The Last Politician Quotes

“failed to create an arm of the government that will be forever attached to his name, nothing like Obamacare or remotely resembling social security. But the thrust of the Inflation Reduction Act can still be described as transformational—and it will change American life. The theory of the legislation is that the world is poised for a momentous shift. For a generation, the economy has taken tentative steps away from its reliance on fossil fuels. New technologies emerged that lowered the costs of solar panels and wind turbines and batteries; the mass market showed genuine interest in electric vehicles and heat pumps. But the pace of adaptation was slow, painfully slow given the looming changes to the climate. On its own, the economy was never going to evolve in time to avert the worst consequences”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“The simple solution was for Manchin to concede. He could just give Sinema her win—and find another way to pay for the bill. But Manchin wasn’t in a yielding mood. “I’m not going to let her define this bill,” he told Steve Ricchetti. To dislodge the pair of obstinate senators, Schumer enlisted Mark Warner, one of their fellow centrists. Warner considered both of them friends and had a history of skillfully steering them in leadership’s favored direction. Warner’s first task was getting Manchin to relent, which meant a late-night visit to his houseboat. A summer storm soaked Warner’s suit, and he lounged around in a borrowed T-shirt and a pair of Manchin’s flip-flops. “Show generosity of spirit,” he urged. He had an ally in Manchin’s wife, Gayle, who had access to emotional weaponry that Warner didn’t. “You can’t be greedy on this,” she told her husband. Having worked through his anger, Manchin could see that he had little choice but to grant Sinema her win.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Despite their shared centrism, there was an ideological difference that separated them. They championed different constituencies. Where Sinema built an alliance with Wall Street, Manchin enjoyed occasionally sticking it to the bankers, like a good old-fashioned populist from the hollers. And where Manchin felt a home-state duty to the fossil fuels industry, and personally benefited from its success, Sinema wanted to break its stranglehold over climate policy. In the course of negotiations with Schumer, Manchin had insisted on a provision ending the carried-interest loophole—a gaping unfairness in the tax code that allows hedge fund and private equity managers to count their revenue as capital gains and avoid the income tax. But Sinema had a history of defending that loophole. Manchin had every reason to believe that Sinema would despise his proposal—and that she would likely consider it a red line—but he insisted on pushing forward with it, regardless. Schumer didn’t fight Manchin. He wasn’t going to worry about his Sinema problem when it was theoretical. But now her objection was more than a theoretical source of worry. Sinema constituted the primary obstacle to the realization of Schumer’s greatest achievement, and he was stuck.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Secrecy, however, came at a cost. Every Democratic senator greeted the announcement with euphoria, except for one. Kyrsten Sinema learned about the agreement on the floor of the Senate, when Republican senator John Thune mentioned it to her. And she instantly unleashed her fury on Schumer. In fairness, Joe Manchin knew that the legislation would needle her. Over the past year, the pair struggled to suppress their rivalry. They both enjoyed being the fiftieth senator, the vote on which their party’s agenda depended. It was the point of maximum leverage—and it came with the plaudits of tycoons, who cheered them for spoiling the Democratic agenda. Despite”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“That afternoon, Manchin and Schumer published a joint statement revealing their secret agreement to the world. And the world couldn’t quite believe it. Politico deemed it a “shocker.” And when that outlet relayed the news to Tiernan Sittenfeld, the League of Conservation Voters’ top lobbyist, she could only manage to blurt, “Holy shit.” In Washington, these sorts of surprises were usually spoiled by the city’s high concentration of reporters and its cultural proclivity for leaking. After so many months of false dawns, it felt only prudent to view this as another moment of bloated expectations. But this was unlike every other plot point. This wasn’t hearsay evidence of Manchin’s endorsement of a theoretical deal, but a definitive statement issued in his name.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“That afternoon, Manchin and Schumer published a joint statement revealing their secret agreement to the world. And the world couldn’t quite believe it. Politico deemed it a “shocker.” And when that outlet relayed the news to Tiernan Sittenfeld, the League of Conservation Voters’ top lobbyist, she could only manage to blurt, “Holy shit.” In Washington, these sorts of surprises were usually spoiled by the city’s high concentration of reporters and its cultural proclivity for leaking. After”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“That left one last task before they could tell the world about their deal. Manchin, who now had his own case of COVID, needed Biden’s formal endorsement of their agreement. All along, Manchin was convinced that the White House was going to hate provisions in the deal expanding oil and gas leases. But many in the White House, like Brian Deese, were perfectly comfortable with what Manchin wanted. Given the conflict in Ukraine and the spike in energy prices, they were happy to expand domestic production of energy. It was politically expedient, at the very least—and might help lower prices in the middle of a crisis. When Biden came on the line and greeted Manchin, he purred, “Joe-Joe!” After nine months of emotionally exhausting back-and-forth, they were done.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Schumer was too anxious to revel in his first victory. He needed to see Nancy Pelosi, to let her know about his deal with Manchin. A year earlier, Pelosi felt blindsided by Schumer when he failed to tell her about how he signed a surreptitious agreement with the West Virginia senator. Now, he was ready to spring a much happier surprise on her, although he wasn’t sure how she would respond to Manchin’s demands, which he worried might irk Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades on the Left. But Schumer couldn’t relay his revelation to Pelosi, because he couldn’t reach her. She was in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, receiving a briefing on Ukraine, without access to a cell phone. When she finally emerged, Schumer trekked to her office. It came as an enormous relief that she didn’t think twice about agreeing to Schumer’s side deals with Manchin. Schumer asked her to call the West Virginia senator to relay her assent.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Mitch McConnell’s threats hovered over the calendar. He publicly threatened to kill CHIPS if Schumer moved forward with his reconciliation bill. Thus the need for secrecy—and choreography. To protect CHIPS, Schumer needed McConnell to believe that reconciliation was a distant fantasy. He needed to expeditiously pass the semiconductor bill before word of his deal with Manchin leaked. But he also wanted to avoid embarrassing the Republicans who intended to vote for CHIPS. His plan was to wait a day after passing the semiconductor bill before announcing his deal. But this was summer in Washington.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“In search of sixty votes, CHIPS grew more expansive. To the White House’s delight, undecided Republican senators bartered for investment in research and development in their home states. The bill began to hark back to the Cold War, when the menace of a foreign enemy provided a pretext for expanding universities and erecting research laboratories. CHIPS now poured billions into the National Science Foundation, to fund research and development in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. It set money aside to develop a deeper pool of American scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. But”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“They also needed a name: Manchin toyed with calling it the Energy Security Act. Together they dubbed it the Inflation Reduction Act. The moniker didn’t really capture the contents of the bill, or its grandeur. But the tax credits and health care provisions would make life cheaper. That might be a touch disingenuous, and it certainly wasn’t a title that would echo through the ages, but it had the feel of good politics. —”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Over the course of a fifteen-minute conversation, they shook hands and agreed to finalize the legislation that Manchin had sketched. They vowed to treat the last stage of negotiation as the closest-held secret in Washington. They weren’t going to keep the White House in the loop, since that is a building where secrets go to die. To finish by the August recess, they would need to sprint.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“As Schumer talked through the remarks he sketched in his head, his chief negotiator, Gerry Petrella, received a text from Lance West. There wasn’t much to the message, just a terse invitation to meet in Manchin’s hideaway office in the Capitol in an hour’s time. A few minutes later, a subsequent text arrived, asking Petrella if he minded Brian Deese’s joining them. “Of course not,” he replied. When Petrella and Deese arrived, West handed them a document.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“It doesn’t have to be,” Ricchetti told him. “It’s only over because you told Schumer that you weren’t ready.” Ricchetti felt that he needed to dislodge Manchin from his sense of fatalism. All along, Ricchetti considered himself the last optimist in the White House, the only one who truly believed that a climate bill would eventually land on the president’s desk. His role was to keep everyone talking at moments like this, when collapse seemed inevitable. He told Manchin that if he wanted to come back to the table—and to make something happen—he could. “We want this deal,” he pleaded with Manchin. “Tell us what you need.” “I’ll think about it,” Manchin replied. It felt like a polite rejection.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“That afternoon, Gerry Petrella scheduled a Zoom with dozens of staffers who had worked on Senate committees. Over the months, he had asked them for help cobbling together the details of policies, even though Petrella was coy about the purpose of his requests. But now, he was informing them that all their hard work had been in vain. He watched as the news washed over the faces on his screen. In boxes across his computer, staffers began tearing up. When the press reported the death of the climate negotiations, Manchin’s Senate colleagues allowed their pent-up frustrations to come rushing out. They wanted to hold him personally responsible for the government’s failure to avert climate catastrophe. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico tweeted that Democrats should consider stripping Manchin of his committee chairmanship. That seemed restrained compared with what activists said about Manchin on Twitter. It felt especially painful to learn that they had been so close to a climate bill—as if a generational opportunity had drifted away.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Two hours later, Schumer called Manchin from his sickbed. “What are you doing? We’re so close. This is going to be a history-making bill.” Manchin felt attacked and clung even more fiercely to his objections. “I’m not going to do something, and overreach, that causes more problems.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“After Manchin returned from recess, Schumer planned on sticking close to him so he could cajole him and ward off legislative saboteurs. But these were still pandemic times. Just as he was about to fly back from New York, Schumer tested positive for COVID. Instead of giving Manchin the LBJ treatment, Schumer was stuck in his Brooklyn apartment.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“The nature of the reconciliation process is that it doesn’t leave the minority party with many obstructionist options. But Mitch McConnell was determined to test them all. He announced that if the Democrats moved forward with reconciliation, he would sink the bipartisan CHIPS bill, which needed at least ten Republican votes to pass. The bill would invest nearly $300 billion in developing the American semiconductor industry, reducing the economy’s dependence on the foreign import of the single most important component of modern life. After a year of wallowing in limbo, CHIPS was weeks away from finally passing. McConnell felt that his threat might deter Schumer, who considered CHIPS a pet project. More”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“The parliamentarian represented a bottleneck in the process. She would need to scrutinize each provision, judging whether it fell within the acceptable bounds of the rule governing reconciliation, an audit known as a Byrd Bath—in honor of the West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, who created the arcane rules back in the seventies. Every provision in a reconciliation bill needed to have a “fiscal implication.” Otherwise, the parliamentarian would rule it out of bounds and excise it from the bill. If she rejected a provision, Schumer would be sent scrambling for a last-minute fix. The fragile structure that Schumer and Manchin had concocted might collapse. Before the Senate dispersed, Schumer summoned Manchin to his office. He felt as if he needed to light a fire under Manchin, to convince him that it was time to rush. —”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Schumer’s new enemy was the calendar. Senators were about to leave town for the Fourth of July, and Labor Day was looming in the near distance. This was an election year, and he couldn’t plausibly pass the bill once Congress headed to the hustings. Working backward, Schumer‘s staff figured that they really needed to vote a bill into law before Congress fled Washington for the August recess. That left roughly a month to rush things to completion. If they were passing a normal piece of legislation, he wouldn’t have worried. But this was a massive bill, which needed to comply with the exacting constraints of the reconciliation process, enforced by a persnickety parliamentarian.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“There were, at most, ten people in Washington who understood how close Chuck Schumer was to reviving Biden’s domestic agenda with an unlikely last-minute triumph—or how close it was to slipping away. The possibility of collapse was what had begun to bother Schumer. For a year, the primary obstacle to his legislative dreams was the obstreperous Joe Manchin. But Schumer’s policy director, Gerry Petrella, had spent the past two months negotiating with Manchin’s chief of staff, Lance West. In a conference room in the basement of the Capitol, the pair kept pushing toward an agreement for the ages, which they felt sure would shock the world when they could finally reveal it. They worked through the details”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“But Pelosi had every reason to be furious. The House had already passed a budget resolution authorizing $3.5 trillion in spending. And Pelosi was driving House committees to furiously finish the donkey work required to create a fully realized bill. But Schumer knew that all that work was futile, and he hadn’t bothered telling her. They were producing language for a bill that Joe Manchin was never going to support. Why hadn’t he bothered telling Pelosi about that? The best Schumer could muster was that his agreement with Manchin wasn’t binding. In truth, Schumer was engaged in the very same process as Pelosi. He just wanted to press forward. When Manchin arrived in his office with the “contract,” Schumer agreed to sign it because it was the path of least resistance. Schumer needed Manchin’s support for a procedural vote advancing Build Back Better—and this contract was the condition of his support. If Manchin voted against the procedural vote, the whole bill would be stalled, if not effectively dead. So rather than attempting to negotiate with Manchin, he did what it took to move forward, even if it left him with a future mess. He could deal with the mess when the moment arrived. In the meantime, he just signed the damn thing. But he also handwrote an addendum onto the document that supplied him with cover. It read, “Will try to dissuade Joe on many of these.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“I’m having a hard time hearing you,” she said. “Why don’t you write some of this down. I want to make sure that I have this right. Then text it to me.” A text arrived, a document that she had never seen before. She struggled to make sense of it. In a memo dated July 28, Manchin outlined the spending that he’d accept in a final reconciliation bill. He said that he could accept $1.5 trillion—and, with specificity, described the tax hikes he favored and the clean energy programs he preferred. What surprised Pelosi, shocked her, really, was that Manchin affixed his signature to the bottom of the document—and Chuck Schumer had signed it, too. In her state of shock and anger, she phoned Schumer. “What’s this? He just sent me this thing and it kinda has your name on it.” Schumer fumbled for an answer. “That was my acknowledging that I saw what he was doing.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Nancy Pelosi trailed the president as he circled the ballpark, then perched herself in the stands. As she watched Biden enjoy himself with abandon, her phone rang. It was Joe Manchin. Despite the noise of the crowd—and the fact there were cameras all around her—she went to work. “We have got to get this done, Joe.” Manchin wasn’t having it. “I don’t believe in entitlements,” he told her. Pelosi started to grow aggravated, but this wasn’t the time or place for either having a philosophical debate about the role of government or brokering a deal. She was shouting to make herself heard. To all the world, it looked as if she were chewing out whoever was on the other side of the conversation.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Pelosi didn’t especially care for the infrastructure bill, at least not as a standalone piece of legislation. But her mission was to keep the wins coming, and she had a promise to her moderates to keep. Her best hope was to press to make it happen all at once, if she could, advancing both bills. If she needed to be the one to pressure Manchin into compliance, well, she would play that role. She’d placed a call to him, left a message to have him call, and then went to glad-hand at a sacred ritual.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“The problem was that the progressives in her flock didn’t trust the moderates, not the ones in the House, not Manchin or Sinema. They worried that if the moderates passed their beloved infrastructure bill, the progressives would be deprived of their primary bargaining chip. The moderates might grudgingly support the progressives’ grand plans to expand the safety net, but would seek to edit them down to a fraction of the proposed size—or perhaps kill them altogether.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“With each passing day, Nancy Pelosi found herself growing more agitated that chances for legislative victories were slipping away. In August, she cut a deal with the moderates in her caucus. They wanted her to guarantee a vote on the infrastructure bill, and she promised them one by September 27. But that deadline slipped because she couldn’t deliver enough votes.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“It would have been easier if Biden were dealing with just Manchin, but he wasn’t. He needed to bring Kyrsten Sinema along, and dealing with both of them was a maddening exercise. It was as if they were strategically out of sync. They kept pushing in opposite directions. Sinema didn’t want to raise taxes but was less skittish about spending money; Manchin was happy to raise taxes but didn’t want to spend too much. Pleasing one of the holdouts made it harder to cut a deal with the other. On September 22, Biden decided to confront the problem head on. Rather than conduct separate negotiations with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and six centrist House Democrats, he pulled them together for a meeting in the Oval Office. When senators entered the Oval Office to negotiate with Biden, they were surprised by his collegiality. He treated them as his equal. It was as if he were still Joe Biden (D-Del.), a legislative dealmaker, not a president imposing his will on them. Meetings with legislators were sometimes scheduled for two-and-a-half-hour blocks. And they were endless. Sinema came to the White House ten times over the summer and early fall. He was solicitous and patient, trying to edge them to consensus, for the most part. But Biden”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“Sanders would watch Biden at labor rallies, where they often followed each other on the program, and he noted that Biden consistently showed empathy for those without college degrees, a group he considered the most neglected in American politics.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future

“During Biden’s long period of flailing, I had feared that he had missed his chance to avert the worst consequence of climate change—and that another opportunity to protect the planet wouldn’t come around for years, after it was far too late. But then in the summer of 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a banally named bill that will transform American life. Its investments in alternative energy will ignite the growth of industries that will wean the economy from its dependence on fossil fuels. That achievement was of a piece with the new economics that his presidency had begun to enshrine. Where the past generation of Democratic presidents was deferential to markets, reluctant to challenge monopoly, indifferent to unions, and generally encouraging of globalization, Biden went in a different direction. Through a series of bills—not just his investments in alternative energy, but also the CHIPS Act and his infrastructure bill—he erected a state that will function as an investment bank, spending money to catalyze favored industries to realize his vision, where the United States controls the commanding heights of the economy of the future. The critique of gerontocracy is that once politicians become senior citizens, they will only focus on the short term, because they will only inhabit the short term. But Biden, the oldest president in history, pushed for spending money on projects that might not come to fruition in his lifetime. His theory of the case—that democracy will succeed only if it delivers for its citizens—compelled him to push for expenditures on unglamorous but essential items such as electric vehicle charging systems, crumbling ports, and semiconductor plants, which will decarbonize the economy, employ the next generation of workers, and prevent national decline.”
― Franklin Foer, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future