Notes

 

Introduction

1155 Cong. Rec. S5342 (daily ed. May 12, 2009) (statement of Sen. McConnell on the Trustees Annual Report).

2Fred Hiatt, “McConnell’s cynical flip,” Washington Post, February 1, 2010.

3Jeff Zeleny and Megan Thee-Brenan, “New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government,” New York Times, October 26, 2011.

4Austin Ranney, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Commentary,” American Political Science Review 45 (September 1951): 488–499; “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties,” American Political Science Review 44, no. 3 (1950): part 2, supplement. 

Chapter 1

1Economist, “Downgrading our politics,” August 6, 2011, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/08/sps-credit-rating-cut.

2Remarks of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, “The Near- and Longer-Term Prospects for the U.S. Economy,” August 26, 2011, http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20110826a.htm.

3Michael Cooper and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Disapproval Rate for Congress at Record 82% After Debt Talks,” New York Times, August 4, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/us/politics/05poll.html.

4D. Andrew Austin and Mindy R. Levit, “The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases,” Congressional Research Service, September 9, 2011, http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid=%270E%2C*P\%3F%3D%23%20%20%20%0A.

5Greg Brown, “Druckenmiller Fears a Beltway Deal on Debt, Not US Default,” Money News, May 17, 2011, http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/us-economy-Druckenmiller-Beltway/2011/05/17/id/396689.

6We draw on excellent reporting by a Washington Post team: Brady Dennis, Alec MacGillis, and Lori Montgomery, “Origins of the debt showdown,” Washington Post, August 6, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/origins-of-the-debt-showdown/2011/08/03/gIQA9uqIzI_story.html.

7Steve Benen, “Boehner Wants Congress to Tackle Debt Limit As ‘Adults,’” Washington Monthly, November 19, 2010, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026714.php.

8Dennis, MacGillis, and Montgomery, “Origins.”

9David M. Herszenhorn and Helene Cooper, “Concessions and Tension, Then a Deal,” New York Times, April 9, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/us/politics/10reconstruct.html?pagewanted=all.

10Patricia Murphy, “Why Eric Cantor Bailed,” Daily Beast, June 23, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/23/eric-cantor-departure-from-biden-budget-sessions-prompted-by-obama-boehner-talks.html.

11David Rogers, “Debt Talks Turn to Tax Reform,” Politico, July 7, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58535.html.

12Lisa Mascaro and Kathleen Hennessey, “Boehner-Cantor rivalry affecting debt talks,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/11/nation/la-na-cantor-boehner-20110712.

13Felicia Sonmez, “McConnell Warns Default Could ‘Destroy’ GOP Brand,” Washington Post, July 13, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/mcconnell-warns-default-could-destroy-gop-brand/2011/07/13/gIQAPZTwCI_blog.html.

14Mike Allen, “Politico Playbook,” July 20, 2011, Politico, http://www.politico.com/playbook/0711/playbook1485.html.

15David Rogers, “Debt deal momentum builds as House resists,” Politico, July 19, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59421.html.

16Peter Nicholas and Lisa Mascaro, “How the Obama-Boehner debt talks collapsed,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/22/nation/la-na-obama-boehner-20110723.

17Jay Newton-Small, “The Inside Story of Obama and Boehner’s Second Failed Grant Bargain,” Time Swampland, July 23, 2011, http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/23/the-inside-story-of-obama-and-boehners-second-failed-grand-bargain/.

18Ibid.

19Ibid.

20Address by President Barack Obama to the Nation, July 25, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/25/address-president-nation.

21Washington Post, PostPolitics, “In debt deal, the triumph of the old Washington,” August 8, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-debt-deal-the-triumph-of-the-old-washington/2011/08/02/gIQARSFfqI_story_1.html. Italics added.

22Alex Seitz-Wald, “Mitch McConnell Vows to Hold Debt Ceiling Hostage in the Future: ‘We’ll Be Doing It All Over,’” Think Progress, August 1, 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/01/285025/mcconnell-vows-to-hold-debt-ceiling-hostage-again/. Italics added.

23Washington Post, PostPolitics, “In debt deal, the triumph of the old Washington,” August 8, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-debt-deal-the-triumph-of-the-old-washington/2011/08/02/gIQARSFfqI_story_1.html. Emphasis is the authors’.

24See, for example, Pat Toomey, “The Truth About the Debt Ceiling and Default,” RealClearPolitics, April 22, 2011, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/22/the_truth_about_the_debt_ceiling_and_default_109633.html; Sam Stein, “Tim Pawlenty: GOP Should Vote Against Raising Debt Ceiling, Then Pass Bill Preventing Default,” Huffington Post, January 16, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/16/pawlenty-debt-ceiling_n_809633.html; and James Freeman, “What If the U.S. Treasury Defaults,” Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576317612323790964.html.

Chapter 2

1This story is recounted in Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 64–122.

2Richard F. Fenno, “If, as Ralph Nader Says, Congress Is ‘The Broken Branch,’ How Come We Love Our Congressmen So Much?” In Congress in Change: Evolution and Reform, ed. Norman J. Ornstein (New York: Praeger, 1975).

3Peter Osterlund, “A Capitol Chameleon: What Will Newt Gingrich Do Next?” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1991.

4David Osborne, “Newt Gingrich: Shining Knight of the Post-Reagan Right,” New Republic, November 1, 1984.

5Kim Geiger, “U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches Boxer attack ads,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/19/news/la-pn-chamber-california-ad-20101019.

6Hendrik Hertzberg, “Alt-Newt,” New Yorker, December 19, 2011, p. 38, http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/12/19/111219taco_talk_hertzberg#ixzz1gKkpYaGl.

7Andy Barr, “John Shadegg, Joe Scarborough laugh at J.D. Hayworth,” Politico, February 25, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33547.html#ixzz0gfpYPOdZ.

8Sean Theriault and David Rohde, “The Gingrich Senators and Party Polarization in the Senate,” Journal of Politics, August 2011, DOI: 10.1017/S0022381611000752.

9Joe Nocera, “The Ugliness Started with Bork,” New York Times, October 22, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/nocera-the-ugliness-all-started-with-bork.html.

10Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, “Party Polarization: 1879–2010,” voteview blog, March 17, 2011, http://voteview.spia.uga.edu/blog/?p=1292.

11Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics,Causes, and Consequences,” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (June 2006): 83–110.

12Ronald Brownstein, “The Four Quadrants of Congress,” National Journal, January 30, 2011.

13Sinclair summarizes much of the evidence. See Barbara Sinclair, Party Wars (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), pp. 22–28.

14Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams, Disconnect (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009).

15Most recently, Alan Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

16Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, “Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?” American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 3, pp. 666–680 (July 2009). Thomas E. Mann, “Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter?” in Red and Blue Nation? Volume I, eds. Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006).

17The next several pages are drawn in part from Mann, “Polarizing the House of Representatives.”

18Nelson W. Polsby, How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of Institutional Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

19Gary Jacobson, “Explaining the Ideological Polarization of the Congressional Parties Since the 1970s,” April 2004, SSRN, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1157024.

20Bill Bishop, The Big Sort (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008).

21Sinclair, Party Wars.

22David Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Aldrich & Rohde, “Measuring Conditional Party Government,” Midwest Political Science Association, April 23–25, 1998, http://www.duke.edu/~dcross/Aldrich3.pdf.

23Sarah Binder and Thomas E. Mann, “Constraints on Leadership in Washington,” Issues in Governance Studies 41 (July 2011), Brookings Institution.

24Frances E. Lee, Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

25Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized Politics: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Much of this is summarized in Sinclair, Party Wars, chapter 2; Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

26Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, p. xvi.

27See, for example, John H. Makin and Norman J. Ornstein, Debt and Taxes (New York: Times Books, 1994).

28Cameron Joseph, “Former GOP Sen. Hagel bashes Republicans,” The Hill Ballot Box, September 1, 2011, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/179243-republican-former-senator-hagel-bashes-gop.

29Mike Lofgren, “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult,” Truthout, http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779.

30Frank Newport, “Very Conservative Americans: Leaders Should Stick to Beliefs,” Gallup Poll, January 12, 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/145541/conservative-americans-leaders-stick-beliefs.aspx.

31Theda Skocpol and Lawrence Jacobs, eds., Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in Obama’s First Two Years (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

32Gallup Poll, op. cit.

33Galston and Mann, “The GOP’s grass-roots obstructionists” Washington Post, May 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051404234.html.

34Poole and Rosenthal, “Party Polarization.”

35Adam Bonica, “Introducing the 112th Congress,” Ideological Cartography, November 5, 2010, http://ideologicalcartography.com/2010/11/05/introducing-the-112th-congress/.

36Much of the analysis in this section comes from Norman Ornstein with John C. Fortier and Jennifer Marsico, “Creating a Public Square in a Challenging Media Age: A White Paper on the Knight Commission Report on Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age” (Washington, DC: AEI, 2011), http://www.knightcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CreatingaPublicSquare.pdf.

37Adam Thierer, “Submission to Participants in Knight Foundation/AEI Workshop on the Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age,” paper presented at AEI discussion and working lunch, April 12, 2010, p. 4.

38Ibid., p. 4.

39See, for example, Martin Kaplan and Matthew Hale, “Local TV News in the Los Angeles Media Market: Are Stations Serving the Public Interest?” (Los Angeles: The Norman Lear Center, March 11, 2010).

40David Carr and Tim Arango, “A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics,” New York Times, January 9, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/media/10ailes.html?pagewanted=1&hp.

41Pew Research Center, “Partisanship and Cable News Audiences,” October 30, 2009, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1395/partisanship-fox-news-and-other-cable-news-audiences.

42VisionCritical, “The Politics of Cable News: Do Americans believe Fox News qualifies as News?” October 22, 2009, http://www.visioncritical.com/2009/10/the-politics-of-cable-news-do-americans-believe-fox-news-qualifies-as-news/.

43The Winthrop Poll, http://www.winthrop.edu/winthroppoll/default.aspx?id=9804.

44This analysis comes in significant part from Norman Ornstein, “The Rumored Perks of Congressional Service,” Roll Call, May 11, 2011, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_120/ornstein_rumored_perks_congressional_service-205495-1.html.

45Patrick J. Purcell, “Retirement Benefits for Members of Congress,” Congressional Research Service, February 9, 2007, http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30631.pdf.

46FactCheck.org, “Congress Not Exempt from Student Loans,” January 6, 2011, http://www.factcheck.org/2011/01/congress-not-exempt-from-student-loans/.

47Barbara English, “Health Benefits for Members of Congress,” Congressional Research Service, September 25, 2007, http://mcmorris.house.gov/uploads/August2009HealthCareBenefitsforMembersofCongress.PDF.

48Paul Farhi, “The email rumor mill is run by conservatives,” Washington Post, November 17, 2011.

49Robert G. Kaiser, So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosian of American Government (New York: Knopf, 2009).

5060 Minutes transcript, http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/07/362392/abramoff-owned-congress/. Italics added.

51Anthony Corrado, “Money and Politics: A History of Federal Campaign Finance Law,” in The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook, eds. Anthony Corrado, Daniel R. Ortiz, Thomas E. Mann, and Trevor Potter (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), p. 7.

52This section adapted from Norman Ornstein, “Court Way Oversteps Its Authority with Citizens United Case,” Roll Call, January 27, 2010, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_82/-42639-1.html.

53Associated Press, “Chief Justice Says His Goal Is More Consensus On Court,” May 22, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/washington/22justice.html.

54Richard L. Hasen, “How Justice Kennedy paved the way for “Super-PACS” and the return of soft money,” Slate, October 25, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/10/citizens_united_how_justice_kennedy_has_paved_the_way_for_the_re.html.

55Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, “Outside Groups Dominate Spending in Judicial Elections, New Report Shows,” press release, October 26, 2011, http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/outside_groups_dominate_spending_in_judicial_elections_new_report_shows.

56Kenneth P. Vogel, “Rove-linked group uses secret donors to fund attacks,” Politico, July 21, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39998.html.

57Ibid.

58SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission, 599 F.3d 686 (C.A.D.C. 2010).

59Democracy21, “Leading Presidential-Candidate Super PACs and The Serious Questions that Exist About Their Legality,” January 4, 2011, http://www.democracy21.org/vertical/Sites/%7B3D66FAFE-2697-446F-BB39-85FBBBA57812%7D/uploads/Democracy_21_Super_PAC_Report__1_4_2012.pdf.

60Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Mitt Romney donor comes forward,” Politico, August 8, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60776.html.

61Ibid.

62Laylan Copelin, “Perry has long history with super PAC friend,” Austin American-Statesman, September 15, 2011, http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/perry-has-long-history-with-super-pac-friend-1861325.html.

63This section draws on Norman Ornstein, “Citizens United: Corrupting Campaign Clarity,” Roll Call, June 15, 2011, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_139/citizens_united_corrupting_campaign_clarity-206476-1.html.

64Jane Mayer, “State for Sale,” New Yorker, October 10, 2011, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer.

65Paul Herrnson, “The Roles of Party Organizations, Party-Connected Committees, and Party Allies in Elections,” Journal of Politics 71 (October 2009): 1207–1224.

66In a column focusing on the conflict between the Montana Supreme Court’s recent opinion upholding a state ban on corporate contributions, Dahlia Lithwick wonders whether the decision will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. See Dahlia Lithwick, “In Montana, Corporations Aren’t People,” Slate, January 4, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/01/montana_supreme_court_citizens_united_can_montana_get_away_with_defying_the_supreme_court_.html.

Chapter 3

1Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers (New York: New York University Press, 1957), p. 171.

2The FAA story is described in detail in a Washington Post story and an earlier Post blog entry: Ashley Halsey III, “FAA shutdown imperils billions in projects,” Washington Post, July 30, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/faa-shutdown-imperils-billions-in-projects/2011/07/29/gIQAvmC5jI_story.html; Dylan Matthews, “Everything you need to know about the FAA shutdown in one post,” Washington Post Online, Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, August 3, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-faa-shutdown-in-one-post/2011/07/11/gIQAfatTsI_blog.html.

3See, for example, Norman Ornstein, “Our Broken Senate,” The American, March/April 2008, http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/our-broken-senate; Examining theFilibuster: The Filibuster Today and its Consequences, before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, 111th Cong. (168) (statement of Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute).

4Sarah Binder and Steven Smith, Politics or Principle? Filibustering in the United States Senate (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), pp. 29–39.

5Ibid, p. 38.

6United States Senate, Senate Action on Cloture Motions, http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/cloture_motions/clotureCounts.htm.

7Sarah Binder, “Through the Looking Glass, Darkly: What has Become of the Senate?” Forum 9, no. 4 (2011), http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol9/iss4/art2/.

8This arms race between the parties is described well by Steven Smith in “The Senate Syndrome,” The Brookings Institution Issues in Governance Studies, no. 35, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/06_cloture_smith.aspx.

9Francis E. Lee, “Making Laws and Making Points: Senate Governance in an Era of Uncertain Majorities,” Forum 9, no. 4, pp. 1–17. “Parties as Problem Solvers,” in Promoting the General Welfare, Alan S. Gerber and Eric M. Patashnik, eds. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006), pp. 237–255.

10U.S. Senate, 2009, Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act, H.R. 3548. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 334, November 4, 2009, S.11099-11103; U.S. Senate, 2009, Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act, H.R. 3548. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 329, October 27, 2009, S.10769-10772; U.S. Senate, 2009, Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act, H.R. 3548. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 333, November 4, 2009, S.11080.

11U.S. Senate, 2009, Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act, H.R. 627. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 193, May 19, 2009, S.5570; U.S. Senate, 2009, Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act, H.R. 627. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 194, May 19, 2009, S.5573-5581.

12U.S. Senate, 2009, Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act, S.386. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 170, April 27, 2009, S.4740; U.S. Senate, 2009, Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act, S.386. 111th Cong., 1st sess. Roll Call Vote No. 171, April 27, 2009, S.4777-4781.

13American Constitution Society ACS Blog, “After Five Months, Senators Unanimously Confirm Fourth Circuit Nominee,” March 2, 2010, http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/all/justice-barbara-keenan.

14The following section has been taken in major part from testimony given to the Senate Rules Committee by Thomas E. Mann on June 23, 2010.

15Examining the Filibuster: Silent Filibusters, Holds, and the Senate Confirmation Process, before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration,111th Cong. (336) (statement of G. Calvin Mackenzie, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government, Department of Government, Colby College).

16E.J. Dionne and William A. Galston, “A Half-Empty Government Can’t Govern: Why Everyone Wants to Fix the Appointments Process, Why it Never Happens, and How We Can Get It Done,” Brookings Institution, December 14, 2010, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/1214_appointments_galston_dionne.aspx.

17Jonathan Cohn, “The New Nullification: GOP v. Obama Nominees,” New Republic, July 19, 2011, http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/92167/cordray-warren-cfpb-obama-republicans-nomination.

18Mann, Testimony, June 23, 2010.

19Caroline May, “Obama caves, surrenders top Medicare administrator,” Daily Caller, November 23, 2011, http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/23/obama-caves-surrenders-top-medicare-administrator/#ixzz1ekess900.

20Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz, “Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and the Quality of Democracy in the United States,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 4 (December 2011), DOI: 10.1017/S1537592711003756.

21Daniel Patrick Moynihan articulated this concept in “Defining Deviancy Down,” American Scholar 62, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 17–30.

Chapter 4

1David R. Mayhew, Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946–2002 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).

2Sarah Binder, Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003).

3David R. Mayhew, Partisan Balance: Why Political Parties Don’t Kill the U.S. Constitutional System (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 14.

4Ibid, p. 190.

5Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 coincided with the emergence of a new Republican party to replace the failed Whigs.

6Thomas L. Friedman, “Make Way for the Radical Center,” New York Times, July 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24friedman.html; Thomas L. Friedman, “A Tea Party Without Nuts,” New York Times, March 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/opinion/24friedman.html; Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

7Ezra Klein, “Do we need a third-party presidential candidacy? A debate with Matt Miller,” Washington Post, October 18, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/do-we-need-a-third-party-presidential-candidacy-a-debate-with-matt-miller/2011/08/25/gIQApOV8uL_blog.html; Matt Miller, “The third-party stumpspeech we need,” Washington Post, September 25, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-third-party-stump-speech-we-need/2011/09/22/gIQAjzx8wK_print.html; Matt Miller, “Why we need a third party of (radical) centrists,” Washington Post, November 11, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111003489.html.

8See http://www.americanselect.org/; Nathan L. Gonzales, “Party Crashers All the Rage, Aren’t All the Same,” Roll Call, August 17, 2011, http://www.rollcall.com/news/party_crashers_all_the_rage_arent_all_the_same-208221-1.html.

9Bruce E. Keith, et al., The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

10Larry M. Bartels, “The Irrational Electorate,” Wilson Quarterly 32, no.4 (Autumn 2008): 44–50; Thomas M. Carsey, Geoffrey C. Layman, “Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 2 (April 2006): 464–477.

11Richard Hasen, “A democracy deficit at Americans Elect?” Politico, November 9, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67965.html.

12Matt Miller, “Why we need a third party,” Washington Post, September 25, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-need-a-third-party/2011/09/25/gIQALQLGxK_story.html.

13Donald Marron, “Oops! Senate Republicans’ big budget mistake,” Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Donald-Marron/2011/0708/Oops!-Senate-Republicans-big-budget-mistake.

14Jonathan Chait, “The Balanced Budget Scam,” New Republic, August 31, 2011, http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/94371/the-balanced-budget-scam; Michael Linden, “Not So Fast, Newt: The Real Heroes of the 1998 Budget Surplus: Clinton and His Economy,” Center for American Progress, March 7, 2011, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/newts_surplus.html.

15CNN Money, “Greenspan eyes tax cuts,” January 25, 2011, http://money.cnn.com/2001/01/25/economy/greenspan/.

16Bruce Bartlett, “Are the Bush Tax Cuts the Root of Our Fiscal Problem?” New York Times Economix, July 26, 2011 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/are-the-bush-tax-cuts-the-root-of-our-fiscal-problem/.

17Ibid.

18See Teresa Tritch, “How the Deficit Got This Big,” New York Times, July 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html.

19Christina D. Romer, “Do Tax Cuts Starve the Beast? The Effect of Tax Changes on Government Spending,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 13548, October 2007, http://www.nber.org/papers/w13548; Peter R. Orzag and William G. Gale, “BushAdministration Tax Policy: Starving the Beast?” Brookings Institution, Tax Notes, November 15, 2004, http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/1115useconomics_gale.aspx.

20Caroline May, “Term Limits for Congress?” Daily Caller, April 15, 2011, http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/15/term-limits-for-congress/.

21George F. Will, Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1993).

22U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).

23Thad Kousser, Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); “Legislative Term Limits: An Overview,” National Conference of State Legislatures, accessed January 3, 2011, http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=14849.

24Kousser, Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism; John M. Carey, Richard G. Niemi, and Lynda W. Powell, Term Limits in State Legislatures (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Karl T. Kurtz, Bruce Cain, and Richard G. Niemi, eds., Institutional Change in American Politics: The Case of Term Limits; Legislating Without Experience (Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures, 2007).

25Eliza Newton-Carney, “The Deregulated Campaign,” CQ Weekly, September 17, 2011.

26Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It (New York: Twelve, 2011).

Chapter 5

1The Pew Center on the States, “Upgrading Democracy: Improving America’s Elections by Modernizing States’ Voter Registration Systems,” November 2010, http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Upgrading_Democracy_report.pdf.

2Christopher Ponoroff, “Voter Registration in a Digital Age,” Brennan Center for Justice, 2010, http://brennan.3cdn.net/806ab5ea23fde7c261_n1m6b1s4z.pdf.

3Ibid.

4The Pew Center on the States, “Upgrading Democracy: Improving America’s Elections by Modernizing States’ Voter Registration Systems,” November 2010, http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Upgrading_Democracy_report.pdf.

5Midwest Political Science Association, with Robert M. Stein and Greg Vonnahme, “Election Day Vote Centers and Voter Turnout,” Chicago, Ill., April 22–24, 2006.

6Dēmos, “Voters Win with Election Day Registration,” Winter 2008, http://archive.demos.org/pubs/Voters%20Win.pdf.

7Eric Russell, “Mainers vote to continue Election Day registration,” Bangor Daily News, November 8, 2011, http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/08/politics/early-results-indicate-election-day-voter-registration-restored/.

8Jim Davenport, “SC voter ID law hits some black precincts harder,” Associated Press, October 19, 2011, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/10/19/sc_voter_id_law_hits_some_black_precincts_harder/.

9Peter Wallsten, “In states, parties clash over voting laws that would affect college students, others,” Washington Post, Post Politics, March 8, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/06/AR2011030602662.html.

10Heather K. Gerken, “A Third Way for the Voting Rights Act: Section 5 and the Opt-In Approach,” Paper 354, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/354.

11William A. Galston, “Telling Americans to Vote, or Else” New York Times, November 5, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/telling-americans-to-vote-or-else.html?pagewanted=all.

12Norman Ornstein, “How to Expand the Center? Look Down Under,” Roll Call, April 28, 2010, http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_123/-45605-1.html.

13“Voter Turnout for Referendums and Elections 1901–Present,” Australian Electoral Commission, accessed January 31, 2012, http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/australian_electoral_history/Voter_Turnout.htm.

14Thomas E. Mann, “Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter?” in Red and Blue Nation? Volume I, eds. Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006); Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, “Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?” American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 3 (July 2009): 666–680, doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00393.x.

15Thomas E. Mann, “Redistricting Reform: What is Desirable? Possible?” in Party Lines, eds. Thomas E. Mann and Bruce Cain (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005).

16Michael McDonald and Micah Altman, “Pulling back the curtain on redistricting,” Washington Post, July 9, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/08/AR2010070804270.html.

17Elisabeth R. Gerber and Rebecca B. Morton, “Primary Election Systems and Representation,” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 14, no. 2 (1998): 304–324, http://www.jstor.org/stable/765107.

18Erin McGhee, “Open Primaries,” At Issue, Public Policy Institute of California, February 2010, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/atissue/AI_210EMAI.pdf.

19Gerber and Morton, “Primary Election Systems.”

20McGhee, “Open Primaries.”

21Maurice Duverger, “Les Partis Politique,” in Universite de Bordeaux, Conferences du Lundi, 1946.

22Robert Richie and Steven Hill, “The Case for Proportional Representation,” Boston Review, February–March 1998, http://bostonreview.net/BR23.1/richie.html.

23Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1989), pp. 26–28.

24See also Remarks by Trevor Potter, President, Campaign Legal Center to the Professional Advocacy Association of Texas, “Super PACs: How We Got Here, Where We Need to Go,” Friday, December 2, 2011, http://www.clcblog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=444:super-pacs-how-we-got-here-where-we-need-to-go.

25Andy Kroll, “What the FEC?” Mother Jones, April 18, 2011, http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/fec-cazayoux-citizens-united.

26Newton Minow and Henry Geller, “Who is paying for political ads?” Politico, December 11, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70263.html#ixzz1gHmmSnfE.

27Ibid.

28“The CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Accountability and Disclosure,” Center for Political Accountability and The Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, October 28, 2011, http://www.politicalaccountability.net/index.php?ht=a/GetDocumentAction/i/5800.

29“Leadership PACs,” Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/industry.php?txt=Q03&cycle=2012.

30Jack Abramoff, Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2011), p. 305.

31Anthony Corrado et al., “Reform in an Age of Networked Campaigns: How to Foster Citizen Participation Through Small Donors and Volunteers,” Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and Campaign Finance Institute, January 14, 2010, http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/0114_campaign_finance_reform.aspx.

Chapter 6

1R. Kent Weaver and Bert A. Rockman, eds., Do Institutions Matter? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1993).

2A resolution to amend the Standing Rules of the Senate to reform the filibuster rules to improve the daily process of the Senate, S. Res. 12, 112th Cong., 1st Session; A resolution to improve the debate and consideration of legislative matters and nominations in the Senate, S. Res. 10, 112th Cong., 1st Session; A resolution to amend the Standing Rules of the Senate to provide procedures for extended debate, S. Res. 21, 112th Cong., 1st Session.

3Sarah Binder et al., “What Senators Need to Know about Filibuster Reform,” December 2, 2010, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/1202_filibuster_mann_binder.aspx; Martin B. Gold and Dimple Gupta, “The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: A Majoritarian Means to Over Come the Filibuster,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 28, no. 1 (2006): 206–272, http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Gold_Gupta_JLPP_article.pdf;Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, “Burying the ‘Continuing Body’ Theory of the Senate,” Iowa Law Review 95 (2010), http://www.uiowa.edu/~ilr/issues/ILR_95-5_Bruhl.pdf; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Hearing on “Examining the Filibuster: Silent Filibusters, Holds and the Senate Confirmation Process,” June 23, 2010, pp. 390–391; Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Hearing on Judicial Nominations and Filibusters, May 6, 2003.

4Mark Tushnet, “A Political Perspective on the Theory of the Unitary Executive,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 2009, 12, no. 2, 313–330; Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo, The Unitary Executive (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

5Russell Wheeler, unpublished paper, October 15, 2008.

6Charles Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

7Sarah Rosen Wartell and John Podesta, “The Power of the President: Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change,” Center for American Progress, November 16, 2010, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/11/executive_orders.html.

8Daniel Carpenter, “Free the F.D.A.,” New York Times, December 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/free-the-fda.html.

9R. Chuck Mason, “Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC): Transfer and Disposal of Military Property,” Congressional Research Service, March 31, 2009, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40476.pdf.

10Henry Aaron, “The Independent Payment Advisory Board—Congress’s ‘Good Deed,’” New England Journal of Medicine 364 (2011): 2377–2379, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1105144.

Chapter 7

1Courtney Comstock, “Steve Schwarzman on Tax Increase: It’s Like When Hitler Invaded Poland,” Business Insider, August 16, 2010, http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-08-16/wall_street/30045366_1_tax-hikes-taxes-on-private-equity-poland.

2Scott Rothschild, “Speaker O’Neal apologizes for forwarding email that calls Michelle Obama ‘Mrs. YoMama,’” The Lawrence Journal-World, January 5, 2012, http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/jan/05/statehouse-live-speaker-oneal-forwards-email-calls/.

3U.S. Senate, 2012, National Defense Authorization Act, S.1867. 112th Cong., 1st sess. S.7943-7987, S.8012-8054, S.8060-8062, S.8094-8138, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.112s1867.

4The term insurgent outlier was applied to the Republican Party by Stephen Skowronek at the 2011 meeting of the American Political Science Association. We took the term from him but absolve him of any responsibility for the specific interpretations and arguments we have made with it in this volume.

5When called to task by bloggers for advancing “false equivalence” or “artificial balance,” they often retreat even more aggressively to the safe practices being criticized. See, for example, James Fallows, “False Equivalence Watch, at (sigh) the WaPo Again,” Atlantic, November 4, 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/false-equivalence-watch-at-sigh-the-wapo-again/247906/; James Fallows, “False Equivalence Watch: Et Tu, PBS?” Atlantic, October 22, 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/10/false-equivalence-watch-et-tu-pbs/247201/.

6Three major surveys of the scholarly literature on polarization included no discussion of its partisan asymmetry. Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences,” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (June 2008): pp. 83-110; Brian F. Shaffner, “Party Polarization,” In The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress, eds. Erick Schickler and Frances E. Lee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paul J. Quick, “A House Dividing: Understanding Polarization,” Forum 9 no. 2 (2011), http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol9/iss2/art12.

7Ramesh Ponnuru, “Republicans Lose Way by Misreading Bush History,” Bloomberg, November 14, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/republicans-lose-way-misreading-bushhistory-commentary-by-ramesh-ponnuru.html#.

8Steven F. Hayward, “Modernizing Conservatism,” Breakthrough Journal, no. 2 (Fall 2011), http://breakthroughjournal.org/content//2011/11/modernizing_conservatism-print.html.

9Morris P. Fiorina, “Economic retrospective voting in American national elections: A micro-analysis,” American Journal of Political Science 22, no. 2 (May 1978): 426–443; Gary C. Jacobson, “Referendum: The 2006 Midterm Congressional Elections,” Political Science Quarterly 122, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–24; Alan I. Abramowitz, “An Improved Model for Predicting Presidential Election Outcomes,” Political Science and Politics 21, no. 4 (Autumn 1988): 843–847.

10Major Garrett, “Top GOP Priority: Make Obama a One-Term President,” National Journal, October 29, 2010, http://nationaljournal.com/member/magazine/top-gop-priority-make-obama-a-one-term-president-20101023.

11Larry M. Bartels, “Ideology and Retrospection in Electoral Responses to the Great Recession,” prepared for a conference on “Popular Reactions to the Great Recession,” Nuffield College, Oxford, England, June 24–26, 2011.

12Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1985).