 Welcome to the Cato Institute. Thank you very much for coming out in the middle of a monsoon and to hear about Congress, James Madison and our current politics. My name is John Samples. I'm director of the Center for Representative Government here at the Cato Institute. And today we're having a book form, as you know, for the new book by Bill Connolly Jr., James Madison Rules America, subtitled The Constitutional Origins of Congressional Partisanship. As you may know, a book form here at Cato comprises basically three kinds of events. First of all, we'll get to hear from our author, Professor Connolly, followed by some comments from Lee Rawls today. And then perhaps a little discussion between them and perhaps not. And in any case, we'll move on thereafter to question and answers in which you can pose your questions to both Professor Connolly and Mr. Rawls. And then we'll go to lunch. And during this period, too, you'll also have an opportunity to be able to purchase the books that you can read later that you've learned about here at the event. Now my only admonition as we go into this over the next hour and a half or so, by 1.30 or so, we'll break for lunch upstairs and we'll have more chance to talk about these issues. My only admonition, however, is I would ask you to turn off your cell phones so that they don't go off in the middle of the event. The underlying subtext of our book form today, I think, can be described in several ways about Congress. But one might be the question, what are we to do with Congress? And that really is in some ways America's questions. It is remarkable when you look at it. I myself was stunned by it when I looked at the polling data. How wide, broad, and sustained public disapproval of Congress as an institution has become. Did you know, for example, that the last time more people approved of Congress's performance than disapproved was in January of 2005? Well over five years ago, and that was only for a brief period. Since then, since that early January of 2005, disapprovals have been greater than approvals, often by 60% or more, or 50% or more. That is to say, 70% disapproved, 20% approved, which is about where we are right now. At the high tide of public approval of Congress was in March of 2009 in the early days of the Obama administration, and even then there was a 7-point difference. 48% disapproved of Congress, 41% approved of their performance. It's a remarkable story. Congress is an institution, which after all was thought to be the Republican institution by the framers of the Constitution. The Republican institution, par excellence, has fallen into deep, deep disregard among the American public. Probably much of the public sees Congress as public enemy. However, that also, I think, that phrase makes us pause for a minute because there in fact was a book called Congress as Public Enemy about public opinion. And that was from the mid-90s. So in a sense, this is nothing new. We have seen this concern and doubts about Congress. Now some people say that the reason Congress isn't held in such low regard is that it's the broken branch, quote, unquote. That the institution itself has failed because the people inside it have failed and have essentially broken the institution. With too much polarization, too much partisanship leads to gridlock, leads to public frustration, and finally a dour continuing public view of Congress. The idea on the other side is that if Congress were efficient, where it moved quickly and easily and passed laws and passed more rather than fewer laws, the public would not be frustrated and would be happy with the institution. Yet the frustration comes from, part from checks on majority power, from the political struggles, all of which have a political origin and a constitutional origin. In this book, and the reason I ask Professor Conley here today, it was important to hear why those kinds of constitutional 1789 Constitution, those kinds of institutional checks and balances and restraint were an important part in producing the way Congress is and why it's valuable. Because I believe, as I said to Professor Conley, around about November 3rd or so, I suspect we're going to hear a great deal about the dangers of gridlock, of inertia, of too much conflict and polarization and congressional failure. Our author today, Bill Conley, looks at Congress in his new book, James Madison Rules America, through a constitutional lens and finds what many people complain about, partisanship and too much struggle to be not only constitutionally designed and wanted by James Madison, to be of value, value that we often overlook. So I would like for you to welcome Bill Conley. Thank you, John. Thank you, John, for that kind introduction. I appreciate that. And thank you, Lee, for coming and participating in this panel. I mentioned to John a few minutes ago that what I intended to talk about today is mostly the subtitle of the book, The Constitutional Origins of Congressional Partisanship, which is in some sense a subset of the title of the book, James Madison Rules America, which is the argument that in some sense, even today, we are fundamentally governed by the Constitution. The second is an example, the subtitle is an example of the former. What I would like to do is defend a proposition for the sake of promoting discussion, and hopefully we'll have a healthy discussion afterward. And the proposition is this, that partisanship, including polarized partisanship, is normal, natural, and a necessary part of our constitutional system. As John alluded to a moment ago, there's a lot that's been written on partisan polarization, much of it lamenting the bitter partisan polarization of our politics. Ron Brownstein, National Journal reporter, wrote the second Civil War, the title alone suggests how severe the problem apparently is. Juliet Elperin, a Washington Post reporter, wrote a book called Fight Club Politics, premise I assume on the movie, by the same name, Fight Club that is, and Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein have written a book called The Broken Branch, that Congress is broken. And there are other examples that one might cite. You may also remember that Barack Obama, President Obama, ran as a post-partisan candidate, and pretty clearly he has failed at getting us beyond the partisanship in our politics. But who was the last president who failed, or who in part ran on the idea of getting us beyond the bitter partisan polarization of our politics, the compassionate conservative of George W. Bush, and arguably he failed in some sense too. And before that, Bill Clinton, who was promoting a third way politics, our presidents run on post-partisanship and then don't deliver it in some sense. I'm not sure that it's their fault, or simply their fault anyway. We commonly bemoan bitter partisan polarization and the permanent campaign. The permanent campaign is the political science shorthand for the idea that it's all politics all the time. We never get down to policy. We just keep playing politics and never get serious about policymaking. And so I can explain during the Q&A, if you wish, is in some sense fundamentally rooted in Madison's constitution. Madison intended that permanent campaign quality to our politics. You often hear that contrary to our constitutional system, that all of this, this bitter partisan polarization, the permanent campaign, gridlock as some people sometimes lament, that this is contrary to our constitutional system, that purportedly Madison gave us a system that would promote a pluralistic politics of coalition building and compromise that sort of can't we all get along civility. Now I do acknowledge that our politics is more polarized today, especially compared to the 1950s. That's the baseline that political scientists often turn to. And there is no question that over recent decades, and I don't think it's just the last two decades, it's at least three and maybe even four decades, there has clearly been an increased partisan polarization in our politics. That's a fact. But the 1950s may be more the exception than the rule. In the 1950s, it's worth remembering, political scientists lamented the lack of clear definition between the parties. There was a famous APSA report called toward a more responsible two-party system. And that report laments the excessively local, parochial, and pluralistic character of our politics, the fact that our parties were twiddle-D and twiddle-Dumb. This apparently was a problem. The municipal party school of thought, as it came to be called in political science, wanted parties that provided a choice, not an echo, a principled opposition as opposed to a sort of twiddle-D, twiddle-Dumb politics. Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for, because sometimes, after many decades, we get it. You often hear that the founders would not approve. James Madison did not think you could take the politics, including the partisanship, out of politics. Madison intentionally infused our politics with the spirit of party, his term, and faction, his term, of course, in Federalist 10. In Federalist 10, Madison notes that the principal task of modern legislation is the regulation of various interfering interests, which involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government. Madison's Constitution incorporates both the mischiefs of faction and the spirit of party. American politics encompasses both intense minorities and aspiring majorities, both minority factions, special-interest groups, and majority sentiment, often given voice by majoritarian parties. The Constitution checks and balances special interests and political parties, but the Constitution, however, also embraces and empowers special interests and political parties. Arguably, the struggle among contending interest groups of both constitutes and, if you will, corrupts our politics. This argument was made very nicely recently by Nicholas Lehmann in an article in The Atlantic that special-interest politics, both constitutes and corrupts our politics. Well, similarly, I would argue partisan confrontation between the political parties, both constitutes and potentially corrupts our politics. Still, people today persist in arguing that the founders were anti-party. Yet James Madison concluded, quote, parties seem to have a permanent foundation in the variance of political opinions in free states, end quote. Madison saw politics as essentially partisan, quote, no free country has ever been without parties which are a natural offspring of freedom, end quote. Indeed, Madison observed, quote, the Constitution itself must be an unfailing source of party distinction, end quote. It is tempting to concur with Madison and conclude that partisanship to this day is rooted in the Constitution. Some today insist the founders did not expect political parties to form, but that only, that parties only rose later in American history. But in a 1792 essay titled A Candid State of Parties, Madison outlines the state of parties at the time. Madison concludes, party distinctions are, quote, natural to most political parties, end quote, and will likely endure, even to this day perhaps. Admittedly, A Candid State of Parties is a partisan tract, just as were the federal's papers. Madison as the founder was a statesman, a politician, a political theorist, and a partisan, and that is not a criticism. Madison clearly understood, quote, in every political society, parties are unavoidable, end quote. In fact, he concluded, parties, quote, must always be expected in a government as free as ours, end quote. Madison recognized that American politics and partisanship are rooted in the Constitution. Mere partisanship is possible precisely because of limited constitutional government, or as I like to say, the Constitution governs parties more than the parties govern the Constitution. That too is something that I'd be happy to talk about during the Q&A because that's the argument of the title of the book James Madison Rules America. The Constitution governs parties more than the parties govern the Constitution. The Constitution governs the presidency and the Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans, more than the Democrats and Republicans, the President of the Congress, govern the Constitution. Our constitutional concrete is sufficient to withstand partisan warfare, just as it did to withstand partisan warfare today, just as it did in the 1790s when you think our political system would be a little bit more vulnerable in the opening decade of the American Republic. Partisanship is rooted in the Constitution because of First Amendment freedoms. Clearly, our First Amendment freedoms of the press and freedom of association allow and even invite the abuse of licentiousness and excessive partisanship. But what is the alternative? Madison understood that in a free society, politics, including the spirit of party, is ubiquitous. Since the latent cause of the faction and the spirit of party are natural to man, Madison sought to control the effects of faction rather than to remove the cause, that that would be a cure worse than disease. It's what the anti-Federalists wanted. It would have required curbing liberty. The point was to expand, not limit liberty. Yet partisanship is also rooted in the Constitution in another fundamental way. Throughout our history, beginning in the 1790s, partisanship has been premised on the fault lines of constitutional interpretation and debate over the central principles of the separation of powers and federalism. In other words, role of government questions. Contentious partisanship has its roots in the Constitution. In the 1790s, we also see the founders' practice of their principles. Their actions, too, seem to refute the notion that the founders were anti-party. Historian Joseph Ellis' description of the 1790s sounds like the polarizing partisanship so oft decried by today's critics of partisan politics. This is Ellis. The politics of the 1790s was a truly cacophonous affair. Previous historians have labeled it the age of passion for good reason. For in terms of shrill, accusatory rhetoric, flamboyant displays of ideological intransigence, intense personal rivalries, and hyperbolic claims of imminent catastrophe, it has no equal in American history. The political dialogue within the highest echelon of the revolutionary generation was a decade-long shouting match." Historian Gordon Wood concluded about the 1790s, quote, hardy spirit ruled all, end quote. To the Federalist Republicans were Jacobins. In disguise. To the Republicans, Federalists were undisguised monarchists, and you thought neuter Nancy were bad. In his book, In Praise of Deadlock, Lee Rawls urges us to be appropriately skeptical of the good old days, golden age fallacy. The 1950s was a period of relative partisan quiescence, as was the era of good feeling in the early part of the 1800s. But again, I think if you look historically as political scientist Brady and Hahn have done, for example, those two periods are the exception more than the rule. Now, partisanship is potentially good or bad. Friction creates light as well as heat. Our Constitution invites constructive partisanship, including often cacophonous, contankerous, contentious partisanship. The principal difference is between our two great parties, whether over the war on terrorism, healthcare reform, or global warming, matter. The differences are important, and they're often principal differences. Samuel Huntington argues that American politics involves or entails the promise of disharmony, the promise of disharmony, that in some sense this is a healthy tension and it can be productive. It can be a good thing. Two potential examples might be, you may remember back in the 1990s when Ginnrich and Company came to the fore with their House Republican Revolution, so-called, and in the first Congress, the first Republican majority in 40 years, you had the dual government showdown shutdown, 1994, 1995. That dual showdown shutdown, where they shut down the government and shut down a few museums and monuments for a while. That was the necessary premise, arguably for the 1997 budget accord. Dan Palazzolo in a book called Dundeeil makes the argument that the one would not have happened without the other. Another possible example is the 1996 welfare reform effort in a tug-of-war involving repeated veto threats from Bill Clinton, a tug-of-war with the Ginnrich-led Republicans. Conflict sometimes is the premise for compromise. Moreover, as political scientist Nelson Polesby and Charles O. Jones have argued, gridlock may be good. Gridlock may be a form of governing. Jones says, for example, quote, the prevention of legislation may also represent effective governance. End quote. At times, the status quo may be preferable to legislative change. Who has not agreed with this observation at one time or another? For example, Republicans in the 2010 health care reform, they would have preferred gridlock or stalemate to the passage of that comprehensive legislation. But also, another example would be the Pelosi-led Democrats on President Bush's social security reform effort in 2005 and 2006. Limited government as opposed to activist government may be desirable. Political scientist Sidney Milkes underscores another argument. Partisanship can be good by rousing us from our slumber, overcoming the blight of apathy and alienation, but it can also be good by rousing us from our slumber. And we have seen that in the last three presidential elections, including, and as well, midterm elections like the current election. In conclusion, it's worth examining some of the causes of heightened partisanship today. One, the primary-dominated nominating processes, especially in congressional elections, which invite appeals to the party base, slowly contribute to greater partisan polarization. We've seen this with the Tea Party movement, for example. Should we eliminate congressional primaries? Our nominating primary is either at the congressional or presidential level. Should we return to the smoke-filled rooms? Second cause, gerrymandered redistricting, especially enhanced by computer modeling. Maybe we should adopt the ludic reform of eliminating computers, or maybe not. Third, the democratization and decentralization of Congress due to the institutional reforms. Some of the above causes were consequences of the 1970s reforms in Congress in particular, designed to make Congress more open and democratic. Should we reform the reforms? Fourth cause, the growth of government and the concomitant increase stake in our politics. Big government gives you big politics. James Q. Wilson, one of the leading political scientists in recent generations, said that once politics was about a few things, today it is about nearly everything. Maybe what we need to do is limit government if we want to limit politics and make it less contankerous. Similarly, an important cause of partisan polarization has been the effort to advance comprehensive non-incremental reform. For example, the decision by Democrats to advance comprehensive healthcare reform, made by its very nature, had been partisan since it raised fundamental questions about the role of government. Perhaps we should re-federalize some political questions. Ron Brownstein in his book, Second Civil War, raises that possibility. Moreover, we blame political parties when we should also acknowledge the role of our two other key mediating institutions, interest groups and the media. Greater partisan polarization is due to six. The explosion in the role in number of interest groups, so-called hyper pluralism, including in the think tank universe, maybe we should blame or credit Cato for partisan polarization. The proliferation of think tanks over the last 30 or 40 or 50 years has contributed to a more ideological or you could say more principled politics in some cases. Seven, another potential cause of our more ideological politics may be the dramatic increase in education among Americans. I can paraphrase Shakespeare, perhaps the first thing we should do is kill all the professors, but I personally hope we don't do that. Eight, the decentralization, fragmentation, and greater competition of the new media, the new media, as the hegemony of the old media establishment erodes, has clearly contributed to the more cacophonous, contentious character of our politics, the internet. Clearly not going to get rid of that anytime soon. Bloggers, et cetera. Political scientist Barbara Sinclair notes what I think we're all now familiar with, which is that the media prefers conflict to cooperation and consensus. The media loves to report on the planes of crash, not the thousands of planes that fly successfully every day. Conflict is what gets covered as opposed to consensus and at some point it even exaggerates the level of, I think, contentiousness in our politics. But do we want to get rid of the new media and return to the good old days, or was it bad old days, of the old media establishment? Do we really want to return to the 1960s near-monopoly of national news by NBC, ABC, CBS, the UPI, and AP Wires? And yet finally the most fundamental cause of partisan polarization may be our 200-year-old constitutional system, which, as I suggested earlier with Madison, invites the spirit of party in our politics. And I certainly don't recommend a new constitutional convention. Thank you very much. Well, I'm embarrassed. I have to say I forgot to give you the biographical details about Bill. And I think, since this is such a fine book, if I don't know that... I already confessed to being a professor. If I don't know it to him, I at least owe it to Mr. Boardman and to Washington and Lee University to give you those details. Let me explain. Bill is actually the John K. Boardman politics professor at Washington Lee University, where he's taught since 1986. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia. But there's an interesting additional part from the biographical material. He worked in the Connecticut legislature. He was a congressional fellow sponsored by the American Political Science Association. That is in the mid-80s. He gets to go to Congress and actually work there and see how things work out. Professor and a politician. Professor and a politician. He has, unlike a lot, he has some actual observations of politics. He worked for Dick Cheney and Senator Richard Luger. Cheney at that time was a House member. His research has been on Congress. He published with Jack Pitney about Congress's permanent minority Republicans in the U.S. House. He's published widely in the scholarly literature. Also, Roll Call and The Hill. So he combines that kind of professorial as well as a political background. I think that is an extremely good, along with a constitutional point of view, way of approaching these issues. Our commentator today has a similar background. He's been involved in practical life and political life, and he's now undertaken a more academic side to his career, including the publication of a new book. W. Lee Rawls is the author of In Praise of Deadlock, How Partisans Struggle Makes Better Laws, which has just appeared with Johns Hopkins University Press. Mr. Rawls joined the faculty of the National War College after serving as chief of staff to the director of the FBI during his 30 years in Washington. He's also served as chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, so that definite engagement there. Chief of Staff to Senator Pete Domenici and Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice. Previously, he has been a partner in the law firms of Vincent and Elkins and Baker Donaldson, whose Washington office he opened in 1988. For 16 years, he has been an adjunct professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. As I said, In Praise of Deadlock has now appeared and reflects the comments and the reason I wanted Mr. Rawls to come today and participate in this event. Mr. Rawls. Thank you. Although I'm kind of in an academic circle at the moment, I really come to you as a practitioner. So when you say to me, Madison, the Constitution, it's kind of going to have to crank it over a little bit in terms of kind of an extra get the neurons firing. But in the course of my four decades in Washington, having been Senator Frist's Chief of Staff when he was Majority Leader, that'll be the focus kind of of my comments and my look at this book as a practitioner. What does this book mean to a practitioner? I'm sure the theoreticians will have some views. Along the way, obviously being in the Senate for 14 years, I developed some views. And so when I opened up Senator Baker's law office, since I opened it up and we made money from day one, I felt that I had kind of a natural right, so to speak, to bludgeon him with my ideas about the United States Senate. And those of you who remember Senator Baker, remember he was Majority Leader of the United States Senate. Senator Reagan's Chief of Staff and also Ambassador to Japan, so he had views too. So one day I'm kind of beating at him with one of my harebrained ideas. And he gently, but he firmly pushes back and he says, Lee, you've got this on the U.S. Senate much too complicated. You just need a couple basics. You have to realize it's the world's greatest deliberate of body, so the members deliberate together. Our spouses, they socialize together. Our children, they play together. And when one of us loses, we eat them. Now, the value of that story really is that it captures a great deal about certainly the Senate and American politics. Kind of the ambiguities and the nuances, interplay of civility and power, velvet gloves, steel fist, but most of all the importance of a competitive two-party system and what that really means over time. So in turning to Professor Connolly's book, I'm going to dispense with the usual superlatives of interesting, thoughtful, and insightful, and instead open up by labeling James Maas and Rules America for what it is. Liberating. Practitioners, this is a liberating book. For all of you who have cared deeply about America, participated in the American political system and thought about America's future, this is for you. If you are like me and over the past several decades have participated with gusto in our competitive two-party system, but you have found yourself recently pursued by a self-anointed core of political pundits crying foul at your every move and demanding that you demonstrate more civility, comedy, and a willingness to compromise and this book is also for you. Now, before I mistakenly portray this book and owed to the right-wing rock star Ted Nugent on the virtues of beef, beer, and hunting with a bow, let me emphasize that the liberation here is intellectual. At the core of Professor Connolly's thought, again to the practitioner, is what we would label as Madison's conundrum and as in fashioning this conundrum and embedding it in the Constitution that the full scope of Madison's genius becomes apparent. For Professor Connolly, the strategic challenge faced and faced by every participant in the American legislative process is in its simplest term, do you compromise or confront? Do you seek bipartisanship or partisan advantage? Are you after a policy solution or a political outcome? Do you want to achieve an agenda item of a party platform or do you want to advance a party's desire to achieve power? All this range of options. For all of us who have participated in the process, this is an eternal dilemma. For some it arises as an occasional issue. But I can say that for members of Congress, their staff, and the political elements of the executive branch, this is not just a daily, but it is an hourly issue as to how do you respond to the challenges before you. Now the brilliance of Professor Connolly's analysis is that this, what I call conundrum, his phrase of strategic challenge is not only intentionally embedded in the Constitution, but Madison has made it unavoidable. Combination of separation of powers, bicameralism, federalism, midterm elections, all work together to pin the decision maker eternally on the horns of this dilemma. In Federalist 10 and 51, Madison lays out the underlying rationale and mechanics of this dilemma. Now whereas the Greek gods chain Prometheus to the rock for eternity and retribution for helping man, Madison is not after revenge. Instead he pins the participants in the American political process on the eternal horns of his dilemma for a purpose. He is forcing future generations to walk a tightrope. The goal is limited but effective government. Madison is not just protecting against the abuses of power by Congress and executive. He's also aiming to provide a new nation after the failures of the Articles of Confederation and effective enough system to govern itself and a new continent. Moreover, this conundrum not only provides for limited and effective government, it also provides for energetic creative government. Now this is a point that I had never thought about. 40 years in the game, never kind of crossed my P-brain. And I have to say, as an aside, my wife stands prepared to, with a list of other points I've completely missed in my lifetime. This thought will quickly show you the value of this insight. Decentralized, horizontal systems with multiple participants are inherently more energetic and creative. This may offer an explanation of how a backwater country of several million in 1789 has managed to become the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet utilizing a government designed 220 years ago. With his separation of power, Madison ensured that energy is not unchecked. With his cool, accurate assessment of human nature, Madison ensured that the combination of the strategic dilemma, the separation of power served to keep energy within constitutional bounds. Madison gave us energy, deliberation, but not unchecked ambition. Now comes a part about liberation. After I left Senator Frist in 2005, I made the mistake of picking up and reading some of the broken branch literature. In particular, the broken branch school of thought criticized Senator Frist for passing the Medicare drug benefit and the bankruptcy legislation during his time as majority leader. Now my understanding of broken means something doesn't work. So I was mystified by a line of criticism that says, when you pass something others disagree with, that the system is broken. I fully understand policy or political disagreement. It says a piece, the legislation is bad, poorly conceived, deserves defeat. But the fact that your opponent passes a bill you do not like does not strike me at least as broken, rather it raises the fact that you as an opponent consider it to be bad law. The broken branch school also began to clamor for bipartisanship, compromise, and civility. My other gripe with the broken branch of school of thought was that I could be sitting completely still at my desk. My pulse would surge about 130 beats per minute. As men, I was either engaged in a new form of aerobic training or I was having a heart attack. To solve this emergency, I took some time and went over to the Woodrow Wilson International Center and wrote a little book that takes a hands-on look of the American legislative system. And I'm going to actually, since I got one thing right in the book and it's a little bit of a rarity, I'm going to kind of do a little self-promotion and I will quote from the book that was written before the election in 2008. Had the kids of postpartisan politics invoke a new era where these tensions dissolve. Regrettably, as we have shown, the existing legislative machine will not grant them their wish. Moreover, as long as political parties remain the unit of cooperation within the American political system and it is difficult to imagine American democracy without them, the desire of the postpartisans to cross the River Jordan into the political promised land will remain unfulfilled. More important, the postpartisans fail to realize that the clash of contending forces they hear in the political arena is the sound of democracy at work. So for me, it was obvious that this postpartisanship wasn't going to work. Anybody that had been a participant in the process knew that we had hope well ahead of reality. Now, although I think my effort from the practitioner viewpoint has value, it lacked the structure and intellectual depth that Professor Connolly has brought to these same issues. And although it was the best answer I could come up with at the time, my belief is that Professor Connolly brings a deeper analytic depth to the entire process. And this is where the deliberation comes in. Whereas the broken branch and other schools of thought attempt to solve Madison's dilemma, Madison rejects the very existence of a right answer. For Madison, as long as the dilemma stays intact and the basic constitutional machinery remains intact to provide limited, energetic, and effective government, then the answer to the strategic dilemma that you face at any given moment is up to the participants based on a whole range of particular considerations that they face. Madison is not out to determine outcomes as long as the decision is taken within a constitutional context. In fact, Madison would reject a silver bullet explanation or a solution to his conundrum. As I was thinking about this morning a little bit, Madison would not be on the sidelines going tisk-tisk about purported fouls in the legislative process. He had the type of mentality that he would be in the middle of it moving ahead rapidly, maximizing whatever he thought was the right policy. For Madison, you can choose bipartisanship or you can go your merry partisan way. You can choose a policy outcome or seek political advantage. You can even wholeheartedly engage in gridlock, which I have done on occasion. After all, gridlock is no more than a preference for existing law over some new, untested scheme. All of these are valid responses. Think of Madison as offering a political form of the Atkins diet. Eat meat, be happy, lose weight. In short, all Americans should feel that they can enter the political fray, love their country, and fight hard, and certainly don't let anybody tell you they have all the answers. Now, so that I'm not at the end of this kind of accused of being some kind of servile lap dog to Professor Connolly. I'd like to end on two minor critiques. I feel kind of an obligation to do this. The first is to talk Phil. Whenever I hear his name, I go into a defensive crouch. After all, he was in America for only nine months, 1830, so that's 180 years ago. He wrote two long volumes, pontificated on everything about the American character. My problem is that every time I see him quoted, his remarks seem exactly on point, but how's that possible? It's just too perfect. So just put me down as skeptical on our French friend. Second point is to note that the Senate with its filibuster does have a major influence on the modern American legislative system. I realize that Professor Connolly is more at home discussing the House while I am a creature of the Senate. We're a little bit like a carpenter or a plumber facing a construction problem. He sees a nail, he reaches for a hammer. I see a pipe, and I'm reaching for my pipe wrench. These are both minor knits and only raised to establish my independence. There's sections of this book on Woodrow Wilson, Gingrich, Speaker Pelosi, that are excellent. Moreover, his critique of the broken branch school citing Professors Mayhew, Han, and Brady, I consider to be completely dispositive of the issue. But enough. I will end on a question he left open as to whether the problem today is not hypersensitivity to partisanship. So I'll give you my answer. The ghost of Madison tells me that hypersensitivity is the real problem if there is one at all. Thanks for your time. And also thanks for Professor Connolly for this excellent book. Thank you. Okay. Thanks very much, Mr. Rawls. I can only help thinking and passing as you finished up talking about the filibuster and having been the work for Senator Frist at the time. The filibuster was controversial in the last couple years, but it was before that it was controversial when you were in the Senate about federal judges. Perhaps in our discussion period, we'll hear more about you from you about the filibuster. When you're done here in a moment, I will. Okay. So before we go to Q&A, we'll let Professor Connolly make a few comments about, and then we'll go to questions and answers. Lee, thank you very much for those kind comments. I appreciate it very much. It's nice to get some sort of agreement with someone with as vast experience as me, Rawls. I, too, am a fan of his book, and he writes, as you can see from his spoken comments, in a much more entertaining and humorous way than I do. I'm sort of a plotting political science professor, and so his book is equally insightful and more entertaining than mine. He has a fine sense of humor. In terms of Madison as a theorist, again, we tend to think of Madison first and foremost as, you know, the authors of the federal's papers, and, you know, you assign these to students, and they assume this is some boring political theorist, political philosophers from years gone by, et cetera. But, again, it's important to keep in mind that Madison was writing as a politician and even as a partisan, in the case of the federal's papers, as a partisan of ratification of the Constitution. But Madison was a remarkably effective politician. His nickname as a child growing up at Montpelier was Jemi, not really Jimmy, but Jemi with an E. And in Congress he came to be called Jemi the Knife, because he was remarkably good at playing legislative politics. Robert Goldwyn has a good book on the Bill of Rights, how Madison, who, along with Hamilton, was an opponent of the Anti-Federalist Call for a Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments being tacked on to the Constitution. It's at least ironic that the father of the Constitution, James Madison, very readily, very quickly becomes the father of the Bill of Rights in the first Congress. However, as Goldwyn points out in that book, Madison's adroit political maneuvering took a problem and turned it into a solution. And it was Madison's Bill of Rights that made up the first ten amendments, and it's worth pointing out that those first ten amendments to the Constitution do not amend a jot or a tittle in the body of the Constitution. They do not change a word in the body of the Constitution. In answer to Elise's final observation about hypersensitivity, yes, is the problem hyperpartisanship or hypersensitivity? I do think the problem today is hypersensitivity. John and I were talking about this in the green room before we came out here. The reason there's a chapter on Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives is because the progressive perspective has eclipsed that of Madison. One of the reasons I wrote this book with the perhaps overly dramatic title, James Madison Rules America, is to get us back to understanding Madison's thought as opposed to the more conventional wisdom today, which is largely borrowed from Woodrow Wilson, including as Lee pointed out, a fundamental misunderstanding of the separation of powers. Everybody thinks they understand the separation of powers as the checks and balances, but the separation of powers, as Lee pointed out, both limits the abuse of power and provides for the effect of use of power. It both humbles and empowers, providing for limited yet energetic government when necessary. Lee did a better job than I did of articulating perhaps the central argument of the book, which is that one of the ways in which Madison's constitution governs, one of the ways in which Madison rules America, is what I call the strategic challenge or strategic dilemma. The word conundrum is a better word. The strategic conundrum at the heart of our constitutional system, a conundrum is a problem that cannot be resolved, that there is no simply right answer to. And the question, again, for political party leaders in Congress is whether to be, whether to compromise or engage in conflict, whether to be bipartisan or partisan, and ultimately comes down to a question of whether to be part of the government or part of the opposition. But herein lies the problem. In the British parliamentary system, there is a clear demarcation between the party that is the government and the party that is the opposition. Now I understand that the current British system is a bit muddled with their coalition government, so the argument doesn't apply to the British politics immediately today. But historically, the majority party in the British system is the government, the minority party is the loyal opposition. We never have that situation in our political system. The Democrats right now, for example, control the White House, the House, and the Senate. Or at least they have the majority in the House and the Senate. Whether they control the Senate is, of course, another question. But the Democrats have so-called united party government, but they are not simply the government. Notice that we don't refer to the Obama White House as the government or the Bush White House as the government. It's called the administration. Lloyd Cutler, a neo-progressive thinker, wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs many years ago, called it to form a government, in which he, as a Wilsonian progressive, lamented the fact that we never form a government. This is Wilson's desire that we would have something like the British system where clear responsibility would reside in the majority party, which is the government and the minority party is the loyal opposition. The Democrats and Republicans are never in that favored position. They always, at all times, are part of the government and part of the opposition. I once asked Billy Pitts, House Republican lead staffer, what is the one thing that political scientists overlook? He said leverage. You need to pay more attention to leverage. In our political system, both parties at all times have leverage, and the best example is really the Senate. It's hard to say that the Senate is governed by the majority party. In fact, if anything, at times it looks like the minority party governs the Senate more than the majority party does. The opposition dilemma. In the British system, it's clear cut. One party is government, the other party is the opposition. In our political system, it never is, and so that conundrum, whether to play the politics of compromise or confrontation, whether to be bipartisan or partisan, that's a question that simply never ends. It's a conundrum. And that, by the way, is the way in which Madison keeps the parties in some sense fundamentally under control. I say that the Constitution governs Republicans never are the government, never simply governed, and for that matter, the President of Congress never simply governed. Thank you. Before going to questions, I just occurred to me, Bill mentioned the possibility that think tanks are guilty or a source of partisanship or excessive polarization, which reminded me of an anecdote. In the spring of 1995, at that sort of top moment of Republican partisanship and in some way to Republican power, Newt Gingrich has reported to have turned to someone and asked, why is it that Ed Crane keeps attacking me? Ed Crane, if you don't know, is the President and Founder of the Cato Institute. So at that moment, we weren't on the team, I suppose. Let's go to questions. Just raise your hand and please wait for a microphone to come. The other thing I would say, please identify yourself and also give us something that can, if you want to direct it to one of the speakers or the other, please indicate that and give us a question in the form of a question so that our question-answer session can go on. The lady in the back had her hand up first, I believe. Thanks. I'm Helen Riffel, Resources for the Future. I'm a little perplexed about where Lincoln would fit into your perfect scheme that Madison has set up about the two opposing, or perhaps more than two, partisans stymying one another. After all, it broke out into civil war and we simply had to vanquish the other party despite this perfect congressional setup. Would the British system have been better where the party in power could simply rule or would that have simply led to a civil war as well? That's a professor question. I'll take a shot of that. First of all, there is no chapter on Lincoln in the book. There's a chapter on the Anti-Federalist, a chapter on Tocqueville, a chapter on Wilson, etc., but no chapter on Lincoln, so I am not a Lincoln scholar. Chris Morel at Washington University is a Lincoln scholar and could better answer that question, but I'll take a stab at it. Where Lincoln, I think, would fall in this debate is Lincoln is somewhat like Tocqueville, something of a synthesis of the Federals and the Anti-Federalists. Seemed to appreciate both sides. Lee said he was skeptical about Tocqueville. Tocqueville's quotations oftentimes seemed too perfect. Well, the reason for that, I think, is that, first of all, the book Democracy in America, my nominee for the second most important book ever written on American politics, the first being the Federalist Papers, which of course were written as op-eds, if you will, but Tocqueville's Democracy in America, there is a sort of on the one hand on the other hand quality to the book. Tocqueville talks about every question under the sun that you can think of, and Tocqueville at times sounds like the Federalist at times sounds like an Anti-Federalist, and he's very explicit in his praise and criticism of the Federalist and his praise and criticism of, say, the Jeffersonian Republicans. There isn't Tocqueville a serious synthesis of the two, and I think in Lincoln you see something of that as well. Now, would the British system be better? Lincoln is a good example of what I was talking about before about our separation of power system simultaneously humbling and empowering Democrats and Republicans, presidents and Congress. There are times in our political system when we need the capacity to act. We need effective executive action. We need a powerful executive. There are times in our political history when we need to be deliberative, to talk. The executive in our separation of power system is designed to act, to take executive action. The Congress is pretty clearly designed as witness c-span to talk and to be slow and deliberative in doing so. Our constitutional system has both capacities at all times as needed. For example, following 9-11 George W. Bush suddenly became enormously popular and suddenly power seemed to shift palpably down from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. Congress in part was deferential with, for example, the Patriot Act, but to its credit, Congress immediately began to push back and began to try to reign in its willingness to grant greater executive prerogative to a president who they began to see as perhaps overweening, or perhaps a vice president, my former boss, as overweening in their use of executive power. That constant tug of war is a healthy thing. Lincoln is sometimes referred to as the closest thing we've ever had to a constitutional dictator. In the crisis of the Civil War we needed a very powerful executive. We had it. But then, following the Civil War, what did Congress do? Of course, Lincoln was dead. Congress began to push back and humble the very executive that had gotten us through the Civil War. One little... I was just going to say a straight comment. Slavery being maybe almost impossible to resolve by any system, but it's always worth remembering that the British parliamentary system is at one point they cut off the king's head. The parliament cut off his head and they went to a dictatorship for about 10 years under Cromwell, and then they had to bring a king back. So you can get these dilemmas that normal political channels just almost can't handle. And Civil War slavery might have been one. Gentlemen, right here. My name is Steven Shore. My question is one aspect of the partisanship that is not often commented on is that the United States, I think alone among the established democracies, has had no successful political party in a hundred since the Republicans emerged. And I'm wondering how this contributes to the atmosphere of partisanship, the fact that both parties, when any potential rival has appeared, it inevitably has gotten absorbed and the logistic difficulties of forming a successful third party seem almost impossible to overcome whether one celebrates or laments that fact. And a brief comment about Lincoln. Lincoln was not simply the emergency of the Civil War, but at least half the opposition walked out of Congress, made his task much easier in administering America. No successful third party movements. It depends on what you define as success. The Republicans as you noted, as a third party became the second party. But I would argue that there have been any number of instances where third party movements have had profound influences on the two party system. And yes they're typically absorbed by the existing two party system, the Perot movement being a possible example, the Tea Party movement. Tea Party movement for all the insistence on the part of Tea Party members, especially rank and file members, that they want to be an independent party and do not want to be absorbed by the Republican Party appear already to be in the process of being absorbed by the Republican Party. So I think third party movements are important, they're corrective on the failings sometimes of the existing two party system. In the case of the Perot Party it was pretty clear there was sort of an empty center and there was sort of this insurgency of the center on the part of Perot's party to try to and Democrats and Republicans tried to move in and respond to that effort. I sometimes tell my students that Democrats would never win elections were not for the Republicans. And Republicans would never win an election were not for the Democrats. The failings of the two political parties, their weaknesses their defects in some ways are often sometimes their virtues and third party sometimes usefully exploit that and point out the defects of our two party system. Lady here sorry to be so nervous about it. Hi, my name is Tanya and I'm a law student. My question is what you make of the White House Council's office because it's an institution that both arguably makes for greater partisanship and also wasn't necessarily conceivative by the framers. What was the last part of the question? That it's an institution that wasn't conceivative by the framers arguably but is also a partisan institution. I'm going to defer to the lawyer. I have no trouble with the notion of White House Council and the president having lawyers and a team of lawyers a whole range of issues come through a lot of them are policy issues Department of Justice probably can chew up a large number of them and handle them administration of justice civil litigation all that goes with it but there are large scale policy issues that remain loose across the government that some kind of entity has to move in on and it's just as long as you don't get kind of carried away with the notion that quote this is the White House Council this is the president's lawyers this is the president's legal shop and they're going to be doing the president's legal work whether you're for against Gitmo that's the kind of issue that's kind of beyond the existing agency state defense justice can't handle that they need somebody to move in on the top and give a coherent policy directive on that this president's been trying to close Gitmo that would be a good example where the White House Council president is under siege like president Reagan it was in his second term on Iran Contra I mean the justice department needs to stay away from that they're professional prosecutors professional civil litigants you want them out of that so you need a team that moves in in the president's behalf when he's got a set of legal issues like Clinton's impeachment you know that's going to be run out of the White House Council's office so just as long as you don't get confused by a fancy title and just recognize that the president's going to have a legal team he certainly needs one and something as complicated as the U.S. government these days I don't know when the first White House Council would be an interesting question is when it really showed up because the Attorney General used to be you know pretty much picked as the White House lawyer but I honestly don't know when the White House Council actually showed up when the first one showed that would be anyway well beyond me. My name is Lee Young I tried to think about several things together and then to see if now people is doing much better face compared to the Madison period or Jefferson period the way I think is 200 years history and there will be a revolution in Europe or in China is basically the same I'm thinking that even now Republican or Democrat what they are doing is they argue really the wrong thing rather than for the best interests of the general public so the bias in government you can see really difficult to understand how could a politician to represent people to say these type of things and so if you are thinking about this way I'm thinking even a politician senators or House of Representatives they don't really prepare the documents like Jefferson or Madison they have to go back and right and come to argue themselves rather than they push in a day they have so many they just let the bills there really composed by somebody else those people are misled by for the supporters which is not really representative elected by the people what about that is it really not representative you think I think a lot of part of the whether Congress is run by congressional staff and Michael Malvin has addressed that question the first part of the question I think was in part the notion that neither the Democrats or the Republicans ever simply have the public interest in view I'm not sure that I all together agree with that proposition and yet the very notion of partisanship or party is that parties are partial Harvey Mansfield argues politics by its very nature is partisan parties are partial they are not the whole they clearly are representing a particular perspective you could go so far as to suggest that our two-party system going back to that earlier question that the Democrats and the Republicans in some sense are two halves of a whole that in some sense they need each other if one party were to disappear from the scene and if you go back to the early years of the American Republic that's more or less happened with the federalist party the other party would split into two and become the fetus for another two-party system in some sense so I don't think you can fault either the Democrats or the Republicans for being partial or only being having a partial perspective partisan perspective I think it's in part human nature the only thing I would say is on quote the notion of public interest I think Madison would be the first to say well people just are going to disagree so I've got a view somebody else has a view and pretty soon we're arguing everybody can agree to the general proposition why don't we just get together and solve the problems facing America and then as soon as you say one particular everybody's off to the races you raise taxes or you want to cut taxes you want to expand programs you want to cut programs boom you just triggered yourself the reason you have the parties and I kind of feel like even today's parties are fighting to some degree the original federalist anti-federalist fight size of government how energetic scope and we've kind of had and I think that Professor Conley does a good job of kind of showing the anti-federalist outbursts we've had along the way and even Gingrich where folks have kind of suddenly stood up and said we're heading we're heading the wrong way so my view is the public interest is tough to identify and if you're a Madisonian you would say well the real public interest is to have an open free democratic system to handle these individual issues will come and go we'll always think that they're the most important for the moment but ultimately it's a system to handle that that's in a real public interest so I disagree with you I lose that vote I show up the next day I got somebody on my side and I win that vote that's the day in and day out of politics but the real key and the real threat you want to stay away from is anybody who says I want to fundamentally order the system so it is not open it's not free and we can't get these issues resolved I'd like to go to the question I mentioned only in passing the filibuster in the last decade we've seen just in the last couple of years the Obama administration and democratic partisans very frustrated with the filibuster because Senator McConnell has used it to great effect and I think there's probably very little criticism in terms of strategy about how well he's done with it to frustrate parts of or make more difficult which are parts of the Obama administration's agenda but it's only about six years ago that Republicans were publishing little pieces complaining about the filibuster and at that time the issue went around the question of the nomination and approval of federal judgeships and indeed throughout if you go back and at least for a long time the filibuster was used to frustrate civil rights legislation but once you get beyond that you really see both parties on both sides of the issues depending on the period of time and yet there's an argument that this is essentially not a device about majoritarianism but it's a device that over frustrates that we have enough as one of my friends says we have enough minority protections already in the system particularly when you take the courts into account though it's constitutionally it's certainly true that the senate has a right to set that rule it's too much it's really making the system not work what do you think about that is the filibuster really a problem or does it fit in this Madisonian system well I will in a moment defer to our senate expert on filibuster what if I can say just a couple cause the expert's not quite right but I'm opinionated so the filibuster of course or the complaints about the filibuster of course are part of the complaints about gridlock and again you'd be hard pressed to look over the last year and say that our political system is gridlocked George Packer has an article and I believe it's the New Yorker recently lamenting the filibuster and he cites Sarah Binder at the Brookings institution Sarah has written a book on titled Stalemate that talks a lot about the filibuster and the book too it makes a somewhat different argument than I would on the subject but Packer's argument is fairly as a journalist it's a fairly interesting argument because he laments the use and abuse of the filibuster including for judicial nominations and the filibuster has in fact been abused there's no question about it it's been used and abused partisanship has been used and abused but Packer curiously sort of undercuts the entire argument in this New Yorker essay at the end by saying he couldn't find a single Senate Republican who was opposed to the filibuster well the Senate Republicans of course are in the minority and then he quotes Chris Dodd retiring Senate Democrat as being critical of his junior colleagues who he said have never been in the minority so they don't understand the value of the filibuster now this observation by Senator Dodd is a good example of Madison's wisdom the central argument of the Federalist Papers is the idea that institutions affect the behavior of individuals where you sit influences what you think the line that everybody remembers from the filibuster from the Federalist Papers is ambition must be made to counteract ambition the very next sentence is arguably the single most important sentence in the Federalist Papers the interest of the man must be connected to the constitutional rights of the place where you sit influences what you think when the Democrats are in the minority suddenly they will see the virtues of the filibuster well the filibuster is kind of an interesting beast in that I've spent a lot of time with it and when I was in majority leaders office running staff every month I'd get a piece of paper from the we were in the majority so I get a piece of paper from the Republican Senatorial Committee indicating that the level of Democratic abuse with respect to the filibuster reached all time historic highs and they just chart this and so I would get this every month you know blah blah then Senator Frist at some point was actually looking after I left but he was looking at something called the nuclear option that would have allowed for a way from a majority to beat the filibuster in the Senate and I remember walking through protests outside the United States Senate that this was absolutely essential to the heritage and culture of the Senate and it would be somewhere between an international crime and a war crime if we did away with the filibuster and let these Republicans loose on the land with a majority vote in the Senate so when I hear it today I'm thinking well so what you know comes around what you need to do is really ask yourself and I think Professor Connolly is right on as to why the members don't change it because the members have careers that go beyond usually that of a president or a particular majority so most members of the Senate are 18 years plus I'm just saying that and so they're going to be on the top and they're also going to be on the bottom and if you're rational you always hedge your bets for the downside when the upside comes that's nice but what you're really worried about if you're in finance or game theory or war is what's the worst that can happen to you so given that you'll always protect the filibuster and so I think that's what's happened I do think there is an argument and some of the young Democrats are against it and there have been some what I consider to be harebrained schemes about altering the filibuster either you're for it or you're against it and you need to think it through if you're for it you're going to get rapid more rapid action out of the Senate there'll be quasi parliamentary system 51 things will move faster if you believe that America needs a dynamic big growing national agenda to solve these complex problems of the 21st century which is the binder rhetoric then you're for doing away with the filibuster if you're a little skeptical that there's perhaps a lot of bad ideas lucid at any given time between between the two houses 535 members maybe 10 or 15,000 staff then you're going to slow down the one thing if you get rid of the filibuster those two things one is if you get rid of the filibuster the members are going to adjust immediately they're all bred to play this legislative game so for the members they'll scream for a month and then they'll figure something out and they'll be off to the races so they're not going to miss a beat the two things that will happen at least in my view is if you do away with the filibuster is first the interest groups behind each of the parties are going to roll through the Senate so look at the other side look what's on their websites look at the thing you fear most and just assume it's law because it's coming through the members without a filibuster cannot stop they don't have the machinery for stopping that second the other person that's going to be strengthened who's going to come right through you is going to be the president because he's going to sit there he's going to line things up he'll have the groups on his side he'll have the house locked in and he's going to say here's my agenda item to the Senate and if he's got 51 guys you deliver or I'll be in your district the groups will be in your district so the president and the interest groups will advance and if you're in the Senate you're going to be much more to line up and do others bidding and I don't think the members that are against the filibuster kind of have thought about that because they've never had to live it but the country would adjust the Madisonian scheme is not going to collapse without the filibuster I'm for it but if it went wouldn't be the end of the world it would be different but I do think you see more interest groups and you see a more powerful presidency if you read the Sarah Binder book that I mentioned stalemate I also recommend you read Lee's book in Praise of Deadlock which responds directly to Sarah's argument and very effectively very good analysis additional questions right here from Kato you mentioned just previously Professor Connolly is an abusive partisanship is there a nonpartisan definition of bad partisanship I suppose if I understand the question I think the answer is no I think we all are human we all are partial our interests inform our opinions, our ideas there is no single individual who is a philosopher king, no single political party that simply represents the whole so when I said that there are partisan abuses as well as partisan uses I'm sure if we're Republicans we'd look and say well those Democrats they're abusing you know their partisanship is sort of abusive and if we're Democrats we'd see the Republicans as engaging in a sort of abusive partisanship and there's probably an element of truth to both arguments in that in that sense so the healthy free market of political competition both between the parties and within the political parties by the way one of the ways in which Madison controls the political parties is our political parties tend not to be ideological and monolithic they tend to be unbelievably factionalized including on that strategic conundrum that we were discussing earlier when I worked for the House Republicans for the House Republican leadership you always heard that the House Republicans were monolithic that they're homogeneous and at that time the House Republicans were approaching 40 years as a permanent minority so for all intents and purposes political journalists in town had stopped paying any attention to them whatsoever they were largely unknown but operating within the House Republican leadership it was shocking to read things that would say that this party was homogeneous and they were all on the same page etc because there was constant infighting and one of the constant sources of infighting is precisely that conundrum should we play the politics of confrontation or should we play the politics of compromise and you saw this in the tension if you will Bob Michael who as a House Republican leader was inclined toward trying to work with Tip O'Neill etc the Democratic leader earlier in the 1980s versus Newt Gingrich who wanted to be a backbench bomb thrower playing the politics of confrontation I asked Cheney who struck me as in some ways the smartest of the House Republican leaders at the time what's the correct answer to this question the majority in the House be the party of confrontation or the party of compromise the party of bipartisanship and he said there is no right answer to that question in other words it's a conundrum and I'll be perfectly honest as a young staffer I had no idea what he meant I didn't understand that answer but in part that was the genesis later of this book gentlemen right here had his hand up and then next to him and then we'll be done thank you Hello my name is Sebastian Schock I'm from Germany and I'm here working for a men's health network and my question is about it's a little bit in the same direction as this gentleman already asked but do you think there are still questions which can be solved by rationality beneath partisanship and what do you think for example about approaches like that to be partisan commission on public finance and dealing with public debt thank you Lee is the one who made reference to game theory earlier I don't I guess my feeling is that Professor Connolly does a good job he's got a partners book of the role of ideas so it's just not going partisan screaming and shouting that part of the arsenal of both sides is a battle might be too strong but a battle of contending ideas and at least in the American system that's kind of a prelude to kind of reaching a conclusion you want to hear both sides now rational can be a very kind of precise specific word calling for a single efficient solution so I'm not sure how rational you could consider democratic politics but there's no reason it can't be reasonable because both sides are offering ideas making best solution possible sometimes it's a pure compromise sometimes there's consensus just as a side point everybody talks about the struggles in the senate but I'm going to make this number up but the senate passes like 120, 130 laws a year five or six are the ones you hear about the others there's consensus rational whatever you'd like to characterize afternoons usually Wednesday afternoons Thursday afternoons in the senate they got an hour or two and stuff is just going right through since it's not bad news it's not contentious news it's not news so on rational I kind of just leave it open as to whether when you had a second part to the question of the commission I'm actually not against I don't know where this fits in the Madisonian scheme creative thinking against certain kinds of problems so we had the difficulty in America with respect to closing our bases, our military bases because every member had a base and so the members collectively weren't willing to close bases and it was too expensive for the military and something had to happen so they put together a commission that kind of would give the congress take it or leave it solution so to speak and congress abided by that deficits got a little bit of the same in American politics some of the same dilemmas some of the same psychological elements and so we may need something that's a little out of the ordinary to handle the deficit over time but we'll see we've got two reports coming I think in November here we have the bipartisan there's a bipartisan institute in town and then later on I think we have the bipartisan commission in December and then the President of the United States will have to make some decisions for his State of the Union in January and I think we'll have a much better feel for how bad is the problem how immediate and what's the range of solutions and all that goes with it right now we're kind of in the dark a little bit not knowing what's going to happen to taxes nobody can get a good number on what the healthcare numbers really are and we do have these two commissions coming if I may follow up very briefly on that the idea of bipartisan commissions again they exist outside our constitutional system our separation of power system I think they're fine as incubators of ideas but ultimately it's the President of the Congress, the Democrats and the Republicans that will have to deal with whatever it is that they propose because again I don't think you can take the politics out of politics I think they're great as incubators of ideas just as think tanks are great as incubators of ideas on the rationality question rationality part of the question I'm not sure that there is a rationality apart from partisanship I like Lee's use of the word reasonable Joe Bissetta professor at Claremont McKenna college has a book called the mild voice of reason that's an expression of Madison's the mild voice of reason the Madison understood that politics would be contentious, cacophonous et cetera but that he hoped that in all that cacophony the mild voice of reason could be heard Congress is in fact I think a truly deliberative institution the Senate likes to call itself the greatest deliberative body in the world and sometimes it's deliberative and sometimes it's not but a lot of deliberations going on all the time you know the press may not be paying attention to it but in committees and subcommittees in conference committees and what have you so I think that our politics is very reasonable it's also very passionate it's very human lady in the back will be our last question oh hello I'm a guide interpreter in the city and we had a record number of tourists this year which was wonderful so many of them came from my beloved Italy and I have nothing but compliments for the congress and the senate for only 535 people and everything running so smooth they see this country as just going in the right direction I have nothing but compliments and I want you to know that I think, didn't they have a fist fight on the Italian parliament in the last year well they say they have twice as many people as we do and nothing much gets done I thought you'd like to hear that actually this is where Tocqueville is sort of useful now I should say that I'm a congress scholar and I love congress including the contentiousness of congress I have in my office back at the university I have c-span running all the time I flip back and forth between c-span 1 and 2 and if it's the floor the senate tends to be more entertaining than the house and then I take it into the classroom so I love congress including the fact that congress is contentious that's actually a virtue in a democratic republic like ours Tocqueville by the way as a foreigner came to the united states and in talking about political parties he said one does not know whether to envy or whether to feel bad for or to envy the americans for their willingness to fight over what he thought were incomprehensible and pure-wild little debates we are a very fortunate people to be fighting over some of the things that we at times think are the end of days and they're not