phil warlick and kevin koester and i are often the token conservatives in a lot of these conversations. but beneath what seems like agreement that the beginnings of those conversations, agreement that congress is dysfunction, there's actually a very profound disagreement about what function it is failing to perform. what is congress not doing? most people would answer. i think that it's not passing the legislation that they think is essential. it's not acting on entitlement reform or climate change or whatever you take to be the crucial challenge of the moment. that is the common view. but i think that it's a mistaken view of what's wrong with the institution. it seems to me that what congress is failing to do is not so much advance my policy agenda, but enable cross partizan accommodation. what it's failing to do is enable us to act together when we don't think alike. and that difference over diagnosis actually has some enormous implications for prescribing remedies. people who are frustrated with congress's failure to move legislation rather in with the failure to advance some idea o