Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes
Roosevelt's strength was that he understood he would never get anything through the Republican old guard, his party, unless the public pressured Congress.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. Simon & Schuster, 2013.
When his Republican political opponents controlled Congress, they had constant Congressional investigations of the President and his wife. Tens of millions of dollars were spent, and the President was constantly diverted from the important problems to deal with the investigations. For all that time and money all they came up with was the fact that Clinton was having a sexual liaison with a White House intern and lied about it to keep the information away from his wife, daughter and the public. The Republican majority impeached Clinton late in his second term, and when a trial was held in the Senate, the Republicans could not even get 50% of the Senators to vote “Guilty.” Clinton began to joke about the ineffectual Republican efforts.
Many members of his own party opposed some of the President's policies and programs, and party loyalty and discipline were strained:
President Kennedy and Dean Rusk were discussing the ratification strategy of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. The Secretary of State wanted Kennedy to hold off a televised address to the nation until after the Senate completed its ratification hearings:
In 2007 the Republicans, who were in the minority, began to use the filibuster to a degree that it had never been used. Within the single year of 2007 Republican’s filibustered 62 times, doubling the highest rate that had occurred before. A small minority of senators were able to block legislation that easily passed the House and was supported by the majority of senators and in some cases supported by the overwhelming majority of the American Public.
At the time Congress was gridlocked in bitter hyperpartisan conflict. Most people called for more comity and bipartisanship and most politicians wanted more bipartisanship but blamed the other party for the rift. Mourdock,arguing for less bipartisanship and no compromise defeated Richard Lugar in the Republican Senatorial Primary election. Lugar, one of the most respected and effective Senators was a statesman who worked with any and all to find effective compromises to reach national solutions. The nation was so politically polarized that the Republican Indiana voters ousted one of their most senior senators because he was effective at developing national solutions. See {626717} and {302706} for other Mourdock outrageous comments. While this rhetoric won in the Primary, it lost him the general election in a state where Republicans had a strong majority and should have had the seat.
This is the reason that it is so hard to reform Congress.
American Congressional politics had reached the point where whenever a member of Congress voted on a controversial issue, there would be enough lobbyists, corporation, money and single issue voters to run a candidate against the member of Congress in the primaries. So even if a politician voted with the majority of his/her constituency in a controversial issue, an irate minority with money could possible defeat the member in the primary election. Even if the member won the primary, he/she would still have to raise more money to contest it and then the member might be so wounded by a bitter negative primary that he/she would be vulnerable in the general election.
Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalist and political commentator.
