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The Broken Branch By Thomas E. Mann And Norman J. Ornstein

885 Words4 Pages

In The Broken Branch, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein offer a first hand and well-explained account of what is wrong in the United States Congress today, when and where the government started to let things slip, and how Congress can work to get back on track. Mann and Ornstein begin their book by discussing some of the history, events, and reasoning behind practices of today’s Congress. Not until chapter three in the book do they really get into the root cause of the problems facing Congress in today’s day in age. In chapter three, Mann and Ornestein detail that they began their political careers in Washington D.C. in 1969, at the peak of the dissatisfaction that citizens were feeling over the Vietnam War (47). The duo conveys that the …show more content…

In the months that followed, Mann and Ornstein watched as the Democratic Party slowly fell apart and the Republican Party set themselves up for a decade of control. What began as the Democratic Study Group (DSG) and then morphed into caucuses meetings and recommendations eventually would lead to full on reforms and scars deep within the Democratic Party. Finally, as Jimmy Carter struggled to satisfy the Boll Weevils and Newt Gingrich arrived in Washington, it was clear that the decade-long power held by the Democrats was coming crashing down …show more content…

Bush looked as though it would provide a favorable atmosphere for the coming period. However, those who had predicted for a consistent bipartisanship and an incremental approach to policy making “were wrong” as George W. Bush chose a sharply partisan approach and threw away conventional wisdom on how to approach a closely divided congress (123-124). This was especially evident in his tax cut plan. Bush’s ability to strong arm the Congress shifted majorly when Senator James Jeffords switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, taking with him the Republican control of the Senate (127). In many of the bills that followed, the institutional divide in Washington D.C. was very

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