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Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country?
While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the U.S. Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center. In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert’s account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate’s lost luster. Shapiro places the Senate at “ground zero for America’s political dysfunction”--the institution that has failed the longest and the worst. Because the Senate, at its best, represented the special place where the Democrats and Republicans worked together to transcend ideological and regional differences and find common ground, its decline has intensified the nation’s polarization, by institutionalizing it at the highest level. Shapiro documents this decline and evaluates the prospects of restoration that could provide a way out of the polarized morass that has engulfed Congress.With a narrative that runs right through the first year of the Trump presidency, Broken will be essential reading for all concerned about the state of American politics and the future of our country.
323 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 15, 2018
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September 1, 2022
If there was ever a time that the American people needed a Senate at its best, it would be during the presidency of Donald Trump. Yet the Senate that would deal with President Donald Trump had not been at its best for decades. After a long period of decline, the Senate bore little resemblance to the institution that held presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan accountable for their abuses of power. Nor did it bring back memories of the Senate that partnered with every president from Kennedy to Reagan in achieving their most significant legislative accomplishments. (Page 129)
For a political junkie like myself this was a fascinating read. I was able to revisit all the political highlights of my time: Newt Gingrich and his “Contract on America” (to use Bill Clinton’s phrase for it), the subsequent 3 week government shutdown, the Clarence Thomas hearings, the Clinton impeachment, Al Gore’s gracious concession during the highly questionable 2000 presidential election, the Iraq war quagmire, Dick Cheney’s lie about the weapons of mass destruction, and George W. Bush’s tax cut in the face of a collapsing economy. After all that it only got worse.
This book traces the deterioration of the United States Senate during the period from the 1980 Reagan election to the first year of the Trump presidency. This period saw the long slide of the senate from the world’s “greatest deliberate body” to the divided, partisan shitshow we know it as today.
In 1996 a Senator Heflin said very prophetically:
“It is extremely ironic that as we foster democratic principles throughout the rest of the world and have seen democracy make great strides in many areas, we seem to face our strongest threat from within. Some elected officials, media personalities, extreme elements within political parties, and single-issue organizations strive to pit one group of Americans against another. The focus on divisive issues has increased the alienation and driven us further and further apart.” (Page 56)
With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Mitch McConnell and his republicans stated the anything Obama proposed, they would oppose. The author notes how in 2016 when the republicans controlled government their history of opposition to everything had them at a loss as how to propose changes. This was illustrated by their inability to repeal ObamaCare.
The failure of McConnell to repeal Obamacare fell squarely on McConnell’s disregard for every traditional aspect of legislating. His obsession with repeal had blinded him to the magnitude of the issue. In his long reign as a senate leader he had routinely sacrificed the Senate to accomplish his partisan objectives, but in this case he also jeopardized Republican senators. McConnell failed because as he should have known it is much more difficult to take away a benefit once has been bestowed upon the people.
The author makes a subtle hint that Obama may have lacked the experience in Washington politics to deal with this Senate. Obama had served only four years as a U.S. Senator, whereas McConnell would at the end of the Obama presidency have been a senator for 30 years. This gave McConnell a distinct advantage at the senate’s procedural rules.
This is the second book I have read by this author. The first one, The Last Great Senate, I read prior to joining GoodReads and found it just as fascinating. When I found out this book was available I bought it, then let it age a while on my bookshelf. I see that now he has a third book out The Betrayal. That will be a must read for me.
This trilogy is an essential read to understand how we have gotten to this point. Donald Trump is a symptom of this period and not just the cause. Shapiro mentions the changes that need to be made to senate procedures to make the senate more productive and less divisive. He also quotes several former and current senators who mention the same changes. As Mike Mansfield, the former senate majority leader memorably noted: “In the end, it is not the individuals of the Senate who are important. It is the institution of the Senate.” (Page 27)
And in 2014 McConnell himself said that “The best mechanism we have for working through our difficulties and arriving at a durable consensus is the Senate. … An executive order can’t do it. The fiat of a nine-person court can’t do it. A raucous and precarious partisan majority in the House can’t do it. … This is what the Senate is supposed to be all about, and almost always has been.” (Page 198)
However, there has been a failure of leadership in both parties to instigate these changes. In her 2018 book Leadership: In Turbulent Times Doris Kearns Goodwin writes about four presidents who displayed leadership. These traits are not some profound secret. As a description of that book states:
No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others.
Sadly no such leaders appear to be present today.
August 1, 2022
Ira Shapiro earned his stripes as a critic of the United States Senate - he's a true insider, with a 45-year DC career spent largely working with and for Senators on the Democrats' side of the aisle. With "Broken," Shapiro offers a condensed history of the self-assessed "World's Greatest Deliberative Body" with robust retellings of tales of how the Senate arguably earned that title and the recent debacles that show how the Senate forfeited that title.
Many have heard the old chestnut that the United States Senate is the "cooling saucer" that moderates the impassioned work product of the House of Representatives. Blessed with six-year terms and consisting of only two members per state, the Senate is supposed to be the place where more reasoned (and reasonable) debate can occur over the issues of the day. Shapiro tells several stories in this book of how Senators put aside partisanship even during times of raging partisan battles in order to put the country first. Senators also understood that while they may be in the majority today, their party will be in the minority tomorrow - and vice versa. Collegiality ruled, and Senators often took the long view.
Then we came to the Mitch McConnell era, aided and abetted by Harry Reid. While it may be a little unfair to the Senator from Kentucky to put all the blame for Senate dysfunction over the past twenty-odd years under his name, but it is undeniable that McConnell has led the Republican Party in the Senate to adopt raging partisanship as a standard tactic . . . and who desperately seeks to blame Democrats for partisan hackery when they respond.
Shapiro documents closely that the worst partisanship arose during the administration of President Obama. The George W. Bush Administration had driven the country into a colossal ditch with the Iraq War and the near-collapse of the global economy, and the Republican Party was looking at possible extinction. President Obama was given the job of salvaging the wreck, and Senator McConnell saw that as a member of the Senate Minority he had a few cards to play to block Obama's agenda. He played them all to the hilt, exacerbating partisan tensions. For one thing, he blocked virtually all of Obama's judicial appointments as well as many key executive positions that required Senate approval, just because he could. For another, he crowed about his top priority - to make Obama a one-term President. The best way for a Republican to make a Democrat look bad is to block the Democrat's agenda - Democrats generally want to do things, while all Republicans like McConnell want to do is cut taxes and appoint judges.
Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, was a fighter by nature and training. He had Democrats howling for action to be taken to get around McConnell's blocking tactics, but Reid had nothing McConnell wanted. So Reid, unable to negotiate, changed the rules for judges by getting rid of the filibuster for judicial appointments except for the Supreme Court. Reid was faced with an unwinnable decision - either unilaterally disarm and continue to play by the old Senate rules (in which case nothing would get done) or change the rules to become more partisan. The old fighter chose partisanship.
Eventually, however, McConnell found himself back in the Senate leadership as the Republicans took back the majority, and he played as ruthlessly with that power as he had with the few cards he had as Minority Leader. Nothing embodied this more than McConnell's handling of the Supreme Court nominations, first by making up a new rule to block Obama's appointment to the Supreme Court for over a year and then by hypocritically reversing course to rush through Trump's third appointment. Never had partisan power been wielded so blatantly in the United States Senate for such high stakes, and the jury is out whether the Senate is forever transformed by McConnell's hypocrisy.
Shapiro has a great story to tell her, and he has some great anecdotes. And Shapiro is both smart and knowledgeable about his subject. But the book is strangely littered with typos, misspellings, and other errata that are quite jarring. If you're going to be a critic of something as cerebral as the United States Senate, it's table stakes to have a polished manuscript - those little errors undermine your larger points. It may seem strange to focus on this point, but Shapiro of all people should know about the importance of careful drafting - the Senate, after all, writes legislation where the placement of a comma can have tremendous impact on the meaning of a law.
Recommended for students of the United States government.
Many have heard the old chestnut that the United States Senate is the "cooling saucer" that moderates the impassioned work product of the House of Representatives. Blessed with six-year terms and consisting of only two members per state, the Senate is supposed to be the place where more reasoned (and reasonable) debate can occur over the issues of the day. Shapiro tells several stories in this book of how Senators put aside partisanship even during times of raging partisan battles in order to put the country first. Senators also understood that while they may be in the majority today, their party will be in the minority tomorrow - and vice versa. Collegiality ruled, and Senators often took the long view.
Then we came to the Mitch McConnell era, aided and abetted by Harry Reid. While it may be a little unfair to the Senator from Kentucky to put all the blame for Senate dysfunction over the past twenty-odd years under his name, but it is undeniable that McConnell has led the Republican Party in the Senate to adopt raging partisanship as a standard tactic . . . and who desperately seeks to blame Democrats for partisan hackery when they respond.
Shapiro documents closely that the worst partisanship arose during the administration of President Obama. The George W. Bush Administration had driven the country into a colossal ditch with the Iraq War and the near-collapse of the global economy, and the Republican Party was looking at possible extinction. President Obama was given the job of salvaging the wreck, and Senator McConnell saw that as a member of the Senate Minority he had a few cards to play to block Obama's agenda. He played them all to the hilt, exacerbating partisan tensions. For one thing, he blocked virtually all of Obama's judicial appointments as well as many key executive positions that required Senate approval, just because he could. For another, he crowed about his top priority - to make Obama a one-term President. The best way for a Republican to make a Democrat look bad is to block the Democrat's agenda - Democrats generally want to do things, while all Republicans like McConnell want to do is cut taxes and appoint judges.
Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, was a fighter by nature and training. He had Democrats howling for action to be taken to get around McConnell's blocking tactics, but Reid had nothing McConnell wanted. So Reid, unable to negotiate, changed the rules for judges by getting rid of the filibuster for judicial appointments except for the Supreme Court. Reid was faced with an unwinnable decision - either unilaterally disarm and continue to play by the old Senate rules (in which case nothing would get done) or change the rules to become more partisan. The old fighter chose partisanship.
Eventually, however, McConnell found himself back in the Senate leadership as the Republicans took back the majority, and he played as ruthlessly with that power as he had with the few cards he had as Minority Leader. Nothing embodied this more than McConnell's handling of the Supreme Court nominations, first by making up a new rule to block Obama's appointment to the Supreme Court for over a year and then by hypocritically reversing course to rush through Trump's third appointment. Never had partisan power been wielded so blatantly in the United States Senate for such high stakes, and the jury is out whether the Senate is forever transformed by McConnell's hypocrisy.
Shapiro has a great story to tell her, and he has some great anecdotes. And Shapiro is both smart and knowledgeable about his subject. But the book is strangely littered with typos, misspellings, and other errata that are quite jarring. If you're going to be a critic of something as cerebral as the United States Senate, it's table stakes to have a polished manuscript - those little errors undermine your larger points. It may seem strange to focus on this point, but Shapiro of all people should know about the importance of careful drafting - the Senate, after all, writes legislation where the placement of a comma can have tremendous impact on the meaning of a law.
Recommended for students of the United States government.
May 6, 2019
Why am I torturing myself like this? Why am I obsessively reading about Congress, Presidents, Impeachment?
Spoiler alert: it gets a lot worse.
In brief: This is Ira Shapiro's third book about the Senate covering the period from the mid-19th Century to the Trump era. In this book he focuses on the leadership style of Senators like Mansfield, Byrd, Lott, Reid and McConnell and how they shape the spirit and legislating of the Senate. He does so by summarizing landmark events, the passage of important legislation or how a crisis was handled.
In effect this is a timeline and chronicle of the decline of the Senate. Ira Shapiro points to the usual failures: poor leadership, the consolidation of Senate power in the hands pf party leadership, the demise of bi-partisanship (which was always most important and useful in the Senate,) the erosion of "regular orders," and the increase in the number of Senators who view government as the problem.
I worked on Capitol Hill during most of these events and seeing them laid out before me like this, was extremely depressing. As we get closer and closer to the present day, as the failures are steadily ticked off, we, the readers are filled with dread, because we know what comes next: Donald Trump.
Spoiler alert: it gets a lot worse.
In brief: This is Ira Shapiro's third book about the Senate covering the period from the mid-19th Century to the Trump era. In this book he focuses on the leadership style of Senators like Mansfield, Byrd, Lott, Reid and McConnell and how they shape the spirit and legislating of the Senate. He does so by summarizing landmark events, the passage of important legislation or how a crisis was handled.
In effect this is a timeline and chronicle of the decline of the Senate. Ira Shapiro points to the usual failures: poor leadership, the consolidation of Senate power in the hands pf party leadership, the demise of bi-partisanship (which was always most important and useful in the Senate,) the erosion of "regular orders," and the increase in the number of Senators who view government as the problem.
I worked on Capitol Hill during most of these events and seeing them laid out before me like this, was extremely depressing. As we get closer and closer to the present day, as the failures are steadily ticked off, we, the readers are filled with dread, because we know what comes next: Donald Trump.
March 23, 2018
Full disclosure: Ira is a colleague
An intimate portrait of the Senate's decline, picking up where his previous book left off. The book is a fascinating tour through the senate's role in all the great political crises in the last 30 years, and is never more scathing than when looking at the failures that have occurred thus far during Donald Trump's presidency.
The book is not all doom and gloom, however. Shapiro concludes with a reccomended path forward for bipartisan reform that would improve the functioning of the senate.
A worthwhile read for anyone interested in this country's governance.
An intimate portrait of the Senate's decline, picking up where his previous book left off. The book is a fascinating tour through the senate's role in all the great political crises in the last 30 years, and is never more scathing than when looking at the failures that have occurred thus far during Donald Trump's presidency.
The book is not all doom and gloom, however. Shapiro concludes with a reccomended path forward for bipartisan reform that would improve the functioning of the senate.
A worthwhile read for anyone interested in this country's governance.
April 24, 2018
This book was a solid, semi-historical look at the Senate from the 1980s to present. It builds perfectly on Ira‘s last book about the Last Great Senate in the late 70s. It was comprehensive, but by no means dull or erudite. His treatment of the first year of the Trump presidency was solid, despite only dealing with the first, tumultuous eight months of his presidency. The writing did not seem terribly partisan either. He lays almost as much blame on Reid as he does McConnell. Ira’s conclusions seemed reasonable and narrowly focused on improving Senate rules and procedures, and not fixing the entire broken political culture that contributed to the Senate’s decline.
May 3, 2019
Ira Shapiro’s book “Unbroken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country? ” was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2018. This book profiles the U.S. Senate bipartisan as well as partisan activities over the past 40+ years. The book’s last 150 pages has a very pointed discussion about how the Senate lost its effectiveness from 2012 thru 2017. Shapiro’s historic overview and insights about the Senate’s gridlock and collapse of collective action are alarming and very telling. (P)
November 6, 2018
Ira Shapiro, a former Senate staffer, is concerned about the well-being of democracy in America. In these interesting times, Shapiro offers remedies for making the Senate more vibrant and productive.
May 28, 2020
Fantastic book, helps understand importance of bipartisanship and how “Senate” is more important than individual “Senators”.
April 24, 2020
Mr. Shapiro has all the experience to be able to write a book about the Senate, but instead of telling the truth from the point of view of a neutral observer, he chooses to deliver only half the story. One of the chief reasons why bipartisanship has increased in the Senate is because the reporters delivering to the people are so biased. As in his previous books, Mr. Shapiro consistently tries to paint a rosy picture of the periods when BOTH Houses and the White House were controlled by the same party(for the better part of 50 years before the 1980's).
Personally, this doesn't sound to me like bipartisan, it sounds like the good ol' boys club. Like....why was it the "minority" party (the Republicans) to get the first black man elected (in the late 60s) to the Senate since the Reconstruction Era? And when Brooke lost the Seat in Massachusetts, it was actually in part because of the massive smear campaign at the hands of future Democratic Presidential contender John Kerry and the rest of that machine. Despite some moderate tendencies by Edward Brooke, the Democrats felt the political threat of a free thinking black man on the other side of the aisle.
After all, the language of "Bipartisanship" only became a household word in the media AFTER the Democrats lost their long-held majority. Perhaps bi-hypocrisy would more truthful: Supreme Court nominee Bork lambasted by the Dems in the late 80's-cause he smoked some weed in college(!?); Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas: I guess bi-partisan Democratic "feminists" will support you if seduce your interns in White House like Clinton, but not if you make sexual references about a Coke can on your desk.
The Good Old Days Shapiro describes were when "bi-Partisan" "liberal" minded Democrats held not just a majority, but often a super-majority. So why did it take more than three quarters of Republicans to pass the Civil rights Act and an almost unanimous Republican voting block to nominate the first black man to the Supreme Court(vs. only two thirds of the heavy majority Democratic Senators in both instances) AND later a Republican President to nominate the first woman Court Justice???
Mr. Shapiro paints an accurate picture of the brokenness of the Senate, but he is unwilling to bite his handlers. True bravery in authorship and reporting is when you actually risk your friendships and your position in the club to report the whole truth.
No. Mr. Shapiro's actions speak louder than words, the world is watching but too often it is blind to the promotion of politicians on both sides because of cronyism. When talking heads on supposedly balanced broadcasts show obvious bitterness on election night or ebullience when their candidate wins, it repels the voters and the youth of the world who instinctively recoil from its hypocrisy. More than the politics, it is that which drives us away from shaking hands in the center of the ring.
The divide widens when authors such as Shapiro simultaneously cheer the Untouchable Senators of the 60's then campaign for Hilary Rodham who first made a name for herself by defying the same Honorable Senator Brooke. Seriously, how can anyone cheer for a candidate who was given a voice because of her marriage, was given the guaranteed Senate seat of New York(where she had never lived) by her Party and the outgoing Senator Moynihan, was given the Secretary of State so she could be given the "un-lose-able" nomination to the Presidency based on her "accomplishments"??!?? If one really trusts the people, and the strength of a Democracy, one would be cheering from the housetops at her defeat!
Well, the Populists haven't had a "crazy" egotist in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt, but sometimes the People a get a stomach-full of the staid politics of McKinley or the Mythical Senate and the one-sided media needs to have a drink splashed in its face. Hopefully Trump will do all he can in his own clumsy way to clear out the stables before the clever Media succeeds in dressing him like Herbert Hoover. In truth, if the Press really cared about protecting its Constitutional Rights, it should be helping Trump address the inbred powers of Washington, instead of spinning yarns about how the Democrats of the 60's Solved World Hunger (after failing to do its own job of restraining the Executive Branch for 40 years).
Not all the people are listening to "Fair and Balanced", and soon the 15-20% that have been been given bread and circuses since Society became Great may also wake up and perhaps THEN we will again have true bi-partisanship for a while, not the sham of the 30's through the 70's, when bi-partisanship mostly took the form of minority party servants begging for bread from those porcelain Democratic Leaders.
Mr. Shapiro should use his position, his lengthy knowledge of national politics and experience within the deeply partisan world of the Press to show us his guts, and speak honestly about the past and the present. Then Ira wouldn't have to spell out our fortunes, we could choose one for ourselves.
Personally, this doesn't sound to me like bipartisan, it sounds like the good ol' boys club. Like....why was it the "minority" party (the Republicans) to get the first black man elected (in the late 60s) to the Senate since the Reconstruction Era? And when Brooke lost the Seat in Massachusetts, it was actually in part because of the massive smear campaign at the hands of future Democratic Presidential contender John Kerry and the rest of that machine. Despite some moderate tendencies by Edward Brooke, the Democrats felt the political threat of a free thinking black man on the other side of the aisle.
After all, the language of "Bipartisanship" only became a household word in the media AFTER the Democrats lost their long-held majority. Perhaps bi-hypocrisy would more truthful: Supreme Court nominee Bork lambasted by the Dems in the late 80's-cause he smoked some weed in college(!?); Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas: I guess bi-partisan Democratic "feminists" will support you if seduce your interns in White House like Clinton, but not if you make sexual references about a Coke can on your desk.
The Good Old Days Shapiro describes were when "bi-Partisan" "liberal" minded Democrats held not just a majority, but often a super-majority. So why did it take more than three quarters of Republicans to pass the Civil rights Act and an almost unanimous Republican voting block to nominate the first black man to the Supreme Court(vs. only two thirds of the heavy majority Democratic Senators in both instances) AND later a Republican President to nominate the first woman Court Justice???
Mr. Shapiro paints an accurate picture of the brokenness of the Senate, but he is unwilling to bite his handlers. True bravery in authorship and reporting is when you actually risk your friendships and your position in the club to report the whole truth.
No. Mr. Shapiro's actions speak louder than words, the world is watching but too often it is blind to the promotion of politicians on both sides because of cronyism. When talking heads on supposedly balanced broadcasts show obvious bitterness on election night or ebullience when their candidate wins, it repels the voters and the youth of the world who instinctively recoil from its hypocrisy. More than the politics, it is that which drives us away from shaking hands in the center of the ring.
The divide widens when authors such as Shapiro simultaneously cheer the Untouchable Senators of the 60's then campaign for Hilary Rodham who first made a name for herself by defying the same Honorable Senator Brooke. Seriously, how can anyone cheer for a candidate who was given a voice because of her marriage, was given the guaranteed Senate seat of New York(where she had never lived) by her Party and the outgoing Senator Moynihan, was given the Secretary of State so she could be given the "un-lose-able" nomination to the Presidency based on her "accomplishments"??!?? If one really trusts the people, and the strength of a Democracy, one would be cheering from the housetops at her defeat!
Well, the Populists haven't had a "crazy" egotist in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt, but sometimes the People a get a stomach-full of the staid politics of McKinley or the Mythical Senate and the one-sided media needs to have a drink splashed in its face. Hopefully Trump will do all he can in his own clumsy way to clear out the stables before the clever Media succeeds in dressing him like Herbert Hoover. In truth, if the Press really cared about protecting its Constitutional Rights, it should be helping Trump address the inbred powers of Washington, instead of spinning yarns about how the Democrats of the 60's Solved World Hunger (after failing to do its own job of restraining the Executive Branch for 40 years).
Not all the people are listening to "Fair and Balanced", and soon the 15-20% that have been been given bread and circuses since Society became Great may also wake up and perhaps THEN we will again have true bi-partisanship for a while, not the sham of the 30's through the 70's, when bi-partisanship mostly took the form of minority party servants begging for bread from those porcelain Democratic Leaders.
Mr. Shapiro should use his position, his lengthy knowledge of national politics and experience within the deeply partisan world of the Press to show us his guts, and speak honestly about the past and the present. Then Ira wouldn't have to spell out our fortunes, we could choose one for ourselves.
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