It's Even Worse Than It Looks Quotes

“Today's Republican Party...is an insurgent outlier. It has become 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, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism

“The single-minded focus on scoring political points over solving problems, escalating over the last several decades, has reached a level of such intensity and bitterness that the government seems incapable of taking and sustaining public decisions responsive to the existential challenges facing the country.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism

“Since the debt limit simply accommodates debt that has already been incurred, raising it should, in theory, be perfunctory. But politicians have found it a useful shibboleth for showing their fealty fiscal discipline, even as they vote to ratify the debts their previous actions have a beginning the country to pay. The symbol of railing against debt has proven politically beneficial, even if not substantively meaningful.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism

“In never-ending efforts to defeat incumbent officeholders in hard times, the public is perpetuating the source of its discontent, electing a new group of people who are even less inclined to or capable of crafting compromise or solutions to pressing problems.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism

“Sixty years ago, Austin Ranney, an eminent political scientist, wrote a prophetic dissent to a famous report by an American Political Science Association committee entitled “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.”4 The report, by prominent political scientists frustrated with the role of conservative Southern Democrats in blocking civil rights and other social policy, issued a clarion call for more ideologically coherent, internally unified, and adversarial parties in the fashion of a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy like Britain or Canada. Ranney powerfully argued that such parties would be a disaster within the American constitutional system, given our separation of powers, separately elected institutions, and constraints on majority rule that favor cross-party coalitions and compromise. Time has proven Ranney dead right—we now have the kinds of parties the report desired, and it is disastrous.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism

“President Obama’s postpartisan pitch fell flat, and the Tea Party movement pulled the GOP further to its ideological pole. Republicans greeted the new president with a unified strategy of opposing, obstructing, discrediting, and nullifying every one of his important initiatives.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism

“Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism

“the limits amplified the corrosive effects of ambition on the legislators, who focused from day one on how best to use their limited time as a springboard to their next post. That produced incentives to go for a big, short-term splash and leave the long-term mess to the next wave of their successors.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism

“He (Newt Gingrich as a freshman congressman) was both passionate about his goals and coldly analytical in his means.”
― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism