vimarsana.com

There is a lot of equality in the senate. Most of what we do is on unanimous consent. Anyone of the hundred of us could object and throw the place into a stupor. Every senator has some real clout. The majority leader has more clout in the ability to set the agenda and be recognized first, which gives you tactical advantages. But the house always says we are like a pyramid. At the top you have the speaker. The senate is more like a level playing field, with the majority leader has a little more advantage than anyone else. A strongwilled senator can frequently get his way, simply by objecting. You study the senate. He somewhat downplays the the leaders role. You said Party Leaders are more powerful today than a have been at any time in the Senate History . We take leadership for granted. We think leaders are the most powerful and essential leaders in the United States senate. If we did not have them, the senate could not function. Two beyond this that is probably , correct given how the rankandfile senators approach their job. What majority leader mcconnell left out from his statement was, there is a lot of stuff that goes into structuring the process to when you do ask unanimous consent. When a senator objects, they can object, but the majority leader can make it really difficult for that senator to actually object. You wrote in a piece i referenced, that rankandfile members, despite their frustration with the status quo, cannot imagine the Senate Working without their leaders. I want to spend a few minutes and understand that. Last week, 70 former United States senators signed an oped piece that said the senate is dysfunctional. It really points fingers at the leaders. You responded with this agreement with disagreement. I think the leaders have part of the responsibility and help create the environment. The senate is broken because the senators broke it. That letter was interesting because the senators who signed it, the former senators had served inside the senate as senators over the last two decades. The period of time over which the senate begin to unravel, or the dysfunction increased. They did not act in ways at that time to reverse that trajectory. Now they are writing a letter. If you read between the lines it is passive that there is a Mysterious Force that is presenting and preventing the committees from working. I thought the letter was aimed at the leaders. They said they want to make clear this is not a critique of Chuck Schumer or Mitch Mcconnells leadership. We are not critiquing what they are doing. It is not the committees or the rankandfiles or the leaders. Who does that leave . Who has broken the senate . In what ways is it broken . We think its job is to produce legislation. The senate is supposed to have legislation. But how it passes legislation is how it matters. There is a deliberative side of things. The senate is a place where americans see their claims adjudicated. Whether on the majority or minority side. I think the senate is broken because it no longer serves that role. It is no longer deliberating. And ironically if you look at , it, once we began to see the senate as a factory, it becomes less productive. Now we think the job is to produce legislative widgets, and it does not even make those anymore. We will look back over the past 6070 years and help people understand the path that it took to get to where it is today. Would you tell me more about yourself and how you are interested in the senate . I worked in the senate for over a decade. I wept like a baby on my last day in the senate. I probably shouldnt say that on television, but it is a fabulous institution. Even on its worse day it is still a fabulous institution. While i work there i got my phd in political science. I have written books on the senate. Now i am a senior fellow that spends my time thinking about the senate and how it works and how it does not work. I teach classes at American University on congress, on parties, Interest Groups and politics, and how our system is supposed to work and how it works today. This is a think tank of Public Policy institution. The focus is on ways to cut through everything and how we identify solutions for problems we have today. It is not dogmatic. What are the Real Solutions we can identify to fix the government and politics . A big part is the governance project. It looks at how to fix congress. It is a big focus. How can we make Congress Great again after 2016 . We will use a couple of senate specific terms. I would like to have you explain what they are. You heard about unanimous consent. Thats when the senate decides not to follow its rules. The senate never follows its rules. You have rules and you break the rules and any senator can make a point of order. To not follow the rules you say i would like unanimous consent that we not follow this rule. That point of order no longer lies against what the senate wants to do. Its a shortcut. The leaders play a very Important Role in that process. Susan explain the filibuster . The filibuster from mr. Smith goes to washington, we picture that iconic scene where you have an exhausted senator who has not shaved in a while and has all these letters in front of him. Thats not what we see today. The filibuster today is basically voting against cloture, which is a rule to an debate over a senators objection. Unlike in the house when a Senate Majority can do that whenever. The presiding officer cannot call a vote on something as long as the senator speaking or seeking recognition to speak. We call it filibuster when you oppose this. Its when you try to stop a bill. Susan whats the magic . Number to end a filibuster its 3 5 whats the magic number to end the filibuster . Its 3 5. Its typically going to be 60. But if you can change the senate rules it will be two thirds of senators present voting. Its basically however many people are on the floor at that moment. It could be up to 67. Susan the former senators said they point to the overuse of the filibuster is one of the things spoken about the senate. I want to show you a clip from january of 1995. Robert byrd of west virginia, a democrat talks about the rules and the use of the filibuster. Lets watch. [video clip] howard baker and i both together, propounded points of order. We both have filibuster. I dispose of more than 30 amendments within the course of a few minutes. And the filibuster is broken. Back, neck, arms, legs, it went away in two hours. I understand that it has been abused. I understand that senators dont very often stand up and debate anymore. But lets not try to blame it on the rules. Blame it on the senators. [end of video clip] susan what is your reaction . He is correct. Bird would do things to make a motion to suspend the rules for purposes of tabling all of these amendments at once. You can typically only do that with one amendment. He would use the rules to dispose of obstruction. What he is referencing is that it takes effort. It takes a desire to win. It takes someone on the floor whos willing to use every tool that they have at their disposal to overcome obstruction. Relating to how i described the filibuster you find out a , senator will object to a unanimous consent request and you say we cannot do anything. In the me point to cloture motions and cloture votes as if its a reliable accounts of filibuster. Its a vote to win a debate. The rule that came about in the 20th century was designed to empower the majority. It allows the majority to set the schedule and to call votes. It allows the majority to do a whole host of things. Fromnot entirely clear cloture motions that thats whats happening. Its easier now than it was then. And when its easy you are have more of it. Susan that was a debate in 1995 to change the rules on senators to end the debate, which failed. Subsequent majority leaders continue to be frustrated with the filibuster. Harry reid, when he led the senate, first a vote on the Nuclear Option and Mitch Mcconnell extended it. Can you explain what they were trying to do by curtailing the use of the filibuster . Article one section five gives the senate the power to determine the rules. Because they can set whatever rules they want, they can basically negate or circumvent, or ignore, or overcome, or set aside the rules whenever it wants. That is what we call the Nuclear Option. When you have a minority that says we will use the rules that we have to block you, we will use our constitutional power to break the rules or circumvent them or change them to overcome your filibuster. It was first attempted in recent decades by republicans in 2004 at2005 20042005 and it did not work. It was used by democrats. And it has since been used by republicans in 2019. Its really used to overcome the obstruction to make something happen. Susan senator byrd said, if you know the rules you can control the outcome. Are there any real rules in todays senate . We think about the rules different. We make decisions, by we i am referring to the senate. The senate makes decisions behind closed doors in private negotiations. When all of the process is playing out in that environment, the rules do not mean as much because they dont govern those deliberations as they do deliberations in a public and formal setting. You begin to look at them differently. When you think of the senate as a factory that makes widgets, you begin to conceive of your job as a senator as a simply according to a blueprint designed elsewhere. The rules become means to an end and that it the ability to really serve as a powerful weapon because the majority can get rid of them whenever they want. There are no longer islands of predictability and is no longer for senators. The majority can wipe them away when they want. Susan we will spend some time looking at the recent past powerful majority leaders. We should note that the senate did not become constituted with leaders. When did the position, around position, around . Position come around . They began they began electing their caucus chairman in 1903, and those positions became the floor leader position in the 1920s. Oscar underwood is considered to be the first democratic floor leader. Charles curtis from kansas is considered to be the first republican floor leader. Susan you wrote that Party Leaders derive their power from the senates precedents, not from standing rules. One of those is the right of first recognition. Former majority leader robert byrd called it the most potent weapon in the majority leaders arsenal. Leader a clip from mcconnell talking about his role in how he can set the legislative agenda. Lets watch. [video clip] so, you dont think its a good idea . You dont think its something the president would entertain or should entertain . Sen. Mcconnell this is a piece of legislation that is not necessary. It should be in there. Sen. Mcconnell im the one who decides what we take to the floor. Thats my responsibility as the majority leader. [end of video clip] i love this quote, im the one who decides what we take to the floor as majority leader. Thats not true. Any senator can make a motion to approve anything on the senate calendar. Any senator can put a bill on the calendar without having gone through committee first. Any senator can use the rules at his or her disposal to make a motion to proceed to force his or her colleagues to consider something that he or she wants to consider. This came up a lot in recent years. What is fascinating is, the last time, and the majority leader is correct, senators deferred to leaders to make this decision and motions and they have been for decades. But the last time a senator who was not the majority leader made a motion to proceed over the objections of the majority leader and filed closure on it to force a vote, it was Mitch Mcconnell. It is interesting because he was the minority leader at the time. He demonstrated his ability to use the rules to force action on an issue. Susan if the senate operates on precedent, when did first recognition, about . Right of recognition comes from 1937. You have john garner, my favorite Vice President nickname , cactus jack, is in the chair and decides he will grant preferential recognition to the majority leader first and the minority leader second. The favor that they are doing or giving to the majority leader. And incidentally the minority leader. Its not something the senate can require the chair to do. They cannot force the chair to do. The chair can recognize any senator, it does not matter, but it is more of a tradition that they defer to the majority leader. Susan why did his that deference give the majority leader so much power . Once you make a motion to proceed you can set the schedule. If you are creative and can come up with innovative ways, you can control the agenda. You can control it by making motions or block other senators from doing the same things. Once you offer an amendment, you lose the floor. The majority leader gets the floor right back. Same as the minority leader, so long as the majority leader does not want to do so as well. That is a huge power for them that allows them to act ahead of other senators. Susan we are talking about captain jack texan, he was about he was another texan and another one was lbj. He was dubbed master of the senate. He served when as the majority leader . He was a majority leader during the late 50s . He was minority leader prior to that and was assistant leader prior to that, but all during the 1950s. He was master of the senate and did so much to shape the position, the institution we see and know today. He was a master of a senate that was bounded in time. Johnson could not have done, at least i dont believe he could have, the things he did had he existed in a different era. That is key to understanding the dysfunction we have today, and understanding why the current approach to managing the institution on both sides of the aisle has been unsuccessful. Susan lets listen to him talk about power in the senate. [video clip] a lot of rules have been put in to make sure most senators no senator can leave the senate. One of the predecessors said no one can lead it. He said, i have nothing to promise them, i have nothing to threaten them with. So how was Lyndon Johnson able to run the senate . Probably the most significant sentence in the book that answer this question is a quote from Lyndon Johnson, talking about himself. This is Lyndon Johnson talking about his self. I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and i know how to use it. Lyndon johnson was right in that selfassessment. He looks for power in places that no one else had thought to look for it. I have nothing to promise, i have nothing to threaten with. Johnson found things to promise. He found things to threaten them with. [end of video clip] susan when he took over as majority leader he had a onevote majority. How did he find things to lead the senate . Its a fabulous quote and fabulous book. Not just about johnson, but also about the senate, its history and the moment in time in the 1950s. Johnson was so astute. This predates his time in the senate. When he becomes the assistant leader, he looks for Different Things he can do. I give you information about this committee meeting. He starts to amass this and becomes the chief information officer. He uses his financial ties in texas to raise money. To dole out to people who support him. He slowly inserts himself into the center if you can imagine, the center of a tire. Everything radiates through johnson. It was subtle and nuanced, but it was ultimately the key to creating what we know today and recognize today as Senate Leaders. Susan when the 1958 elections happened, he increased this is a his majority to 55, but it said he had a more difficult time leading a larger majority. Why would that be . This is a key moment where we can get a better insight into how Senate Leaders work. Its partly personality, but also the environment. The senators who come in and new classes. The issues on the agenda and the presidency. In 1958 you have 12 liberal Democratic Senators from the north come in and they want to act on a whole host of issues. They dont want to wait forever to become a committee chairman. Southerners have been there and will not go anywhere anytime soon. They are secure. They start agitating. They say the system does not work for us. They start pushing to go to the floor. The power bases on which johnson relied to master the senate began to erode. They get weaker. You get a more collegial, open and free wielding Senate Environment that i believe johnson could not manage. If you was not in the white house as Vice President and president in the 1960s and had stayed in the senate, we would remember him differently today. Susan his signature issue was to write legislation. Why was he not more successful . People do not remember the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Everybody remembers the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A big part is because of what they did. The 1957 act was not as important as the 1964 act. It relates to how johnson tried to get it through the senate. He wanted to control the institution and write bills off the floor. He wanted scripted speeches to fill floor time he wanted to have dispute before it hit the floor. There is no process to really work through all of these issues. Today, or in 1964, his successor from montana has a completely different approach. That approach aligns with the environment and gives him a better bill in the end. Thats why we look at mansfield and see him as one of the greater leaders. Even though we think as johnson as master of the senate. Susan when you read the book, you see it character named bobby baker who is secretary of the senate. Does the secretary of the Senate Position still exist . How did johnson use it versus how it might be used in later times . Bobby baker was a kid from pickens, South Carolina and comes into the senate as a page. He ins up staying in the senate. He has all of these formative moments in life. He has a wedding reception in the senate. He marries another senate staffer. He begins to insert himself into the senate. Johnson uses that in the information and connection he takes from baker to manage the institution. More broadly, johnson had an approach to staff that was different than other senators. He had an approach we would recognize today. One of his predecessors johnson take staff to a different level and shows the senate and his colleagues that you can you staff to do big things. Baker got into trouble we can talk about that under mansfield but the secretary of the Senate Position is more different today than it was then. Susan if you look at personalities, lbj and Mike Mansfield cannot see more different. Tell me about Mike Mansfield. He was a quiet, unassuming man. I never had the privilege to meet him, but reading about him and watching him speak about the senate, one of the things that was remarkable about him was his deep sense of senatorial equality. He saw the senate not as a factory or as a place where senators come in and clock in the floor every day, but it was a place they went to participate in an activity. Where equals go to participate on behalf of the Senate Citizens that they represent. That permeates everything about his leadership style. It informs how you how he approaches the senate and leads to one of the most explosives times in the nations history. Susan he served from 1961 to 1977. His counterparts were houston and scott. How did he work with them . Houston built on the precedent that johnson set on more centralized party control. He began to mimic a lot of the things that johnson did. But he was more public and forward facing. He is one of the first Senate Leaders we see being out in the public pr. Mansfield meshes very well with that. It allows for him to have the spotlight. A lot of people say thats why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ultimately pass. Because mansfield was able to secure his cooperation and was able and was ok with him being out front and taking credit. Scott is interesting because he has a concept of shared leadership. He is a much more decentralized model and wants to bring people in from the republican side into the leadership structure. You dont read a lot about scott. He was a senator from pennsylvania. He continues a lot of what he does and steps back from the pr side and brings more people in. Susan lets watch Mike Mansfield. There is a tradition of Senate Leaders giving lectures on leadership skills and the old senate chambers. This is from 1998. He is talking about his approach to leadership. [video clip] by mid1963, various Democratic Senators had begin to express publicly their frustration with the lack of progress in advancing the kennedy administrations legislative initiative. After all, they reasoned, democrats in the senate enjoy the nearly 21 party ratio. With those numbers, anything should be possible under the lash of discipline leadership. 65 democrats, 35 republicans. Think of it. [laughter] of course i use the word enjoy loosely. Ideological differences within our party seriously undercut that apparent numerical advantage. Susan a democrat and the white house for much of the time and a democrat and a house and democratic senate, why would he have a problem . The majority leader is reading a speech he intended to deliver for the criticism of his style. That was after johnson left and went to the white house. He was going to give it on the senate floor. It was the day that president kennedy was assassinated. Naturally, that did not occur. He submitted it for the record and waited 35 years or so to actually deliver it. He delivered it in the old senate chamber. He is correct. We think today and terms of factory models of leadership. We think if you have more workers, you can do more things. In the senate, if you can get more than 60, you can overcome filibusters. More than 65 can do a lot of stuff. Thats not the reality when the parties are very decided parties are very divided. Its not debating legislation on gun control or gun safety. Its not dealing with these issues because republicans and democrats are divided in turn of a on the issues. What is remarkable about the speech and how it encouraged everyone to read it, this notion of equality and what a leaders job is. Mansfield saw his job is something very different than johnson. His job was not to control things. It was to work out problems it was not to work out problems in for they occur. Mansfield saw his job as facilitating their participation of interested members in a process. He had ideas, priorities and goals. But his responsibility was to make the senate work, not to produce widgets, but to debate legislation. Then the widgets would come in the end. Susan two important issues. We talked about civil rights, but two other important issues, vietnam, because he disagreed with the president s policy. Did he do that publicly or did he use the senate to express his concern . Mansfield does not use his official positions as leader to push an agenda. You do not see that from and skill. Civil rights is another great example. He is terrified that this is going to destroy his party and its going to tear him apart. He goes forward, but not because he is a proponent, he goes forward because its the job of the senate to debate ills. He recognizes he has senators who wants to debate those things. Vietnam is a similar issue. Its an issue that was dividing the party on both sides. It promoted unrest amongst the citizenry. Eventually the senate has to acknowledge that. Susan at his tenure watergate happened. How did he approach that . In very much the same way. Its not something if you look at watergate and compare it to what happened today in regards to impeachment and President Donald Trump and the scandal with ukraine, its remarkable. There is a notion of this is not the outcome we want to get to, but more, this is our responsibility of senators to participate in this process. We want to make sure the process is legitimate and respected. You have a lot more bipartisanship. In terms of statement coming from the senate, the investigations are playing out in the house. It is much more bipartisan for that reason. Susan robert byrd took over. We talked about him already. His biggest challenge was the panama canal treaty vote. The panama can now treaty was a huge debate. It divided the parties, it divided republicans, people dont even think about it. It was an existential type debate. Robert byrd gave a speech after mansfield does where he references it. That was his trying time. He is a little bit mansfield, there is a criticism that the senate was inefficient and unproductive. Bird starts a legislative procedure and combines it with his principal commitment. He makes the senate operate more smoothly. You see that from the panama canal debate. He starts to learn and starts to learn how to do that. In the 1980s is when you see him shine. Susan in 1986 the senate went on television. Something that senator byrd encouraged senators to support. Does it end up costing him his leadership . Some say he was not as good as his majority leader. I am not in these deliberations, but i will say that he probably saw what was happening, or was asked to push things out. But the senate was changing. The job of the senator was changing. He was an oldschool senator and does not want to spend his time engaged in partisan attacks. He sees the senate as an old for him of a place as an old for him forum of a place. Even if he wants to stay leader, it does not look as enticing. He becomes the senator of appropriations committee. Susan in 1980 the election swept in Ronald Reagan and howard baker took over in the position of majority leader. He had a long political promenade. He was married and his father was a congressman. He was someone who wanted to be in leadership. He challenged you scott for the position hugh scott for the position. That is something unheard of today. If you challenge one of your colleagues who is in leadership, instead of saying we want more competition to see how this will work and these are my ideas for how it could work better, back then, that was unheard of. That is a testament to his desire to be in leadership. To try to live up especially his fatherinlaw, and the goals he set for himself. Susan his nickname was the great conciliator. He comes in and is propelled into the position by republican senators who were more conservative. Think Jeremiah Denton from alabama, for instance. They are new and they are fresh, and they have not been exposed to this environment before. Baker uses the moment to centralize control a little bit more over the senate, and over the process. He begins to treat him differently. He begins to treat his responsibilities as leader differently than byrd does. Someone who says i am working for you. They could begin to see that departure during his tenure. That relates to the fact that he comes in with a bunch of freshmen and was to take the opportunity to exert control over congress. Susan does the 1980 election is it a fulcrum where we begin to see a shift in the Republican Party ideology . Yes and no. 94 is a big deal but in the senate its not ideology. Its not conservative or liberal that is breaking the senate. If you think back to the former majority leader byrd talking about senators breaking the senate, its a fact that they are not using all the tools that they have. Im not sure that 1980 is when it starts to shift away from where it used to be, and its all defaulted ideology. There is a change and how senators think about their job and the institution. That change is unrelated to ideology. Susan we have a clip of howard baker talking about his leadership style. Lets watch. [video clip] i remember so vividly, my first day on the senate floor. After the caucus of this room elected me majority leader, i walked over to bob byrd, i said, bob, i will never know the precedent and rules of senate the ways you do. You are truly a man of the senate, speak to the traditions of the senate and acknowledge the procedures. But i will make you a deal. I said, i will never surprise you if you wont surprise me. And bob said, let me think about it. [laughter] and he did think about it. And that afternoon he came over to me on the senate floor, and just said, all right. Susan can we envision the minority and majority leaders today having such a deal . I think they do. The senate does not work if leaders dont cooperate. Mcconnell and harry reid cooperated as well. Senate leaders have to cooperate. They have always cooperated. You can really mess things up. The leaders job is to make things work, not messed things up. This is not a new thing. If you think back to Mike Mansfield and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the beginning of that debate, which was the beginning of a president ial election year, it divides the Democratic Party and the majority leader hopes to get it going and put it on the floor in an election year. He has a meeting with a senator from georgia. They lay out what they think they will do. He says, i will try to stop this bill. They treat each other with respect. As a place senate where senators go to represent their constituents, you think about them as equals and dont surprise each other. You may use the rules of leverage when you can, and senator byrd used the rules as he could. A lot of byrds critiques were that he was using the rules in a partisan way, but they still cooperate. They still cooperate to this day. Susan people who just watched the two leaders through the impeachment process, a lot of partisan divide on the floor of the senate, but your message is that behind the scenes there is cooperation between the two leaders . They may not get along, but they are cooperating. Cooperating on setting the schedule. The two leaders cooperate on the nominations. They dont like the rank and file to get to into that. They want to set the schedule. When mcconnell made the motion to proceed over reads objections, it was not that mcconnell was excited to do it as minority leader and was not going to cooperate, he was trying to talk to the senator who did want to do it out of doing it. That was senator tom coburn. If you look it up on cspan you can see mcconnell links this motion and leaves the floor and coburn starts talking. The idea is that, you have two leaders and their job is to control their conferences and make the senate work and not surprise anyone. Whether the senator is liberal or conservative and tries to do something on the floor all of a sudden, will immediately be told by the leadership staff, floor staff, and ultimately by the leader that they cannot do that. If they do it it will lead to bad things happening. We cannot have that. Susan i want to talk about bob dole. He is the longestserving republican leader. 10 years, 11 months and nine days. 1984 to 1986. He also began to see republican members of the senate who were part of the gingrich leaving the house. Talk about his leadership style with that changing body. Dole thought institutionally. He was a conservative. He thought institutionally. He thought differently about his responsibility. The senate is starting to change and he has to figure out how to accommodate senators who come in and want to do things. Some started to challenge the things at the beginning of the 20th century. This is not a new phenomenon. It leads to innovation. Dole tried to work his way through that as best as possible. On one hand he had a chairman who was basically controlling the place. On the other hand he had a bunch of reformers wanted to change things immediately. Its very difficult to navigate. Susan a couple of pieces of legislation that have reverberated, one was the balancedbudget bill. Another was the 1986 tax reform bill. One is the big Immigration Reform bill. Can you talk about those pieces of legislation and how they got forged . We typically dont mention this, he became upset at the end and was not proud of it. It puts limits on deficits. There eventually replaced by spending caps. Thats the beginning of this government by cliff, appropriations by cliff thing we see. It is a very complex procedure, reconciliation where they try to put things and get over the filibusters. There really written off the floor. If you look at the budget enforcement act of 1990, which was the bill to replace and structure to replace the deficit target. The negotiate the deal off the floor. They figure out how to put it on the floor and pass it. All of a sudden you begin to see things shifting away from the floor. Not necessarily to committees. Although with the bill you have senators and the finance committee basically say, how can we save this process that does not look like it will succeed . They ultimately end up passing a bill. It may be a bad bill, but they still pass a bill. Its similar to today. Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell says theres nothing republicans agree on more than tax reform. The only reason they passed it is that members on the finance committee were working aggressively, trying to come up with different solutions, talking to their colleagues, bringing people into the process to say what can we do to make this thing happen . Thats what lawmaking takes. Susan i am going to bypass his successors and move into the current, harry reid in the senate starting in 1987 through 2017 succeeded tom daschle. Lets start with a clip from him and we will talk about his leadership style. [video clip] a lot of of this job is like any other job. People have to like you. A manager was a wonderful guy. Word got out that his players were playing as hard for him and did not respect him. Was this true or false . I dont really know, but he got dumped. Being the manager of a Baseball Team is no different than being a manager of the senators. If you are not doing a good job and they dont like you, they get rid of you. Susan he was the senate the last two years of george w. Bushs presidency and six years of president obamas term. How does he approached his job . When i worked in the senate he was the majority leader for most of that time. Hes a very interesting senator and wanted what ive changed my appraisal of as i think about it. He is the only senator, the only leader i have ever seen or read about that changed how they did their job midstream. Most leaders just keep doing what they are doing. Johnson will not lead the senate like mansfield, he will lead it like Lyndon Johnson and it wont work. He reacts to a growing level growing liberal class of senators that come in. He begins to change how he leads the senate in response to conservative senators forcing issue on the floor that divide his party on things like immigration. He really dislikes the president , i believe, at the time. I dont think this is a secret, i think all of it comes together and informs his decision to lock down the senate. The most important thing about reid, and i dont know if it comes from his private career as his prior career as a boxer, but he has a sense for the rhythm of the process. He has a sense for the way in which legislative compromise emerges out of legislative struggle. Its not always pretty and you dont always like it. He was very, very good at getting that. I think that explains a lot of what we see. It explains a lot of what he was able to do then say Mitch Mcconnell has not been able to do. Susan could you specifically talk about his approach to the 2008 financial crisis . We were transitioning between two president s and two parties. It was an enormous challenge. How does he approach it . You see this all the time on virtually every bill. Once you get a bill on the floor you immediately file cloture to get into filibuster. You use your party of recognition. The tree is a fancy way of seeing of saying all the bills you can have at once and you wait for that to run out. Read would do that once he got a bill to negotiate with. He would target certain senators and say, susan collins, i think he will be with me on this, i am going to work with you to negotiate a bill. Once we get that bill together then i will use the tools to force that through the senate. Even if i dont think i have you all the way. If i have 59. 5 votes, i will put you in a position that makes you feel uncomfortable to vote. Susan Mitch Mcconnell will consume our last eight minutes. He called his memoir the long game. Unlike a number of the majority leaders who has never had president ial ambitions, how does he approach leadership . Mitch mcconnell approaches leadership like a factory foreman. He says my job is to produce widgets, i need to control the factory. To control the factory i need members. To get members i need to win elections. Which means i need to raise money and keep issues that divide my party and create a dysfunctional narrative. Keep them off the agenda. That leads him to clamp down on the factory, which leads to widgets in the end. Thats the secret to this dysfunction we have today. We are in mikes mansfields Mike Mansfield senate today. There are a lot of important issues that divide the party internally. They divide democrats from democrats and republicans from republicans. Immigration, health care, gun control, those types of issues. You have a leadership that wants to run the senate like Lyndon Johnson did. I dont think it can work. Case in point, the senate is the most unproductive it has ever been in its history. Its ironic, because the second you have someone who can see their job as a factory foreman, the outcome you are not getting any widgets. Susan one area that is suggest that is successful is in judicial appointments. Most of them are passing with bipartisan support. Most of them are passing with democrats and republicans voting for them. You have someone like Brett Kavanaugh for the supreme court. There was some bipartisan there, but they are largely bipartisan. The specter of obstruction, i have not yet seen it. Mitch mcconnell gave an interview and a 115th congress and said its the best congress he ever had. He simultaneously said its the worst historic obstruction i have ever seen. Those two things dont add up. There is not historic obstruction. Both parties are deferring to their leaders and they are negotiating things on judges. Thats what they do. They keep other issues off the agenda. Susan if you watch the interplay between Mitch Mcconnell and Chuck Schumer versus Mitch Mcconnell and harry reid, what do you see . From my perspective schumer and mcconnell appeared to get along better than reid and mcconnell did at the end. Was very adeptd at putting senators in tough situations. One of the reasons was that he had the Nuclear Option and would threaten it and get someone to back down and vote for cloture. He did that over and over again. Eventually, though senators would not back down, so he had to go through with it. That kind of mentality, that kind of hardnosed driving, always wanting to win no matter what i have to do or say, that will grind on you if you are having to work with another individual. I think mcconnell got tired of that. I think it undermined their relationship. Simultaneously mcconnell had , more and more conservative senators who wanted to do things that he could not control. That created tension with him and his relationship with reid. Susan would you comment on Mitch Mcconnells relationship with the Current White House . I am not privy to it. I dont know. Susan you watch it as a scholar, and we have talked about other majority leaders and their relationships with the white house. How does this one seemed to function . One of the key reasons we have a Senate Leader position today is because the presidency is aggressive in the legislative sphere. The leader is expected to assure that agenda through or to work on behalf of that president. Its not the only thing the leader is supposed to do, but its one of the main things when the president is of your party. That is the relationship we see continue with mcconnell and trump. It could go both ways. You see that mcconnell may want to try to push back against some things privately that he does not like, while simultaneously Going Forward on other things, like judges. Thats why the senate only does judges and will not deal with other issues. Susan the last three president s frustrated with the lack of movement is the increase of executive orders. What does that mean in the scheme of how our government is supposed to work . It illustrates how critical and vital congress is an the senate. If you dont have a senate thats willing to be a crucible of conflict or have senators willing to debate, you will not get legislative compromise, which means you cannot legitimize outcomes. Which means people dont see their claims adjudicated. But yet there are still things that need to happen or people want to have happen, so people look to the courts and they look to the presidency to make those decisions. Ultimately the courts and the , presidency cannot legitimize their own decision. They need congress and politics. For that to happen, you have to have a senate that conserve as that can serve as the senate. Until the senate does that, we focus on the presidency an executive order, but this trend will continue until the senate decides it wants to start legislating. Susan at the outset you suggested that its individual senators who have it as their responsibility for a dysfunctional senate. You have a majority leader focused on legislative agenda. How does this situation resolved itself to a more functional senate . A more functional senate in this environment, and it does not always look the same, but a more functional senate may be more chaotic, more messy and more conflict. Ultimately you need more , senators who want to win. Who come to washington, who become democrats or republicans, arrive on day one, look around and say, what tools do i have to win . Then they try to leverage those tools to win. Today, Neither Party appears to want to win inside the senate. Neither party appears to want to pass legislation. You dont have senators who are ostensibly very liberal or conservative saying, i can use these tools at my disposal, but they dont use them. This polarization should induce them to act. Right now they are not acting. , that gets back to my original prescription. The reason why the senate is broken is because senators are not thinking about the senate like they once did. Until they do, it will continue to be broken. We need senators to wake up one morning and say, i want to win and go about trying to do so. , they may lose, but it does not matter whether they win or lose, its the process that matters. Out of that comes outcomes, and out of that the system works. Susan someone who has spent your career in and studying and teaching about the senate thank , you for an interesting hour. Thank you. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspan has aroundtheclock coverage to the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand any time, unfiltered, at cspan. Org coronavirus. The senate has pro forma sessions scheduled for the next two weeks. Hows mirrors have been notified that about his possible this week on a new Coronavirus Relief package with consideration as early as wednesday. Follow the floor action from the house on cspan and the next Senate Session will be live monday, starting at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. President trump and members of the White House Coronavirus task force held a briefing on the federal governments response to the pandemic. President trump thank you very much. I would like to begin by saying

© 2025 Vimarsana

vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.