a commonplace book of this & that in american political life
GWorks Interviews: Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
(Part Four)
Inflections
It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American
Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism
GOVERNINGWorks (GWorks) [00:0:40:23] Is this a make-or-break moment? Do you see signs of hope?
Norman Ornstein (NO) [00:00:45:23] I would say we’re both hopeful in some ways. It is an inflection point. It would be a very interesting challenge. Let’s say the Senate is 50-50. And we get this radical Reconciliation Bill. You’re going to find three or four Republican Senators who will be appalled by it. Whether any of them would be willing to accept the incredible not only pressure but threats that would come, if they stood in the way, after they’d finally attained that power, would be interesting. But, it’s possible, at least that one or two of them would.
At the same time, if President [Barack H.] Obama wins re-election, and Republicans realize they’ve got four more years with him, you’re going to have a number of Republican Senators who are tired of voting ‘No’ on everything and you’ll probably find coalitions in the Senate.
That, I would describe as hopeful.
But also, to be realistic, we have two example this last couple of months where we had three-fourths of the Senate come together in a broad bi-partisan way on a transportation Bill, badly needed crumbling infrastructure, on a farm Bill in the midst of this horrific drought and with a broken farm subsidies system. And both Bills went to the House and the transportation Bill sat there through a critical construction season and while huge problems ensued with the House not paying any attention to what their Republican counterparts did in the Senate. And we have seen nothing done on the farm Bill even as livestock farmers are being devastated by this.
So, I’m not terribly hopeful in the short run about the House.
We are hopeful over a longer period of time. The examples that Tom cited, the period around the War of 1812, the Civil War, the 1890s, those were cycles that took about a decade or so to get out of.
The last one was the Democratic party that veered off the rails. So, I think we come back eventually.
What makes me very uneasy is a decade now is a very long time, given the immediate challenges facing the country in a tough economic and political world.
Thomas Mann (TM) [00:03:05:02] The question is whether the new status quo on January 1, 2013, with the so-called fiscal cliff, the expiration of the tax cuts and the sequestration of defense and discretionary domestic spending changes the political dynamic.
Let’s say, if Obama’s elected but Republicans still controlled the House, it turns out just stopping something isn’t satisfactory anymore because taxes will be higher than they are now by quite a large amount. So Republicans will need affirmative steps to cut taxes. But without the agreement of President Obama, they can’t get them. So, they’re forced into negotiating mode that they haven’t been in during this period of time. And that might, you know, with the global pressures in the global economy and the new status quo from which they are operating, that could create some beginnings of negotiations with some Republicans in both the Senate and the House whose instinct is more toward problem-solving than ideology-advancing. So, that’s possible.
But it’s just as possible that we’re...if [Mitt] Romney’s elected with a Republican Congress, we could get a dramatic change in policy and then a stunning reversal in the next mid-term election or the following Presidential election. So, that there’s a new status quo but a political majority that’s deeply opposed to it and continue on with the kinds of battles that...that ensue.
That’s why two of our chapters are...in the book...are really devoted to looking over the long-run...of trying to see if it isn’t possible to temper the...the extreme partisanship and polarization of the parties through extensions of the franchise. And we toy with ideas like mandatory attendance at the polls. But we also look at other reforms of the voting administration but also of the electoral system.
There are things that can be done to change the nature of those who participate, say, in primary elections. And where you can build in a kind of form of preferential voting so you don’t have third parties either discouraged or put in a position of influencing the outcome of an election that denies the majority the choice they would like.
So, I think...I think it’s important to work on both fronts—the immediate situation, trying to clarify what’s going on here and why we have the disfunction? What, you know...in the end, you’ve got to reach voters but sadly the voters you need to reach are not already committed to the parties. And those swing voters are the least engaged, least informed, least looking for such information.
But, I have to say, we come down pretty hard not just on the partisan media but on the mainstream media. They have cowered in the face of charges of partisan bias or ideological bias and they’ve come to take the safe route, saying, ‘Oh, they’re equally implicated.’ Or give a voice to one of the Left and one on the Right and step back from...really getting at the truth.
This is so evident now in this Congress in particular where there was a lot of reluctance to speak forthrightly about the reckless move it was to take the Debt Ceiling hostage. And, we’re seeing it in the campaign as well. And, we see it in the commercial channels. We see it in public broadcasting. Everyone’s sort of, kind of weary of being charged with bias. That’s why we were quite explicit about our analysis. And that’s perhaps helped us get the attention that we’ve been able to get.
[00:08:13:15] If you read that carefully, we offer that as a solution—but one we’re not very attracted to. That is to say, we’re not ready to undermine Separation of Powers. We’re not attracted to the idea of weakening the Congress. We’re not excited about the prospect removing important decisions from elected officials.
But, we do think some degree of some distance on some matters, like the base-closing commission, in this case probably the most important is the new board set up to try to control health care costs. It’s weak the way it was set up because of opposition. But, it needs to be strengthened. We have to introduce some elements of those without denying the ultimate authority of Congress and the President to act on the basis of their election legitimacy.
[00:09:21:00] Exactly so.
We don’t want a parliamentary system. But, we suggest that we may have to tilt a little bit, if we can’t break the deadlock of where we are now, towards providing a little bit more authority for the Executive. We explore other options.
But, our strong, strong, strong preference is to keep the institutions the way the Framers designed them and simply have them work with political figures who understand that the goal is to work with others, find some common ground and solve problems.
—End of Part Four—
Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
Part One: We Are Not Hegelians
The book, the Republican party as
“insurgent outlier” and the value of
faith in government over conflict
The power ideology has over
politicians and the political process
Race, political opportunity & what
Republicans are playing for
Is this a make-or-break moment
and is there cause for hope
Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein
The one-hour interview in its entirety
For more interviews,
please visit GWorks Interviews
EDITOR’S NOTES
GWorks Interviews: Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein was filmed Tuesday 28 August 2012 in the offices of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC. GWorks would like to thank Mssrs Ornstein and Mann for their generous participation; AEI—in particular, Michael Pratt; and Caitlin Graf of Basic Books. Please note: Basic Books provided a Reviewer Copy of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.
Photo: Thomas Mann. Photo credit: Ralph Alswang. Courtesy Basic Books.
Photo: Norman Ornstein. Photo credit: Peter Holden. Courtesy Basic Books.
Photo: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. Courtesy Basic Books.
1 Noted Congressional scholars and political observers, in Washington, DC for more than 40 years, Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. In addition to It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, Mssrs Ornstein and Mann are co-authors of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How To Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006).
GWorks Interviews is a series dedicated to exploring governance issues of interest with persons given to thinking about and having relevant experience. GWorks invites a GWorks Interviewee to respond in depth to questions. GWorks does not edit the substance of what an interviewee says. GWorks edits GWorks Interviews only for editorial and technical considerations including style, length and productions issues. For more, please visit GWorks Interviews.
—Thursday 20 September 2012—
Introduction
“It’s easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘This is horrible.’ Or, ‘The end of the world is coming.’ It’s harder to look at what you can do about it.”
In GWorks Interviews: Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, the noted Congressional scholars and political observers for over 40 years discuss their latest book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, the acid state of current political affairs and what to do about it.
In Part Four: Inflections (below), Mssrs Mann discuss whether this is a make-or-break moment and if there is cause for hope.
In Part One: We Are Not Hegelians, Mssrs Mann and Ornstein describe their latest book, the Republican party as “insurgent outlier” and that value is found in their shared faith in government and problem-solving—not in the synthesis of any contrasting view they might have.
In Part Two: Ideology or Bust, Mssrs Mann and Ornstein discuss the destructive power of ideology over politicians and the political process.
In Part Three: End Games, Mssrs Mann and Ornstein discuss race, political opportunity, the debt|deficit and what Republicans are playing for.
Recent GWorks Posts
GWorks Interviews: Frank Partnoy
“There’s been a lot of thinking and writing about how we make decisions, about why we make certain kinds of decisions, about what we should decide. There hasn’t been as much writing or thinking about when.”
GWorks Interviews: Tom Goldstein
“As I’ve been doing [Supreme Court litigation] now for 15 years...it gets actually more and more complicated, not simpler and simpler, as you realize all the different layers to the onion that you’re peeling back.”
“I wanted to write about oil in an age of limits and change.” In Private Empire: ExxonMobil & American Power, Steve Coll explores oil’s place in the world by looking at ExxonMobil, the largest company headquartered in the United States, and its place in the United States and abroad as it produces a singular resource and epitomizes American political and economic authority.
Jamie Dimon, President & CEO of JPMorgan Chanse, testifying before Congress, invokes “Old Testament justice”
Love or Confusion—Re-electing Scott Walker
What does the Wisconsin re-call election mean?
In Memoriam—Nicholas de Belleville Katzenbach
Briefly recalling the former US Attorney General and Undersecretary of State, who died 8 May 2012.
John Brennan on the Administration’s counterterrorism policy.
GWorks Interviews: Benjamin Wittes
Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and, together with Jeffrey Rosen, co-Editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change, discusses his vision for the book and the relationships among technological development, National Security and Constitutional values.
GWorks Interviews: Lawrence Lessig
Harvard Law School Profess and author of Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It discusses Congress, the corrupting influence of money and reform
GWorks Interviews: Jeffrey Rosen
George Washington University Law School Professor and co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change discusses Constitutional values and technological change
President Obama’s annual address to Congress
revisiting Citizens United two years later
an historic speech at the March on Washington to mark the Civil Rights leader’s birth
on the (il)logic of campaign rhetoric
Viewing GOVERNINGWorks
The GOVERNINGWorks Web site is best viewed on the Internet using Chrome, Firefox or Safari. These browsers are available on the Internet for FREE for Mac OS and Windows. Readers may download any of these browsers by following the links in this paragraph.
The noted Congressional scholars and political observers for more than 40 years discuss their latest book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, the acid state of politics and what to do about it.
Part One: We Are Not Hegelians
Tuesday 11 September 2012
Their latest book, the Republican party as “insurgent outlier” and that value is found in shared faith in government and problem-solving—not in the synthesis of any contrasting view they might have
“[W]e wanted to do something that was broader than just looking at Congress, that looked at the culture more generally that had been corroded and really devastated more broadly but also in politics, look at many different elements of the process, and that would pull no punches.”
Thursday 13 September 2012
The destructive power of ideology over politicians and the political process
“[Ideology] reinforces some of the worst tendencies in our politics. And in recent years, it has emerged in a way that has allowed the Republican party to really try to gain advantage—if you will, to build a majority in government when such a majority doesn’t really exist in the country.”
Tuesday 18 September 2012
Race, political opportunity & what
Republicans are playing for
“[I]t’s not just to take the country back before the New Deal...it is to take it back before the era of Teddy Roosevelt, too.”
Thursday 20 September 2012
Is this a make-or-break moment and is there cause for hope?
“The question is whether the new status quo on January 1, 2013, with the so-called fiscal cliff, the expiration of the tax cuts and the sequestration of defense and discretionary domestic spending changes the political dynamic.”
For more, please visit GWorks Interviews
