Mr. Galston let me try to call this full house to order, if i may. Welcome to brookings. My name is bill galston, senior fellow in governance studies. Thanks so much for coming and welcome also to the people who are watching this event live on cspan. Todays topic is the past, the present, and possible future of the u. S. Senate. The occasion of this discussion is the publication of ira shapiros second book on the senate, this is entitled, broken can the senate save itself and the country . Those of you that read his first book on the senate will know how passionately he reveres the senate as an institution and will not be surprised to learn how distressed he is by what he describes as its precipitous decline. This topic could not be more timely. We are just days from the expiration of another short term continuing budget resolution, and perhaps even more pertinently from a promised open Senate Debate on u. S. Immigration policy. Will the promise be kept . And if it is, will todays senate be up to the job of an open deliberation on the most burning domestic question, more than domestic in implications facing the country. When it comes to the study of american Political Institutions, there are two kinds of scholars. Type one, people who have been trained in academia, wonderfully trained in academia in many cases, and who study american Political Institutions, using the tools, the concepts, the categories, the empirical techniques of political science, and we here at brookings are committed to the proposition theres much to be learned about american Political Institutions through the practice of that trade. But theres a second way of studying american Political Institutions, the scholar practitioner or the practitioner scholar. And ira shapiro is the latter. He began his government career, ill let the number out of the bag, just a little shy of 50 years ago as an intern to the late, great republican senator jacob javits, among other steps in his distinguished career, he served as legislative Legal Counsel to the great environmentalist senator gaylord nelson. He served as counsel to the master of the senate rule book, majority leader robert byrd, as chief of staff to senator jay rockefeller, and in addition to his Senate Service he has occupied senior positions in the office of the u. S. Trade representative during the clinton administration, and if memory serves, attained ambassadorial rank in one of those positions. His first book on the senate was published in 2012. An updated version with new and preface appeared recently, and for fans of popular culture, his first book on the senate appeared on Frank Underwoods desk during season 2 of house of cards. Let me tell you whats going to transpire in the next hour and 25 minutes. For about 25 of those minutes, ira will present the main themes of his book. Well then hear about ten minutes of commentary from brookings congressional expert molly reynolds, a fellow in our governance studies program. Shes the author of the brookings book, exceptions to the rule, the politics of filibuster in the u. S. Senate, which will indicatewhy shes the perfect commentator. After she delivers that, we will convene on the stage about 15 or 20 minutes of moderated conversation, after which for the last half hour it will be your turn, questions from the floor and responses from these two wonderful scholars. As always, please quiet your cell phones. That doesnt mean turning them off necessarily, and certainly doesnt mean that you cant use them. For those interested in tweeting about this event, it is ussenate. Without any further preliminaries, ira, the podium is yours. Mr. Shapiro i couldnt have a more generous introduction than the one bill gave me. I thank bill for not only that introduction but for organizing this event, for moderating this event. I dont have enough time to go into bills various credentials, so i wont, except to say that no one else is a political theorist and a philosopher, a policy analyst, teacher and scholar, has served at the highest levels of government. So we all get a great deal of wisdom from bill always. And particularly i have never missed his weekly the wall street journal column. I am glad to be here with molly reynolds, i dont know molly that well, but her important book is very well timed, as you will hear from her comments. And given my loose mastery of the senate rules, i decided to defer to molly on the whole rules question. Bill did make one point thats a little sensitive. For a couple of years, i have been planning to advertise my book, the new edition of my old book, by using the reference to house of cards. Somehow that doesnt look as good as it used to. I wasnt sure this panel would draw such a good audience. And it is wonderful to see a spattering of old friends and wonderful to see a lot of people who i dont know. Donald trumps extraordinary and dangerous presidency so dominates our landscape that it is sometimes hard to focus on anything else. And thats particularly true now with the crisis at hand as the Trump White House and House Judiciary Committee are on one side, and the fbi, justice department, important institutions, are under attack. We wait to see whether the president may force resignation or fire people. Special counsel mueller, fbi director christopher ray, rod rosenstein. So i thank you for taking time to come to a panel that doesnt have trumps name in it. As bill said, ive had a long senate career, deep attachment to it. It was a place that sparked my original commitment to Public Service and has been an important part of my life almost a half century. There are people that served longer than i did, i was there 12 years working when i went back, and people have served longer and have done more, but i had an unusual tenure because i spent five years in the Democratic Senate of the late 1970s, and six years in the republican senate, and one more year when it flipped back. So i have seen the majority, seen the minority, i dealt with a lot of different issues. So i think i have some possibly something to offer on this subject at least. So the first book i wrote, i started writing in 2008. I was depressed about the long decline of the senate. I started writing the book at a time when the exciting president ial campaign involving barack obama, john mccain, Hillary Clinton, sarah palin, one of the great exciting campaigns of all time, and i was writing the book hoping that while i wrote it, i would call attention to what the senate had been and what it potentially could be. And i wanted to try to write the book hoping i could help somehow reverse the decline. But at the same time, i was counting on the president ial election. We would have a new president at a time of possible hope and change. So i thought maybe the election would help. By the time i completed the book, obviously the reverse was the case. The senate was deeply mired in partisan gridlock, the narrative of my book ended in 1980, but i wrote an epilogue to explain what happened after 1980. And that epilogue, the first book kind of became the launch pad of this book. And i want to say one thing that i think is important. I undertook to write this book in the fall of 2016 when i was absolutely sure Hillary Clinton would be elected president and couldnt govern unless the senate changed. This book wasnt a response to donald trump. This was about the fact that the senate had failed for so long and it destabilized our political system in my opinion. So let me give you the gist of my argument. Then well try to unpack it. Sort of my elevator speech. We all know that the crisis in american democracy didnt start when donald trump became president or when he came down the escalator. In trump tower. Our political system has been like the proverbial frog in boiling water, slowly dying as the temperature rises. The senate is ground zero for that failure. The Political Institution thats failed us the longest and the worst, going back 25 years at least. At its best, the senate served in walter mondales great phrase as our nations mediator. It was a place where competing interests of two parties and all of the diverse interests of our country came together to be reconciled through negotiation and legislation and principled compromise. It was in Linmanuel Mirandas words, the place where it happened. When the senate could no longer perform that role, when it succumbed to partisanship rather than overcoming it, the American People lost confidence and ultimately turned to an outsider. Donald trump would not have become president if he wasnt a unique celebrity. But he also became president because of the justifiable feeling in the country that washington was failing. Now obviously i am painting with a broad brush. In a longer discussion, we would talk about the issues that attracted Donald Trumps voters, globalization in technology, certainly immigration, but today were talking about the performance of the government. And when were talking about that, the Trump Presidency is the result of the polarization gridlock and dysfunction. But the failure of the senate is the cause. Moreover, the senate reached a new low at precisely the moment that we needed to be at its best because we have an inexperienced and potentially authoritarian president. So thats why my talk is entitled the other threat to our democracy. And the failure of the senate, for failure of the senate one man bears disproportionate responsibility. It is no accident the senates accelerating downward spiral coincides absolutely with Mitch Mcconnells time as leader. I recognize thats a harsh statement. It may not be intuitively obvious. Historians always debate the question how much of this is the individual actions as opposed to the greater forces that are at work. And certainly many factors have contributed to the deterioration of our senate, of our country and politics of our country. The ideological chasm between the parties has grown. The role of money in politics, particularly since Citizens United. The impact of the 24 7 cable tv. Gerrymandered districts, people picking their own news sources, in fact their own facts. In america over the last 30 years our politics have been uniquely undermined by the combination of the Permanent Campaign where theres never time for governing, only preparing for the next election, and the politics of personal destruction, with some superb political minds devoting time and talented to pull testing poll testing what message and votes destroy their opponents and designing campaign ads to do so. So theres a lot wrong with our politics. Senator mcconnells defenders would say hes just a very skilled politician who has adapted to the reality and reflects the reality of todays politics. In fact, one of his best friends, late senator bob bennett of utah praised him in 2010 for understanding exactly what happened to the senate from dole to mcconnell. Think about that for a moment. He understood exactly what happened from dole to mcconnell. In other words, it is a partisan time. We need a partisan leader. Theres no time for a statesman like bob dole. The argument doesnt wash for me. Many people, even senators, get away with the claim that they were victims of their times or merely following orders but senator mcconnell has earned a substantial place in american political history. Six terms in the senate, almost 12 years as minority and majority leader. Mitch mcconnell doesnt reflect americas political climate, he has shaped it. My view of the senate obviously is that Senate Leaders really matter. Matter. They really matter. Looking back over the history of the modern senate, we find occasions when leaders put their indelible mark, not only on the senate but on the politics and government of the time. Of course, the most famous example is lbj, master of the senate, Lyndon Johnson. And lbj did an extraordinary job of dragging the senate into the 20th century. It was a reactionary institution before lbj. He made a great difference with his incredible force of nature, his incredible energy. He used all the power he could to overcome what the senate had been before because before lbj the senate was dominated by Southern Committee elite chairmen, and described as the only place where the south did not lose the civil war. The souths unending revenge upon the north forget for gettysburg. So johnson did everything he could in caros book, describes it, how he got the first Civil Rights Act through. A modest measure but it was the first. Johnson wore out his welcome in the Senate Quickly actually. People got tired of his overbearing nature. They were tired of him. When he accepted the vice presidency from president john kennedy, people were surprised. Johnson thought it was the only way to ever become president for a southerner, but also knew his days in the senate had passed. Louis gould wrote, for the senate Lyndon Johnson was a noisy summer storm that rattled the windows of the Upper Chamber and then moved on, leaving few traces of his passing. He seemed a towering figure at the time, but his essential vision of the senate limit his impact, which is an interesting thought. To understand the senate, what it was, what it is capable of, what weve lost, you have to go back to the last great, what i call the last great senate of the 1960s and 1970s. And i now call it by a better name. Mansfield senate. Mike mansfield, professor of ancient history, was perhaps the most Unlikely Senate majority leader. Although widely respected for his intelligence, honesty, intellect and knowledge of the world, mansfield had no desire to be majority leader. When john kennedy became president , the president elect asked mansfield to be the majority leader and mansfield didnt want the job but acceded to kennedys request. But mansfield made it clear, he would be a different leader, he had a different personality. He believed in a democratic small d senate where all the senators were adults and were all equal. He believed in the golden rule and acted accordingly. And under his leadership, all of the senators had responsibility. Dirksen and others didnt think it could work. Cant work without a strong will Senate Leader after johnson. And pretty quickly, the senate bogged down. Mansfield was under so much criticism, he prepared a speech announcing, explaining his concept of the Senate Leadership, and he announced he was going to give it, he made the announcement on november 22, 1963. He never gave it. It was put in the congressional record. But mansfield then demonstrated his leadership by helping to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through. Lyndon johnson who knew something about the senate called mansfield downtown and said basically you got to break the southern filibuster by wearing them out because Richard Russells old and Allen Ellender has cancer and mansfield said im not going to do it that way. He told them how he was going to do it, they had a two month debate, and he never did anything like that. And mansfield, they went on from that. Acts and64 ask then went on from that to the greatest period of productivity. Mansfield created a senate based on trust and mutual respect. Bipartisanship was second nature. We all knew that thats the way the senate worked. The senate could battle, senators would battle over important issues and then strike their compromises and go out to dinner together. Mansfields senate was extended by robert byrd and howard baker another 8 years. The air is filled with talk about watergate. Understandably. If you look back, the great senators, they were there for watergate. Mansfield launched the Watergate Committee with the unanimous vote of the senate two months after Richard Nixon got 49 states. Robert byrd and howard baker played similar roles in watergate, but these people were great senators during watergate because they were great senators all the time. They didnt change from year to year. It didnt matter who the president was, whether they were in the majority or minority. So lets look at the senates decline for one minute. And my framework is this. It was a long decline of the senate that started probably 25 years ago, somewhere late 1980s, early 1990s you can see it, and theres a long decline. Then all of a sudden theres a second stage of decline. And this decline goes like this and then like that. And that coincides with the arrival of harry reid on the democratic side and Mitch Mcconnell on the republican side. They inherited a senate that was in gradual but unmistakable decline. They had the experience, they had the obligation, they had the opportunity to address that decline and rebuild the senate. Instead, they became in the words of journalist steven colinson, the terrible twins of dysfunction. Both using arcane procedures to slow and throttle the promise of others rule. Their supporters would argue about which one was worse, never which one was better. Under their leadership the long decline accelerated precipitously. Their joint legacy would be a broken senate. But the responsibility was by no means equal. Obviously not since reid in retired, but not while he was there either. So let me turn to senator mcconnell for a moment. I believe theres a tendency to misunderstand him even after all this time. He has been there so long, he has to be an institutionalist. The madness that infected the Republican Party since Newt Gingrich. I see him differently than that. I regard him as the premier political strategist and tactician of our era, perhaps the toughest negotiator. Unfortunately hes used that power and his political s