booktv.org. television for serious readers. healthy democracy doesn't look like this but like this. a republic thrives, get informed straight from the source on c-span, unfiltered, unbiased word for word from the nation's capitol to wherever you are because the opinion that matters the most is your own this is what democracy looks like. c-span power bid cable. >> let me conclude my introductory time by introducing you all to. phil: is a senior aei.

he earned doctorate in politics from princeton university and author of two books like congress, legitimacy and responses to the 2008 financial crisis. sitting at the far end is daniel lipinski, the 13th fellow at the university of dallas. he represents the third district of illinois in the house of representatives since 2005 to 2021. congressman lipinski earned degree in political science, content and consequences. in the middle we have ride ribble, university of wisconsin green bay. he too served in congress and served well. he represented the eighth

district of wisconsin and the u.s. house of representatives from 2011 to 2015 and after retiring from the house he served as the contracting association for 5 years. with that, let me step away and bring up our guests. [applause] >> just want to start by thankinge everyone who braved e smoke today and is here in person. it's a real honor to have you gathered together and to thank theer american enterprise institute for providing really such a wonderful professional home for me where i could write this book. i want to start off by reading

but i find inspirational and helps give a sense of why i'm involved in this project so it comes from this book in defense of politics by bernard crick and goes like this. boredom is great enemy of free men. there's excuse not to be redefining things or pretend to academic unconcern but to make old platitudes pregnant. politics can remain perpetually young, strong and lively so long as it can keep its feet firmly on the ground of mother earth. so cric can a great defender of politics as its own thing and

that's actually the very beginning of his book and in the next paragraph he goes onto say how we should think of politics. politics is too often regarded as poor relation inherently dependent and subsidiary. it's rarely praised with something with life and character of its own. politics is not religion, ethics, law, history or economics neither solves everything nor is it present everywhere and not any one political doctrine such as conservatism, liberal i mean, they can contain elements of most of these things. politics is politics to be valued as itself not because it is like or really is something else more respectable or peculiar. politics is often a dirty word. it's an epithet. if something is political, that means it's bad. part of my effort in writing

this book is to rehabilitate the of politics as something that free people do and the best way that we have to keep social peace in a context of profound differences between the people of our country. we need to learn how to cope with difference and manage it and regulate it and not hope that we can suppress it or pretend that it doesn't exist. and so a big for theme of the book is why congress is the place where we need to deal with difference, why in the american constitutional system congress is really the one institution that allows the maniness to have a say and to allow different factions to come up against each other and hopefully in the process of figuring out on how

to accommodate each other produce policies and solutions for the challenges facing our country better than anything that one group can come up. this is not a new idea as the epigraph says. this goes back to surely most of you were taught in civics class at some point from james madison and federalist number 10. madison and his coauthors of the federalist papers hamilton and jay are very concerned with how are we going to make this country hang together because as the constitution was in the balance, they wereer worried tht this young project, the united states of america was not long for the world and they were essentially concerned with the

problem of how can we get this diverse republic full of people divided by class interest, regional interests, creedal differences, how can we get them all to live together in relative harmony rather than falling to pieces. madison provides famous answer about the extended republic. he talks about having sufficient diversity of factions that they will essentially check each other and keep any one from predominating and thereby make sure that we cannot have tyranny of a majority or tyranny of any one group and i won't go into that in detail because you probably heard that a million times. so fees it to say i think that

madison's argument are more profound than they are given credit for. i think an awful lot of people in our current politics believe that somehow we can suppress difference and that's -- we can deal with the fact that people disagree by somehow making us all into one people who agrees on everything. i think madison is far many realistic and far more profound but turning to practicalities, madison pretty quickly found that it's not simply enough to put these factions in contact with each other and mix it up and hope everything turns out all right and madison in the second congress became concerned that amid sort of chaos, this sort of giant special interest of his day was coming to

predominate and madison as a member of congress wrote to his friend thomas jefferson. he said he worried that the stock jobbers were becoming the pretorian band by the government and overall by clamors and combinations. they had a lot of flair back then. so madison worries that if there's not some kind of organization put on the factional interplay in -- in the congress that he'sat an active member of, a leading member of, that it's going to just sort of open the door to predation by interest and so madison who worried so much about faction is sort of a little bit ironically one of the fathers of political parties and helps to create the republican party as a

counterbalance to hamilton's party essentially, the federalists in congress. and we shouldn't pretend that that just made everything work out smoothly in and of itself. the 1790's were an exceptionally nasty decade of politics in american history. but that's not my subject today. i'm just going to sort ofng say, we see a situation where we need to organize faction in congress but partisan organization introduces its own problems. let me fast-forward about 8 decades to another famous observer of congress that is the political scientists woodrow wilson. woodrow wilson is a doctoral student at john hopkins university wrote a book that became probably the best selling

work of america political science in history and it's all congressional government, most people remember it today from a famous pronouncement that congress and committee is congress at work. that is sort of the famous pronouncement but wilson wasn't just writing a textbook. the book is quite polemical and he's concerned that the congress of his day was again a day where special interests were predating on the american people, that all sorts of deliberation was happening in committee rooms behind closed doors. there were no open committee hearings at that time and thatco the committees were write legislation which would promptly be signed into law after passing on the house and senate floors without much real substantive debate and we once again had a situation where the parties which wilson thought were rather

bankrupt in terms of their principles, sort of running on fumes from the civil war largely. and he worried that that was basically leaving american politics adrift and wilson articulated very powerfully an alternative vision very much different fromry madison's and federalist number 10 where madison was celebrating complexity and faction to possible tyranny. wilson wants clean lines such that we can have accountability, and he believed that what we we needed was the parties can deal with faction internally and then they can present the american people with a clean choice and at election time the american people will decide they will charge one of these parties which has given a clear message with governing the country and then that party should be given a chance to implement its agenda

and pay attention to the finer details of administration. it's remarkable to the extent which wilson's prescriptions got followed in the decades after he wrote well before he ever emerged as a major political figure in his own right. in the 1880's and 1890 we move toward a system of very strong partisan control of the house under speaker reid, known as czar reid and his successor in the first decade of the 20th century was one of the most colorful figures in american history really who i wished was not such obscurity today joseph gurney cannon known as boss cannon and he was somebody who was raised in the sort of wilds

of western indiana in the 1840's but here he was a dominant figure in the first decade of the 20th century. he always had a cigar hanging out of thene corner of his mouth and he sort of played up his hayseed nature as a way of dealing with the press but he was a very shrewed political operator and became dominant figure in washington for a time. if i can, i need a clicker. carley shimkus a clicker somewhere. thank you. okay. i've got -- i'm not showing you a slide show but i have one political cartoon which is practically my favorite part of the whole book. and this is a cartoon and the caption of it -- i better get it

right. the caption saysri the house in session to the minority point of view. that's the script up at the top there and i'm not sure finish for those viewers online and on c-span in case you can't see i will describe thede picture. this is joseph gurne cannon presiding over the chamber of the house and says the gentleman of illinois is recognized. that's him. the yeah from illinois is him and the house is full of him. [laughter] >> it's full of dozens and dozens or scores and scores of carbon copy of joseph gurney cannon such that the house in session consists of doing what mr. cannon wants. so we followed wilson's advice to remarkable degree and we ended up in the situation where we had a dominant party with the pretty clear agenda, very clear differences between the party after the election of 1896, right, where we had william mckinley and william jennings

brian and cannon is for the business orthodoxy of the day and he's the dominant figure but that comes with the problem of a sort of stifling orthodoxy. this is the time of the second industrial revolution. very rapid social change and we -- congress can't keep up when things arere just joseph gurney cannon trying to say how things should be and eventually he faces a seminole moment in congress insurgency from progressive republicans in his party who -- who bolt and join forces with the democrats, overthrow dominance, he had been presiding over the rules committee in addition to being the speaker and he's stripped of that power and soon enough things are blown up and congress operates on a very different principle for many decades.

seniority principle where committee chairs become power the speaker. so the book tries to give a sense that congress is a place where a long history. it's a place where vicissitudes in trying to deal with the problem of faction and trying to make sense of how we can place actions off of each other in productive ways. we sometimes end up in a land like this where we have stifling orthodoxy and other times we end up feeling like the place has become a decentralized chaotic mess and we need to reimpose someme order perhaps through centralization. so that's all i wanted to show from my picture show. i'm just going to gesture up really to the chapter of the book but i want to get the idea

out there and i'm sure we will have time to talk about contemporary politics. at least until very recently, maybe things today are changing and we will talk about that. but it's a place where centralized leadership has called the shots to a remarkable degree and given a sense that we don't really have an interesting interplay of factions we have twocl clusters of factions who know how to yell at each other and insult each other and don't always know how to work together except when they absolutely have to, when to be fair, then they do. the argument of the book is that we're in a moment that the

stifling orthodoxies forced by the centralized leaders really give our politics a sense of not being adequate to the challenges of the moment which are very real r and they tend to push policy making elsewhere in our government, power, of course, a vacuum and if congress doesn't act the executive branch largely picks up the slack and unfortunately the executive branch is not a good place to represent the maniness of this country, we end up with profound legitimacy problems when we p ty to have agency bureaucrats solve all our problems through creative interpretation of old statutes. we really need to keep continually renew our sense of self-government, take ownership for what happens with the federal government does and the best way for us to do that is to feel like we trust the members to congress and we believe in the process by which they mix for it up with each other and work out

ndaccommodations and find solutions. they won't always be pretty solutions, they won't always be good laws. my argument is not that if we empower congress better and got it to be a more assertive branch, it would be the right thing. that would be a crazy argument to make. i don't believe that. overall, why congress, by investing in the political process, by investing in the ideal of self-government that's how we renew our commitment to being free people and that's how we secure social peace better y than any other way we know and that's really how our constitutional system is meant to function and how -- we need to make the choice for madisonian politics once again in order i think to the keep our country from falling to pieces. so i will leave i it at that and look forward to the discussion.

thanks. [applause] >> thank you, phil. let me first start with congressman lipinski. phil's book of congress and i think we say especially the house as being a place that's supposed to be a bunch of diverse interests being piled into the same forum and then having to work things out amongst themselves which can go two basic ways either they cancel each other out and nothing happens or they somehow bargain out a compromise that enough of them can live with that it can move onto the next chamber. was that happening when you were in congress, was that happening much, a lot, not much at all, what was your experience? >> well, let me -- let me start

with phil -- let me read this from a distinguished academic and public servant, the blurb on the back of the book. while few claim congress is uniting the nation or solving problems why congress lays out a convincing case that this is exactly what the institution was design today do, has done in the past and can do once again. let me tell you as we all know it's not doing that right now. i was -- so many different thoughts come to mind as -- as phil was speaking unfortunately way too many. i was thinking, we do the cartoon, they should have with nancy pelosi. that would have been -- that would have been absolutely perfect. but i -- i said the biggest change that i've seen. i studied congress before i ran

for congress as a a political scientist and thest biggest chae that i think happened over the last few decades is it used to be after every election, federal election every two years, everyone in washington, house members, senators would look around and say, okay, who has majority in the house, who has the majority in the senate, who controls the white house. what can we doe over the next year and a half, maybe, together, what can we work for the better man of the country before we fight it out in the next, next election. today after the election every two years what happens everyone looks around and says who controls what and says what can we do in the next two years so our party can get control of everything and shove down the throats of the other side exactly what we want. this is not how congress is supposed to operate.

congress, you know, as i was coming over here i saw a tweet, representative scott perry was asked today about have they resolved the impasse, right now the house is stuck, some members of the freedom caucus block the rule on some bill that all republicans wanted. they asked scott perry hassed that been resolved. it doesn't matter, that was just a messaging bill and the person tweeted, well, that's all the house is doing right now. i've argued that's all the house has done since 2011. the house has taken itself out to large extent legislating and the big problem is as phil said we are not really, you know, congress is supposed to take all of these ideas from the diverse country and this the book is just really incredible. the book i wish i would have

written. i'm glad phil had to put all the work to do it. he did better jonathan i thought he would have but this is -- it's so important but i think so few people understand this whath the role of congress is supposed to be. it's supposed to be representatives who come and bring the views of their constituents to washington. the constitution set up congress to the debate, deliberate, come to some conciliation and congress was meant to and it can as phil says in this book, it could help bring the country together if we actually let representatives centers do their job instead of having just it's either a red way or blue way and

there's no other choices, individual members don't get to have too much of a say in it. we are just trying to -- if we are in the minority, we don't want -- we are not trying to have a say. we want shame the other side so we can win the next election. i remember -- i will tell you one story and then i will led reid go. the two of us can go for a long time. i will shut myself up here. that's illustration of this, one to have best. 2013 government shutdown, october of 2013, a group of us. i was a member of the bipartisan problem solvers caucus. there's a group together, republicans and democrats, what can we possibly put forward to help get us out of -- get the government funded again and, you know, we understood that the republicans had sort of painted themselves in the corner. house republicans said get rid of affordable care act or, you know, the government doesn't get

funded and we are trying to figure out some way through this and some of the democratic members not me because leadership knew they couldn't really persuade me, i was too independent so i hear from democrat colleague, yeah, i got a call from leadership to stop trying to do this. we don't want the government. we don'tes want the government reopened because this makes republicans look really bad and so we don't wantan to help them get out of this problem. and that is just the illustrative of the way things are. what happened, republicans finally got something done. opened the government. they did look bad and then the affordable care act, obamacare website crashed and then it all -- it all flipped to the other side. but that's so much of what the house especially, the senate worked a little bit but that's what the house is about

messaging and that just takes away the people's voice and that's -- that was my -- certainly my experience. >> how about you, reid? in your experience did you see these diverse interests working out things amongst one another, did they have thedi space to do that or was it primarily kind of a red shirt versus blue shirt scrum? >> depends on who in the congress we're speaking of. dan and i spoke frequently and became good friends while i was there. i will tell you something, i guess informed a lot of my thinking in congress. i was there about four months and i had never served in any political office before being elected even though my good friend tossed the group elected in 2011 under the bus, that was me. i was sitting with scott rachel who is a car dealer. i was a roofing contractor by trade. we were both business people and we are sitting in the chamber

for votes and scott leaned over to me, hey, have you met any democrats yet. we had been there 3 months and in committee meetings you go and get sequestered, all the democrats go in their room and there's no discussion between the two and i said, no, i haven't met any. he said, well, why don't with go meet some and i said, i think that's a good idea, you go over there just, they are all sitting over there. just pick one and i will pick one and we will go out to dinner and that's what we did. and i went over there and i introduced to congressman jim cooper and scott introduced to congress kurtt schrader. we picked two of the most moderate members of the chamber. total fluke that that happened. we became really good friends. congress functions in what good friend of mine of member

congress told mere a pyramid of power. and everybody is working to climb up onn top of the pyramid. at the very top of the pyramid there's a speaker of the house and right below are the majority leaders and majority minority whips. they are there and then directly below them are the committee chairman but c i would even -- i would even say directly below the -- the whips and the majority and minority leaders it's really the directors of the committee and then below are the committee chairman and then below them are the legislator directors on your staff and then at the bottom of the period is everybody else, all the members. we had no power whatsoever. everything was driven from the top and i was in the majority the whole time, speaker john boehner was the speaker and he basically governed republican caucus using the that's hastert rule. that point it can move forward. however, when ryan became

speaker is the nature, the there. that were sent it pretty much got to the point nothing came to the floor unless we could pass it on the our own. unless wean didn't have 218 vot, so nothing could happen without that. soea what that meant then that everything was directed from the top and we even had less power in that case and so i -- i'm struck by the congress' unwillingness to jealously and vigorously guard their authority under article 1 of the constitution. they are very willing to pass that authority off to a president and two recent examples would be the -- the u.s. senate under president trump was controlled by republicans and they just all rolled over when president trump didn't want going through process consent for cabinet

positions so trump just made a bunch of acting secretaries and the senate rolled over on their back and waited for trump pat them on the timmy and let him do whatever he wanted and today you've got similar thing going on with president biden just deciding well, we are going to issue $20 billion of -- of credits to student loans and we are goingen to forget it. and the congress got all the power of the purse but they just refused to hold onto and protect and guard their power and it damages the institution. and so i think to get back to where the congress is actually a representative body doing the work that the american people want, they are going to have to seize that power back from the executive branchhe even when its their guy or gal from the white house. they have to be able to say no. nice, mr. president, madame president that you have this opinion, we will let you know, if you like it sign it, if you don't, veto it and we will take

it from there. they are just unwilling to protect own authority. it's dis-- discouraging to watch it unfold. >> i'm old enough to remember the carter presidency, i mean, you had a democratic congress, you had a democratic president but congress was often just openly contemptuous of the white house and it was comp tempous of it and they fought amongst themselves frequently, republicans sitting on the side watching the whole spectacle and rare. that's why i turnhi to you, phi, the issue of congress giving up authority, the constitution says it has, james madison probably would be a bit perplexed by this, you know, a binge of his scheme to some degree involves low motives of human beings wanting to hold and wheel power as part of keeps separation of

powers working. people want to guard the power that they have by virtue of being in the branch, as we all know, delegation giving away a power, refuse of the wield power has become regularized. why d' members do that? isn't power fun? why wouldn't they want to use it? >> the whole ambition counteracting ambition depends on sort of this individual sense of drive and it has to be drive to do something and thus take the responsibility onto yourself rather than just ambition to be seen. that's why a lot of ambitions aree channeled these days and it can't just be ambition to help your partyhe win the next election, right, that's really the thing that dominates our -- our current political moment is the sensee that, oh, well, it really is so important for my party to win the next election. the ambition is let's get our

party in the white house where they're exercising this sort ofr real power in the system and we will take it from there and we will cheer -- cheer them on whe they -- when we have the real power and we will try the slow the other guys when they have it. i guess it's a source of hope for me because i do think that, you know, dan and reid are not so unusual in feeling a lot of frustrations with just how useless members of congress can feel sometimes, right, i think it's a very widely shared sense and the people who get elected are talented and ambitious people. so i think people do feel frustrated and they wish they could be more involved in a meaningful legislative process

where they aree helping to find sortng of strange bed fellows across the aisle and making things happen but they're willing at the same time to sit back and listen to their leaders when their leaders tell them no, that's really not so helpful for the really important thing of winning the next election. part of it is a plea and the bookends with an open letter to members of congress, pretty much just says, hey, aren't you ambitious? don't you want to get something done for this country? isn't this trend of central evasion played out, haven't we had enough of the political moment and a sense that we've kind of exhausted its possibilities? don'tt you want to be a part of mixing it up and solving the country's problems in a more active way, you know, don't you want to be something more than a glorified telemarketer as i know one of your former colleagues

described the job and i do think that a lot of members really do want that and soo i'm hopeful that they can, you know, i'm hopeful they can draw inspiration from the history of their own institution to know that congress has function on very different operative principles and has been organized in different ways to help that kind offe law making happen in the past and -- and certainly could at this point as well. >> so i want to go back to congressman lapinski, this image of the house not being the place where interests are able to work out amongst themselves as being very driven from the top down, is that a structural issue primarily by internal rules and structure of the chamber, is that a partisanship issue? what is it? >> it is driven bipartisanship, it is driven by the divide in --

in the country. but it is reinforced by the s.rules and at the beginning of this congress, i had a washington post saying they are talking about we need to open the process up, we want more of a say of what's going on and we don't want this to be top down ands i said this is good, this s something that is interesting that they felt that well, they want more of a say and somehow they're going to have more control, i don't quite understand that and i'm all for opening things up.

in the problem solver's caucus we are trying to do that. in 2018 elections democrats got the majority in the house and the problem solvers caucus had agreed on some rule changes that we were going to demand whoever, whichever party had won the majority in 2018 election, a new speaker no matter what paul ryan said he was going to step down and we said we are going to demand for rule changes. open it up for more bipartisan, change the rules and open to more bipartisan law making. and unfortunately we didn't -- we made a few small changes but it's tough, it's really tough. atat that time almost nancy peli eventually going to bei speake. i don't want to upset nancy. so it's partially the rules. a lot of it is, look, i'm sure

-- i would assume those members that this past week said we are not going the passwe a rule. you need -- in order to consider legislation on the floor you need to pass a rule. generally the majority party votes for the rule. it's -- it says this bill will come up and how much debate time andd amendments if any, minority votes against it and we are upset that we feel that we didn't have enough input on the debt dealing and so they stopped that from moving forward. and i forgot my point there. >> i agree. i like an awful lot of the

rhetoric from some of those folks back in january. but it has to be in service of coalition building and the operative principle has to be persuasion. you actually have to imagine reaching out to your colleagues and meeting them where they stand abconvincing them that they should do business with you. the strange part that these folks want to blow the floor open and have more of a chance to have a say on the floor and have amendments on the floor and i'm all for that but really for congress to get its mojo back it needs to legislate that make laws and you make laws by assembling majorities and so i think the question that i've always had how do we get the moderates to feel more organized such that they are the ones making demand and speaker is soy

about it or not and the problem solve e's caucus has done good work in that regard but in some ways i find the group less assertive than i wish it was. >> less willing to yield their votes in opposition to stop something for sure because most of the problem solvers are pramatists.ec first word of the constitution. all. pretty inclusive word. all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested and trusted in the congress of the united states which shall consist senate, house of representatives. so all the legislative power that ourt founders bestowed, ty granted herein in the constitution was given to this body, the congress and they had

to wrestle between the states and the people, the house of representatives and the senate to come up with some time of agreement and there never was this idea that the president is going to write legislation and say because i got voted by all of the time you have to do this it's not even remotely because the revolution itself was in opposition to a monarchy, power, in fact, john quncy after he served as president he want back to house of representatives. can you imagine a president of the united states lowering himself to serve in the house of representatives. that's where the power resided in the earlier days and the congress is just -- they're not embraced this at all and i agree both with what you two just said regarding some of the rules changes but one rule change that they needed they didn't push for and that is that you needed to

rest power away from committee chairman and committee chairman are subject to the speaker the speaker still has too much power and the way you rest power away from committee chairman is by having committee chairman selected by the members of the committee because then the chairman would be beholding to the members of the committee rather than the speaker who selects them and the most significant thing they could have made is done that and then you would begin to devow power back to the members and the great wisdom of the crowd that you speak of in your book could emerging but right now the citizens that are represented by kevin mccarthy in california, those citizens, the wisdom of that crowd had way more say and the wisdom of the crowd in northeast wisconsin has none and that's where the wisdom of the crowd breaks down because those members were the proxy, they are

the vote, they are the say, here is what northeast wisconsin and here is what dan in illinois feels about this or that, this is what the citizens say about this or that and they place a card in the machine and vote. that's the only way that the wisdom of the crowd can emerge through this elected body and begin to be heard begin but that could stop because everything is being driven by the top. >> one thing i will say, anyone who is in this room watching this, if there's one thing besides reading phil's book that if want you to take out of this, if you don't know it, congress is article one of the constitution. wegi start out all legislative powerth there. i don't think most americans know that or understand that. they think the president is the leader of everything. the president is supposed to make policies for the country, is supposed to make laws for and

the wisdom and i've gone back in the last couple of years and looked at the federalist papers, just the wisdom of, you know, the men who wrote the constitution and this idea it's a vast, very diverse country even as a time of the founding was a diverse country. how do we keep people together. well, everyone needs to feel like they -- that they have a voice through their representative and i go back to there are not just two ways of thinking, there's not a red way or blue way, there's a lot of diversity across the country. we need those voices to come in and this is a diversity. i think you can paint this as a diversity issue, we're in the hearing all of the different voices across the country and that's the way it was meant to

be. >> schools invite you to come in as member of congress to talk about how congress works. i would take the high school class and i would say today we will create a house and senate in here and we are going to vote on where we are going to lunch and we would divide the room up and then they would have to deliberate and come to a conclusion about where they were going tore go to lunch that day. i would walk around and give somebody card and on the card i said i'm shellfish allergic and another card might say allergy to peanuts and try to show the diversity, the diversity all had to be brought into consideration to get to a conclusion and in the strength of that diversity that congress is allowed and power themselves.

>> so i want to double back to this issue that everyone has hit upon about recent speakers being so powerful, speaker is a single person in a chamber of 435. why is this so person so powerful? what's the source of the power? >> who wants to start in that one? you want -- >> i can tell you my take on it. >> sure. >> i think members like it that way. so when you observe continued dysfunction in any organization in a business, in a congress, in gra marriage, if you continue to observe dysfunction you have to ask the question who is winning as a result of this dysfunction and then you can identify why

the dysfunction exists. when relinquish power to somebody else, when the congress relinquishes it to the speaker they have someone to blame when they gofo home. i was fighting for this but the president wouldn't let us but i'm still going to be fighting for you tomorrow and you get somebody to blame. they get to carry the weight of any bad decision and i think members like that. i think they want to be protected as opposed to wanting to actually behold the power that was the rightful, the rightful heirs of the power based on the electorate that sent them there. >> the old observation about legislative politics is that politics either want to claim credithe or they want to shift blame and to claim credit you at least have to engage in a credible amount of ax to assay

that you achieved something where you're suggesting blame -- >> easiest vote to take is no vote. you canle win reelection and voe no on everything. >> i -- i want to add to that because -- i think there's some truth and a lot of people lay that as primary reason why members of congress give up power, they can't get blamed, i always think that, maybe especially because i'm coming out of, the democratic party, just the idea, we've talked about how democrats and republicans don't mix. the idea that we have our party has all the answers and members come in and first of all, a lot of members who come, new members now get elected, they are not going to be anyth different. they don't know how to

legislate. they don't even think of the idea that i'm going to come in and actually be able to participate in the legislative process. they are thinking i've got elected, i'm here for the team and there's so much that. i'm here for the team and if the leader of the team says, well, you've got to follow along, then you say, okay, all right, i'm here, you know, we have to get, we need to defeat the evil of the other side and if you don't go along the evil on the other side can win. we all need to stay or else the evil other side can win. some of the members don't know what they can possibly do in being legislators and speakers are given a heck of a lot of power and when you get the idea that if i want anything done here, i need to -- i have to go

with king or queen. if they will do something that i want to get done, i can go home and take credit for. i need to go to them. i need to get them to make it happen and therefore i can't cross them in any way, i better follow along untilfo i get my chance to ask for my favor from the monarch. i think that's also part of -- of what's going on. >> i think both of your answers explain a lot about sort of the stickiness of the current moment but i guess again i take some hope from the longer history of the place because i think to some extent those forces are always at work and i think it's still within thehe realm of serious possibilities for members to sort of feel like this threat is played out, at some point being the partisan

team player is not worth it anymore because your own party has gotten so twisted up in its own sort of self-defense rather than actually solving the people's problems and doing the people's work and so i -- i do think, you know, politics, congressional politics, it's gotten kind of boring, right. the debt c ceiling, that's exciting in a certain kind of way but if you know how to watch, it's pretty darn predictable and pretty boring and -- >> happens 100% of the time, likely too happen. >> the media does its darndest to turn into a good story but it's so predictable and it's so sterile and it's not -- it's not going to solve our problems, it's not going to produce anything interesting. if you -- if you really feel like it's important that we' coe up with some novel solutions to

the problems facing the country, congress can be an engine of that. it really is a better place to be an engine of that than the executive branch. the executive branch is not really cut out for creativity. it's cut out for executing the laws that are already on the books and so congress, you know, think of an issue like immigration which is one of the chapters, a sort of case s in my book. there's such widespread sense that our immigration system is broken in so many ways and an awful lot of common sense people feeling like we ought to be able to make a deal, right, we ought to be able to make a deal that does something aboutou the bordr and the problem -- the problem with our immigration courts being so blocked up and that there's something for all people stuck in this legal gray world. there's so many for different aspects of it and it's just waiting for congress to pass a

law and we all kind of know that and sometimes but we have all given up on it and we are hoping that somehow the president can use some covid statute to make it all work out. nobody really believes that that's going to work too well, congress engages in ways to help covering up the way budging the statutory powers. so the need is there. the chance to break things open and come up with solutions in congress is there, we just need -- we need some people to show us some bravery, to show some willingness to realize that holding onto their office is not the most important thing and, i mean, dan is somebody who had the courage of his convictions and suffered the consequences for it unfortunately. but, you know, that wasn't -- that -- i don't think you feel all that much regret about that.

>> no. .. .. something. but when you narrow in just so one single thing they border, you're not going to get anything else. it just makes it virtually impossible to move it. they need there need to be more comprehensive in how they think.

so tactically can do something big like immigration reform. so my question about the speaker pivot away from that, but i it's very interesting that in part the you know, we know the speaker has formal powers. you know what what's going to get voted upon. well, speaker is going to have a lot to do with that sits on the rules committee. well speaker is going to have a lot of sway there but also a lot of the power comes from simply other legislators thinking the speaker has power or simply giving power away. now, my last question before we do the audience questions is to ask each of you you've lamented about the state of congress. what can be done to fix it, and i want to start with you, dan. then read, then fill. you should never start with on a question like that, looking for something looking for hope. i many years thinking this this has to get better this has to return to working.

i came in in 2005 and i think still is second bush term we're starting something still got done there were some things done in a bipartisan way after 2008 election. president obama gets elected the republicans to me at that point the republicans became much more partizan. i call it a sectarian where you just it's the team in just hate the other side we can't even talk to them much less compromise them. and then 2016, president trump gets elected, go off and at that same direction our, i wondered, there was a time in 2013, 2014 where i said i keep saying things have to get better and i finally quit saying things need to get better. i'm glad i said before donald trump was was. you need we've we've seen it

phil talk about in the book we've seen historically there have been revolts members get tired of this and there's a revolt. the problem now that i see is more members are more concerned about losing a primary than losing the general election. so they're in and who has the power in the primaries it's the more extreme members, more extreme voters, your party. i certainly know this myself and that's where the activists are. that's where the workers and the primary campaigns from small dollar donation earns. i tell you, try giving small dollar donations when you're not saying, oh, the world is going to end. if you don't send me five, ten, $20. it's look, donald trump raised most from dollar donors than anyone in history has. that's a a major problem. and i would guess that these members 11 republican members republicans rule this week i

would guess i don't know if true that they went home and heard from their active how did you let this happen how did you let terrible deal happen you need to do and i thought well what can we do. oh well we'll now that we're we're not going to go along, we're we're we're not going to we're not going to play along. and this is what we're going to do is vote this rule on a bill that we want we want passed, but we need to show it because our the activist the people who we are really listening to, calling for this when it change, i don't know. very quickly, i remember in december of of 2020, all this talk about is the in voting to certify the electors in each state. i remember a called problem solvers caucus and were republican members who were saying i just the phone doesn't stop ringing people are

protesting outside my office. they're all saying you have to vote no on and i mean, they felt that and i, i usually never would ever in my 16 years suggested to member what they should do. but i said look you there's a time you have to be willing to stand up and say i'm willing lose my job over this because this is this is so important. and i thought maybe would you know, i, i sort of felt like to some extent i did. they were just so they're like this is probably it. if i if i vote for the, you know, certify electors, that's it. and they're listening to the very vocal minority. but they have a sway. and that's that's thing that how do we get away from that? how do we get. you know, human nature doesn't

change how do we get members who are to say, i think this in fact, what they're doing, it's not just they're saving themselves. they also you also buy into we have the answers and my party has the answers in all the answers. and those are things that somehow have to be broken. i don't have the answer to that. so i'm one of the two of you. does. yeah. i don't think there's a good answer. i never been more fearful for the republic than am in this time. i thought typically it was a crisis where you see congress to function, whether it's a civil war, war one or two. you saw the congress really emerging and become very, very effective. i actually thought january six would have been a triggering event in the history of the country. the first time that we we lack a peaceful transfer of power, that that would have been an event that would have caused people to pause. but the speed at which misinformation and disinformation can move through

through internet today is shocking and profoundly damaging. i, and i confess, to you and i wish it wasn't so much this that i went into congress a bit cynical. i ran because i was cynical and i left congress more cynical than what i went in the that we have right now is is the american people must do a better job at selecting and promoting leaders. and then and then holding their feet to the fire lead. and we need a president who is willing to to actually use moral hazard to force the congress to to the president must relinquish its own power and force the congress to moral hazard, to do their work. and i think that's i think that's ultimately what it'll take that'll probably be triggered by some crisis moment in country. but if i had a solution. i will say this the committee on modernization was a really first step that only works in the

house wasn't working in the senate didn't do it. but if we could just get the to function normally again, that would be helpful. i think they came up with some really good ideas and. so but i've hundreds of audiences since i left, i'll frequently ask a question, how many of you would give the congress of the united an approval rating above 25%? in our tell you, i hardly ever see a hand go up and that tells you that people are by congress the striking disconnect however and the decent send at all the fact that they keep reelecting their own member. they hate the congress, but they love their person person. now, phil, the professional. what do you do? well, the book with with three scenarios which are, i think some of the more fun chapters of the book. they start with dispatches from from the future written by observers in 2039 the 250th

birthday of congress. looking back and thinking where the institution has gotten to by then and the three scenarios are called decrepitude the rubber stamp and revival and i have to admit the first two chapters of the of that set of three were a lot easier to write than the third one. it serves doesn't require too much imagination to imagine congress getting hollowed out, even more than it is today. we should emphasize congress, is not a completely broken place by. any stretch of the imagination, some some good things still happen there. and those things could get more screwed up than they are today. you know. and so the revival chapter. yeah, i kind of agree it kind of seems like we need a real shock to the system to cause this kind of revolt, to cause this kind of

willingness to shake things up. because as long as as long as things sort of stay within lines that we're familiar with today, members are going to keep making the same choices. so that's a hard reality to face. but, you know, if i was going to offer some reforms on the margin which i'm certainly willing to do, i do think devolving power to the committees is isn't thing to do. and i like the idea that we floated before of having members elect their own. i also just like idea of guaranteeing committees floor time part of the problem today is if you make yourself a diligent workhorse in a committee and make yourself a policy expert and. work on writing really good bills with your fellow members. they may not actually go anywhere. they may not even be considered by your own chamber low enough, let alone have a chance to become law so. the more we could do to actually guarantee that, hey, if you're willing to go be a workhorse in congress, if you're willing to

put in the time and write good legislation, not hard subjects, you're to at least have a chance to get it passed into law. that would be a very healthy change in to get some people with ambition realize that they can make something of those ambitions as legislate leaders and not just as performers who who use their perches in congress to get attention all right the time we have left let's go to audience questions gentlemen in the front row. so thank you very much for the microphones coming to you. excellent. thank you very much. my name is tom doan. i worked in the senate for ten years in the 1970s and then worked around both houses as leading different organizations afterwards. i'm a product of the cold war and the vietnam war, and i saw things coming apart right in front of our eyes when members

didn't want to harm, the executive to push the button if they had to incoming missiles, whatever required to stave off the soviet union in doing i also watched particularly in the senate i spent ten years there. the this the authorizing committees giving up power and the appropriators particularly starting with the house therefore became kingmakers afterwards. at least that's how i led different organizations you will to deal with members. so phil i look forward to reading you because i agreed so much to your opening. but we all love madison, all love whoever helped. but then again, 74, like the vietnam war, gingrich's role. can you expand some? i could go on here, but i don't. that's chapter four and five of the book.

so crack a crack it open. and i should mention two members here in person books are on that table for you. it's for you to take. so please, please help yourselves when. we break. i will say that in in that in that era that you mentioned, when there was such a profound loss of trust in government, there was a chance i for the legislature to sort rise in people's estimation and. so a famous book that i like very much was written in 1980 called the decline and resurgence of congress. so seen seventies as a time of resurgence for the institution in large part because of watergate and the ways that vietnam led people to be suspicious. the executive. and so looking on this, the era when you worked the senate, it was actually it was a very exciting time in terms of ambition, reshaping the place,

really a lot of a lot of energy in the halls of congress. but i'd say, unfortunately, they they kind of they didn't they didn't succeed in sort of settling on a model that would really take advantage of congress's distinctive institute or capacities specifically you sort of a shift from legislation to oversight in the seventies and a sense it wasn't always so important whether you passed the laws you could just hold the subcommittee and there were a huge proliferation of subcommittees with staff this time and they did a lot of checking. exactly, yeah. and so i think they they created the carter administration kind of a sense that congress was just a big mess and cacophony, is the word that i use in my chapter title.

that sort of left a problem to be solved. but unfortunately, we didn't we didn't try to solve it with the madisonian logic. we, we turned to the wilsonian logic more and more from the mid 1980s onward. and people people who are frustrated with congress, like a young newt gingrich, they brought a very wilsonian sensibility to american politics. they did not believe in the congress as a place of factional competition, really. newt gingrich from from his very campaign in the mid seventies was saying congress is a corrupt, terrible, we need to take the brooms, clean out the stables. and when when he and he relentlessly campaigned against the institution and even when he became the speaker of the house, he was in a sense oriented against the coalition building of congress. and he very much came in, in a wilsonian way. we have a mandate from the people. we gave them the contract with

america. we won the midterms. president clinton only won because of ross perot. time to do what the republicans want. after all those decades of doing what? doing things the democratic way. and he never he didn't really have legislative sensibilities. my argument in the book he he was not a coalition builder disposition and he tried to smash a lot things through without much regard for even what the senate would think of it, let alone how he would get president clinton on board. he just sort of expected that his moment had arrived and would work out and, you know, the puzzle to me is that model was really not that successful in in, you know, republicans in the mid nineties did not roll the great society. that was their ambition and they failed. welfare reform is the signal where they were. they got something important passed, but by and large, their just failed. but nevertheless, the gingrich model has stuck. and, you know if you look at the

idea of of centralized house leadership, of running things from their hip pocket, that was gingrich's idea it was the idea of jim wright who had relentlessly hounded out of office. in 1988. and, you know. i think we need we need to get away from this of thinking. i think the part of the book's ambition is to try to there is another way of thinking about institution. we need to get away from this wilsonian. everything is going to be decided in the elections mentality. frankly, elections just can't carry that much weight. there were 37 when i was in congress for 37 committees and subcommittee that had authority in some way over health care, 37 so they each could write rules and offer legislate action on health care. but they were all, in their own silos. and so it's no wonder that this thing all comes unglued. and and so i did radical thing the republicans were in control.

i was a republican. so in the rules we were setting up the rules for the 115th congress. i offered a rule change to create a committee on care, but that would remove the ability these 37 other committees to do fundraising in the health care industry. you would have thought that the whole world was going to come. it's the single biggest expense federal government has. when you had medicare and medicaid and all the va benefits, everything that church run health care and no single source or single place where experts can reside aid and deal with one of the most important issues for the american people today. well, i regret to inform you all that we've hit the 75th minute, but me say this for those you who braved the smog, feel free to stick around afterwards. everyone's going to be here and we're happy to chat. for those of you who are watching there, thank you for tuning in. and if we can, can we please get

a round of applause? our panel. henry grabar. i think i got that