As Congress heads into a major fiscal showdown that could result in a government shutdown and the U.S. defaulting on its debt, few Americans approve of the job that top congressional leaders are doing. Americans give relatively low job approval ratings to Republican House Speaker John Boehner (37%), Democratic Senate […] Read more »
Mann and Ornstein: ‘Brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party’
… The year that has passed since this book first appeared has done nothing to make us question our analysis of the causes of America’s dysfunctional politics. First, today’s sharply polarized and strategically focused political parties fit poorly with a constitutional system that anticipates collaboration as well as competition within […] Read more »
Boehner throws polling punch on president
House Speaker John Boehner is tweaking President Barack Obama over the president’s poll numbers. Asked by reporters Wednesday about Obama’s strategy of holding events across the country to push policies and proposals on the economy, Boehner at first declined to comment. But then he said flatly, “If I had poll […] Read more »
Congressional Republicans Are Striking Out
Just about anyone who follows baseball has seen a game where all the close calls seem to go one way, benefiting one team at the expense of the other. So it is with the public’s view of the fiscal-cliff debacle that marked the end of the 112th Congress. Neither party […] Read more »
Public Lukewarm on Cliff Deal, But Obama Bests Boehner
Americans give a lukewarm response to last week’s agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, albeit with higher marks for the deal to President Obama than to House Speaker John Boehner. More people in this ABC News/Washington Post poll approve than disapprove of the agreement, but just by a 7-point margin, […] Read more »
Five myths about the 112th Congress
When we set out to write a book about the growing extremism in American politics about 18 months ago, we thought that the 112th Congress was the worst we had seen in our four decades in Washington. However, the fights over the debt limit, the “fiscal cliff” and the farm […] Read more »