Real or fake? Either way forthcoming book from Congressman "X" is already roiling D.C.

[Hortensis]

89. WHO didn't supposedly know all this pop-culture "wisdom" before?

What people need is a high-quality book explaining how Congress actually functions, including during the current mess we have allowed it to sink into. The mess is not the entirety, nor are some "breathtakingly ignorant" legislators, though pretending so might help a book sell well.

Check out this one: Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving by Adler and Wilkerson, $17 used on Amazon. (And it's only 259 pages...not a behemoth.)

That Congress can and does function even in its dreadfully dysfunctional current form says something quite wonderful about our democracy, that it is much stronger and more functional than our current whiny, dispirited imaginings realize.

Some reviews and description:

Book Description: For many, Congress is an institution consumed by partisan bickering and gridlock. Yet the institution's long history of addressing significant societal problems - even in recent years - seems to contradict this view. The authors of this book argue that the willingness of many voters to hold elected officials accountable for societal conditions is central to appreciating why Congress responds to problems in society despite the many reasons mustered for why it cannot. The authors show that, across decades of policy making, problem-solving motivations explain why bipartisanship is a common pattern of congressional behavior and offer the best explanation for legislative issue attention and policy change.

"Adler and Wilkerson provide an insightful analysis in Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving that offers a more complex view of Congress than the one-dimensional critique we typically get from the press. They discuss institutional practices and processes that drive congressional problem solving and why members of Congress continue to perpetuate them. Although this appears to be the most partisan and dysfunctional Congress in memory, Adler and Wilkerson demonstrate that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are capable of cooperating when they need to." - Representative Henry A. Waxman, 30th Congressional District of California

"Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving is the first serious rethinking of the role and operation of Congress in twenty years or more. It has the potential of encouraging congressional scholars to rethink many of the 'givens' in the field, and will be widely cited and adopted in courses. Additionally, it will be warmly regarded by public policy scholars and by practitioners and any who care about the operation of Congress." - Bryan Jones, J. J. "Jake" Pickle Regents Chair in Congressional Studies, University of Texas at Austin

"This book is the culmination of an enormous effort by the authors, stretching over many years, to collect relevant data on the law-making process and to use the data to address important theoretical issues. The results are impressive. Every congressional researcher will want to read and understand the arguments and evidence the authors marshal, and students will benefit greatly from having this book assigned in class." - David W. Rohde, Ernestine Friedl Professor of Political Science, Duke University

"In the end, I hope and expect that Adler and Wilkerson's challenging study will be widely read. A book that forces us to think hard about how we approach the study of Congress does not come along very often." Paul J. Quirk, Congress and the Presidency