7.8 /10 1 Votes7.8
Country United States Publication date 1 May 2012 ISBN 978-0465031337 Page count 240 | 3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 240 Originally published 1 May 2012 Publisher Basic Books | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Preceded by The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track(2006) Similar Political party books, Non-fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thomas mann and norman ornstein it s even worse than it looks
It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism is a 2012 book of political analysis by Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, published by Basic Books. The authors state that the current U.S. Congress has reached a state of basic gridlock due to both major American political parties moving to solidly left-wing and right-wing sides, leaving the center, and becoming "vehemently adversarial".
Contents
- Thomas mann and norman ornstein it s even worse than it looks
- fordschool tom mann and norm ornstein it s even worse than it looks
- Background
- Synopsis
- Reception and reviews
- References
fordschool tom mann and norm ornstein it s even worse than it looks
Background
Norman Ornstein's work at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann's work at the Brookings Institution had brought them into the public eye before, as well as giving them the respect of other political analysts. They previously collaborated on the well-regarded book The Broken Branch. The two have worked in Washington D.C. for more than forty years, Ornstein in particular having written columns for Roll Call and served as an election analyst for CBS News. According to NPR, "they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions."
Synopsis
The authors analyze the current U.S. Congress, and they conclude that the lawmaking body is now almost completely ineffectual. Two sources of the problem are given. The first is the serious mismatch between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, in their view. They state that the groups "have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and [in] a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act".
Mann and Ornstein specifically criticize the right-ward move of the Republican Party, especially the use of administrative and parliamentary tricks to keep from having clear votes on some issues. The authors describe the party as "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".
Reception and reviews
The book was published the same year as the 2012 United States Presidential election. The election campaign brought attention to it as a descriptor of a major aspect of the campaign, the imbalance between the two major parties in the political degrees they went to win elections, and the difficulty the media had in avoiding false equivalence storylines. Prior to the book, the authors were routinely cited as sources by the national press.
The Economist published a mostly favorable review, remarking that Mann and Ornstein have "devoted a good deal of thought to ways the system can be rescued and improved" to "their great credit", praising the book's "constructive ideas".