "We must address the issue of entitlement spending now, before it is too late...", and that "... the best way to address the crisis is the Conrad-Gregg proposal, which would provide an expedited pathway for fixing these profound long-term challenges". McConnell also advocated the Conrad-Gregg approach in comments at a Feb. 23, 2009, White House summit on fiscal responsibility.

However, in January, 2010, when the Conrad-Gregg bill came for a vote in the Senate, it fell seven votes shy of the Senate's 60-vote threshold for passage. McConnell and six other GOP senators who had co-sponsored the bill all voted against the bill, even though they had co-sponsored the bill. What changed? Why did they vote against a bill they voice support for and sponsored? Well, Obama came out in favor of it.

In a scathing Washington Post op-ed column on Feb. 1, 2010, Fred Hiatt, referring to McConnell's "NO" vote on the commission, wrote that "no single vote by any single senator could possibly illustrate everything that is wrong with Washington today. No single vote could embody the full cynicism and cowardice of our political elite at its worst, or explain by itself why problems do not get solved. But here's one that comes close."

Hiatt continued that "it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the only thing that changed since May is the political usefulness of the proposal to McConnell's partisan goals. He was happy to claim fiscal responsibility while beating up Obama for fiscal recklessness. But when Obama endorsed the idea, as he did on the Saturday before the vote -- and when the commission actually, against all odds, had the wisp of a chance of winning the needed 60 Senate votes -- McConnell bailed."

Mann did seem to do his homework, and the facts seem to check out. I'm sure equal criticism could have been levied against Democrats if earlier years were examined, but since the book is about the current years (2008 - 2012), it's the Republicans who come out looking worse.

All this boils down to Mann's main point, e.g., "It's even worse than it looks", and Congressional extremism helps account for the low regard in which Congress is currently held by the public.
… (meer)

Excellent book by three authors. The authors outline what went wrong with our democracy in the years prior to Donald Trump. They describe how these changes contibuted to the election of Donald Trump. Also discussed is the impact of the actions, or inactions, of Donald Trump and the members of the Republican party on the nation. The authors make suggestions about changes that need to be made now, and in the future, to get the nation back on track and to recover from the presidency of Donald Trump.… (meer)