Now let me conclude my introductory time at the lectern by introducing you all to phil and his two interlocutors, phils a senior fellow here at aei previously, worked as a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and the brookings institution. He also, as a fellow on the House Committee on the modernization of congress back in 2019, he earned his doctorate politics from Princeton University and is the author of two books why congress and to the edge legality and the responses to 2008 financial crisis. Seated at the far end, there is Daniel Lipinski dans a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and the pope, leo the 13th fellow on social thought, the university of dallas. He represented the Third District of illinois in the us house of representative. From 2005 to 2021. His career quite distinguished. Congressman lipinski earned a doctorate in political from Duke University and the author of congressional communication, content and consequences in the middle we have reid ribble the inaugural practitioner in residence in Political Science at the university of wisconsin green bay. He too served in congress and served well. He represented the eighth district district of wisconsin in the us of representatives from 2011 2017. And after retiring from the house, congressman served as the ceo of the National RoofingContractors Association for five years. With that, let me step away from the lectern and bring up our guest, phil wallach. Oh, i just want to start by thanking everyone who braved the smoke today and is here in person. Its its a real honor to have you all gathered together and to thank the American Enterprise institute providing really such a wonderful professional home for me where i could this book i want to start it off off by reading the epigraph, my book, which seems like a strange thing do but i really find it pretty inspirational helps give a sense of of of why im involved in this project so it comes from this book in defense of politics by Bernard Crick and goes like this boredom, established truths is a great enemy of free. So there are some in troubled times not to be clever and inventive in redefining things or to pretend to academic unconcern or scientific detachment, but simply to try to make old platitudes. Pregnant politics like in the greek myth, can remain perpetually young strong and lively. So as it can keep its feet firmly on the ground of mother earth. So crick is a great defender of as it as its thing and thats actually the very beginning of his book and not in the next paragraph. He goes on to Say Something about how we should think of politics. Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary. It is rarely praised as something with the life and character. Its own politics is not religion, ethics, law, science, history or economics. It neither solves everything nor. Is it present everywhere . And it does not. Any one political doctrine such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism or nationalism, though it can contain elements of most of these things. Politics is politics to be valued as itself, not. It is like or really is Something Else more respectable or peculiar politics is politics. Politics is often a dirty word in contemporary usage. Its an epithet. If something is political, that means its bad. And part of my effort in writing this book is to rehabilitate the idea of politics as something that free people do and the best that we have to keep social peace in a context of profound differences between the people of country. We need to learn how to with difference and manage it and, regulate it and not hope that we can suppress it. Pretend that it doesnt exist, and so a big theme of the book is, why congress is the place where we need to deal with difference why in the american Constitutional System Congress is really the one institution that that allows the many menace of to have its say and to allow these different factions to come against each other and, hopefully in the process of, figuring out how to accommodate each other, actually produce policies and solutions for the challenges facing our country better than anything that one group would come up with. All on its own. So this is not a new idea. Has, as the epigraph said, i dont dont pretend to any inventiveness really. This goes straight back to something most of you were taught in in civics class at some from madison and federalist number. So madison and his of the federalist papers hamilton jay are very with how are we going to make this country hang together because as the constitution was in the balance they were worried that this young project the United States of america was not long for the world and they centrally concerned with the problem of how can we get this diverse republic full of people divided class interests regional interests creedal differences how can we get them also live together in relative harmony rather than falling to pieces and madison in federalist provides this very famous answer about the extended republic. He talks about having sufficient diversity of factions that they will essentially check each other and keep anyone from predominating and thereby make sure that we cannot have tyranny of the or or tyranny of of any one group. And i wont go into that in detail because youve probably all heard that a million times suffice it to say, i think that madisons arguments in various ten are really more profound than theyre given credit for. I think an awful of people in our current politics believe somehow we can suppress and that we we can deal with the fact that people disagree somehow making us all into one people who agrees on everything. I think madisons route is far more realistic and far more profound. But turning to practicalities, madison, pretty quickly found that its not simply enough to put these factions in contact with each other and mix it up and hope everything turns out all right. And madison, in the second congress, became concerned. That omits sort factional chaos, the sort of giant special interest of his day was was coming to predominate and. He worried about the bank of the United States and its allies specifically. And so madison as a member of congress wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson and he said he worried that the stock jobbers were becoming the pretorian band of the government at once, its tool and its tyrant bribed by its largesse as and overdrawing it by clamors and combinations. However, they really had a lot of flair back then. So madison, that if theres not some kind of organization put on this factional interplay in in the congress that hes an active member of a leading member of that. Its going to just sort of open the door to predation by interest. And so madison who worried so much about faction, is sort of a little bit ironically one of the fathers of Political Parties and helps to create the republican as a counterbalance to hamiltons party. The federalists in congress. And we shouldnt pretend that just made everything work out smoothly in and of itself. The 1790s were an exceptionally nasty decade of politics in history. But thats not my subject. Im just going to sort of say we we see a situation where we we need to organize a faction in congress. But partizan organization introduces its own problems. Let me fast forward about eight decades to another observer of congress that is the political scientist, Wilson Woodrow wilson, as a as a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins university, wrote a book that became probably the bestselling work of american Political Science in history and its called congressional. Most people remember it today, a famous pronouncement that congress in committee is congress at work. Thats sort of the most famous. But wilson wasnt wasnt just writing a textbook. The book is quite polemical, and hes very concerned that the congress of his day was, again a place where special interests were predating on the american that all of deliberation was happening in committee behind closed doors. There were no open hearings at that time and that the committees would write legislation, which would promptly be signed into law after passing on the on the house and Senate Floors without much real substantive debate. And we once again, a situation where the parties which will wilson thought were rather bankrupt in terms of their principles, are sort of running on fumes from the civil war, largely. And he worried that that basically leaving american politics. And wilson articulated very powerfully an alternative vision, very much different from madisons in federalist number ten, where madison was celebrating complexity and the multiple dissatisfaction as a solution to possible tyranny. Wilson wants clean lines such that we can have accountability and he believed that what we needed was the can deal with faction in internally and then can present the American People with a clean choice. And at election time, the american will decide they will charge one of these parties which given a clear message with governing the country, and then that that that party should be given a chance to implement its agenda and Pay Attention to the to the finer details of administration. Its remarkable the extent to which wilsons prescriptions actually got followed in the decades after he wrote well before he ever emerged as a Major Political figure in his own right in the 1880s and 1890. As we move toward system of very strong partizan control of of the house under speaker reed known as czar reed and his successor in the in the first decade of the 20th century was one of the most colorful figures American History really who i wish was not such an obscurity today Joseph Gurney cannon known as boss cannon and he was somebody who was raised in the sort of wild of western indiana in the 1840s. But here he a dominant figure in the first decade of the 20th century. He always had a cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth and he sort of played his hayseed nature as a way of dealing with the press. But he was a very shrewd political operator and became the dominant figure in washington for a time. And if i can i need a clicker. Theres a clicker somewhere. Thank you okay . Ive got im not showing you a slide show, but have this one political cartoon, which is practically my favorite part of the whole book. And this is a cartoon and the caption of it, i better get it right. The caption says. Uh, the house in session, according the minority point of view, thats whats in the script up at the top there and im not sure for those for those viewers online and on cspan in case you cant see it ill just describe picture this is Joseph Gurney presiding over the chamber of the and he says the gentleman illinois is recognized thats him. The gentleman from illinois is him and the house is full of him its full of dozens and dozens or scores and scores of carbon copies. Joseph gurney cannon such that the house in session consists of doing what mr. Cannon wants wants so we followed wilsons advice to a remarkable degree and we ended in this situation where we a dominant party with a pretty clear agenda, very clear differences between the party. After the election of 1896, right where we have William Mckinley in and William Jennings and cannon is sort of for the business orthodoxy the day and hes dominant figure but that comes with the problem of sort of stifling orthodoxy. This is the time of the second industrial revolution, very rapid social change and. We congress cant keep up when things are just Joseph Gurney cannon trying to say how things should be and eventually he faces a seminal moment in. Congress, an insurgency from progressive republicans, his party who who bolt and join forces with the democrats, overthrow his dominance. He had been presiding over the rules committee. In addition to being the speaker. And hes stripped of that power and soon enough things are blown open. Congress operates on a very different principle for many decades, a sacrosanct seniority principle where committee become the real Power Centers rather than the speaker. And thats a decentralized of congress. So the book tries to give a sense that congress is a place with a long history. Its a place where there have been vicissitudes and in trying to deal with this problem of action, trying to make sense of how we can play factions off against each other in productive ways. We sometimes end up in a in a land like this where have stifling orthodoxy. Other times we end up feeling like the place has become kind of a decentralized, chaotic mess. And we need to start to reimpose some order, perhaps through centralization. So thats all i wanted to show for my picture show. Im just going to gesture up really most of the chapters of the book, but i wanted to get that basic concepts idea out there. Im sure well have a lot of time to talk about contemporary politics in the discussion, but the the main part of the book sort of goes from. The 1970s to today and looks how weve gotten from a place that was in the 1970s became a radically decentralized chamber to today its a place dominated by very cannon like figures at least very recently maybe things today are changing and well talk about that. But its a place where centralized leadership has called the shots to remarkable degree and structured the agenda and a sense that we dont really have a very interesting interplay of factions. We have to clusters of factions who know how to yell at each other and insult each other and always know how to work together, except when they absolutely have to when to be fair then and then they do. The argument of the book is that were in a moment the stifling orthodoxies are enforced by these centralized leaders. Really give our politics a sense of not being adequate to the challenges of the moment, which are very real, and they tend to push elsewhere in our government, power abhors a vacuum. And if congress doesnt act, the executive branch largely picks up the slack and. Unfortunately, the executive branch is not a good place to represent the men of this country. We end up with profound problems when we try to have agency bureaucrats solve all our problems through creative interpretation of old statutes. We really need to continue to renew our sense of selfgovernment, take ownership for happens what the federal government does and the best way for us to do that is to feel like we trust the members that we send to congress and we believe in the process by which they mix it up with each other and work out accommodation and find solutions they wont always be pretty solutions. They wont even always be good laws. My argument is not that if we empowered congress and got it to be a more assertive branch, it would always do the right thing that would be a crazy argument make. I dont believe that, but overall, why . Because by investing in the political process, by investing in this ideal of selfgovernment, thats how we renew our commitment. Being a free people. Thats how we secure social peace better than any other way know. And thats really how our system is meant to function, how, you know, we need to make the choice for madisonian politics once again in order. I to keep our country from falling to pieces. So ill leave it at that and look forward to the discussion. Thanks. Well, thank you, phil. For start with congressman lipinski. Phil spoke of congress and i think we could say especially the house as being a place supposed be a bunch of diverse interests being piled into the same forum and then having to work things out amongst themselves, which, as phil hinted, can go two basic ways, either they cancel each other out and nothing happens, or they somehow bargain out a compromise that enough of them can live with. It can then move on to the next chamber. Was that happening when . You were in congress. Was that happening much a lot . Not much at all. What was your experience . Well, let me let me start with phil read the wrap. Let me read this from distinguish academic and public servant. What the blurb on the back of the book. Well, few would claim that the contemporary congress is uniting the nation, solving our most vexing problems. Why congress lays out a convincing case that this is exactly what the institution was designed to do, has done in the past and do once again. And let me tell you, as we all know, its not doing that right. I was so many different thoughts come to mind as as its filled with speaking. And i unfortunately way, way too many when i was thinking they wouldnt ever that we do that cartoon they sure do with nancy pelosi now that would have been that would have been absolutely perfect perfect but ive ive said the biggest change that ive seen i studied congress before. I ran for congress as a political scientist in the biggest change that think has happened over the last few decades. It used to be after every election, federal election, every two years, everyone in Washington House members, senators would look around, say, okay, who has majority the house . Who is the majority in the senate . Who controls white house . What can we do over next year and a half together . What can we work on the betterment of the country before we fight it out in the next next election . Today after the election, every two years, what happens . Everyone looks around who controls what and says, what can we do in next two years . So our party can get control of everything in shoved down the throats the other side exactly what we what this is how congress is supposed to operate. Congress is as i was coming over here, i saw a tweet representing scott perry was asked today about have they resolve impasse right now the house is stuck freedom some members freedom blocked the rule on some bill that all the republicans wanted us out there. Scott perry has that been resolved and he says it doesnt matter that much that was that was just a messaging bill and the person tweeted a steak sher