![]() ![]() “Americans disagree with each other.” Legislative politics, Wallach suggests, should force politicians to abandon their pure preconceived schemes in order to accommodate “disparate interests, conflicting visions of the good, and divergent judgments about prudent policy.” “Political work is not just policy engineering,” Wallach notes. But a new book, Why Congress by Philip Wallach, focuses more on the opposite concern: that Congress is failing adequately to deliberate on and improve legislation. Instead, he endorsed Britain’s parliamentary system, which gives majority parties the full power to implement whatever sweeping reforms they propose.įrustrated by Congress’s unwillingness to ratify their preferred schemes, progressives have repeatedly echoed Wilson’s critique. Criticizing the Founders’ ideal of checks and balances-which had fragmented legislative power among the House of Representatives, Senate, the states, and the federal government-Wilson argued that “the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.” He lamented that Congress provided special interests and political bosses a multitude of opportunities to block legislation without being held accountable for doing so. In 1884, the political scientist and future president Woodrow Wilson launched his career with a book attacking Congressional Government. The problem is that Congress appears increasingly unable to produce them. They often favor divided government and tend to prefer that legislation be the product of congressional compromises. Over the past 15 years, Congress’s approval rating has averaged 19 percent.īut voters are wary of the unchecked imposition of either party’s wish lists. It is where dreams die amid low-minded wrangling. Whereas presidents win office by mobilizing millions with promises of transformative change, the business of Congress is often inscrutable and disillusioning. Wallach (Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $29.95)Ĭongress is not a popular institution. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.Why Congress, by Philip A. ![]() ![]() Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity suffering with hope, resolve, and humor brutality with rebellion. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.Īhead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Book description, from the publisher’s website : ![]()
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