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发帖数: 4321 | 1 By NPR
Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are no strangers to D
.C. politics. The two of them have been in Washington for more than 40 years.
They came together in 2006 to write a book about dysfunction in Congress,
called The Broken Branch. But their assessment of Congress today is even
more dire — so dire, they've called their new book It's Even Worse Than It
Looks.
Mann, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, and Ornstein, a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), join Morning Edition
host Steve Inskeep to talk about the book, which comes out this week.
The book claims that democracy in America is being endangered by extreme
politics. From the first day of the Obama administration, Ornstein says, our
constitutional system hasn't been allowed to work.
"When we did get action, half the political process viewed it as
illegitimate, tried to undermine its implementation, and moved to repeal it,
" Ornstein says.
Ornstein and Mann make no secret of who they blame for most of the
dysfunction in Congress.
"One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent
outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and
economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional
understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the
legitimacy of its political opposition," they write.
Ornstein says some of his colleagues at AEI, which is known as a
conservative-leaning think tank, "are going to be quite uncomfortable" with
him getting behind such a statement.
You know, maybe we are better than we were in the period leading up to the
Civil War, but that left us with a virtual fracture in our society.
- Norm Ornstein
"We didn't come to this conclusion lightly," he says. He points out that he
and Mann have been highly critical of both parties in previous works. For
example, they called the Democrats "arrogant, condescending, [and]
complacent" after Democrats had been in the majority for 40 consecutive
years up to 1994.
"But for Republicans currently inside Congress, you have a new set of litmus
tests and a new outlook that leads them in directions where you can't say
that there is such a thing as climate change, you take positions on things
like immigration that are simply off the rails, and if you compromise, you
are basically defiling what the party stands for," Ornstein says.
Thomas Mann has worked as a consultant to IBM and the Public Broadcasting
Service.
Ralph Alswang /Perseus Books
Thomas Mann has worked as a consultant to IBM and the Public Broadcasting
Service.
"We're not exactly neutral or balanced, are we?" says Mann. But a central
message of their book, he says, is that norms of non-partisanship in the
media and elsewhere sometimes do "a disservice to the reality."
"It disarms the electorate in a democracy when you really need an
ideological outlier to be reined in by an active, informed public," Mann
says.
Mann and Ornstein recognize that many people will likely be skeptical of the
argument that things in Congress today are so much worse than they used to
be.
Last year, Ornstein wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine about the
112th Congress titled "Worst. Congress. Ever." He says a lot of people wrote
to him and said, "Oh, come on, what about the period right before the Civil
War?"
"And I said, 'I'll grant you that. Do you really want to be compared to the
period right before the Civil War?' You know, maybe we are better than we
were in the period leading up to the Civil War, but that left us with a
virtual fracture in our society. We don't want to see that happen," Ornstein
says.
Norm Ornstein writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election
analyst for CBS News.
Peter Holden /Perseus Books
Norm Ornstein writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election
analyst for CBS News.
Some might argue, however, that a politics of extremes is necessary at times
. Solutions are not necessarily to be found in the middle — sometimes we
may have to go to the edges to solve our problems.
"I think that's a reasonable argument," Mann says. "I don't believe in a
golden mean; I don't believe you find policy wisdom between two polar points
. I don't dismiss that possibility, but I look at the platform that's so
ideologically based, that's so dismissive of facts, of evidence, of science,
and it's frankly hard to take seriously."
Ornstein adds: "We're not against conservatives. Some of our heroes are very
, very strong conservatives here. We're not against strong liberals, either.
... The problem is not one that is resolved by just turning it over to one
side to do simplistic solutions that are based on more wishful thinking than
reality. It's finding that hard reality." | y****t
发帖数: 10233 | 2 1000 days+ without a budget in democrat controlled senate!
yeah, lets talking about extremism in congress.
D
years.
It
resident
【在 P*********0 的大作中提到】
: By NPR
: Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are no strangers to D
: .C. politics. The two of them have been in Washington for more than 40 years.
: They came together in 2006 to write a book about dysfunction in Congress,
: called The Broken Branch. But their assessment of Congress today is even
: more dire — so dire, they've called their new book It's Even Worse Than It
: Looks.
: Mann, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, and Ornstein, a resident
: scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), join Morning Edition
: host Steve Inskeep to talk about the book, which comes out this week.
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