Transcript
TOM MANN: All of these things have consequences, not just for people like us who care about the rules of the game but for policy, for the quality of policymaking, for the quality of the implementation, for the possibilities of mid-course corrections. Our book is littered -- I am sorry -- with examples in which We, the People, suffer as a consequence of bad policy.
The roots are deep. They really go to the ideological polarization of the parties and then after 1994, to a position of parity in which a swing of a few seats could make the difference between a Republican or Democratic majority. That has led to a further development of the permanent campaign to lots of symbolic message politics and basically to a lot of, if you will, sort of intellectual dishonesty in the absence of real serious talk about policies.
The broken branch, as I have described it, has contributed to the likely outcome of this election. I think the War in Iraq is dominant, and Congress was missing from action in a way that the Republicans might have helped their party to avoid this by asking difficult questions in a timely fashion and preventing some of the decisions that were actually made and proved harmful. I think competence is an issue. Once again, Congress' failure to think through and deliberate on the Department of Homeland Security, creating a behemoth that proved extremely ineffective, has hurt the President. I would argue the broader sense of entitlement and even arrogance and a culture of corruption that now is enveloping the Appropriations Committee in the House and that began in some ways with Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham, has contributed to a broader sense in the public that this institution has gone awry.
So, just to be clear about it, I believe there is a huge national negative referendum on this government that will very likely, almost certainly produce a majority for the Democrats in the House with gains of 30 or more seats now increasingly likely in the Senate. Democrats have a chance -- my colleagues may put it a bit below 50 percent, I probably put it a little bit above 50 percent because of the tipping effect of a wave -- to win six or indeed seven seats necessary to hold a majority. In any case, it will be a very evenly divided Senate.
The question is: Will that kind of a result begin to change the Congress? Answer is: Not easily, not quickly, but it is the first point. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. There is no way to change this Congress without the team in power being shown to be held accountable by the public. If they are tossed out, the Democrats are on record as running things differently. We shall see. They will be held by others to account for their behavior. It is conceivable they would be bounced out after two years if they don't, in fact, deliver on their promises and begin to mend a broken branch which then allows the whole American Constitutional system to regain a sense of balance and direction and purpose and raise the spirits of Democrats and Republicans alike.
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