It's Even Worse Than It Looks
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| Author |
Thomas E. Mann Norman J. Ornstein |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Politics of the United States |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Basic Books |
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Publication date
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1 May 2012 |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (2006) |
It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism is a 2012 book of political analysis by Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, published by Basic Books. The authors state that the current U.S. Congress has reached a state of basic gridlock due to both major American political parties moving to solidly left-wing and right-wing sides, leaving the center, and becoming "vehemently adversarial".
Norman Ornstein's work at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann's work at the Brookings Institution had brought them into the public eye before, as well as giving them the respect of other political analysts. They previously collaborated on the well-regarded book The Broken Branch. The two have worked in Washington D.C. for more than forty years, Ornstein in particular having written columns for Roll Call and served as an election analyst for CBS News. According to NPR, "they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions."
The authors analyze the current U.S. Congress, and they conclude that the lawmaking body is now almost completely ineffectual. Two sources of the problem are given. The first is the serious mismatch between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, in their view. They state that the groups "have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and [in] a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act".
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