Still Broken?

This week, the winter 2010 class of John Glenn Fellows is reading Tom Mann and Norman Ornstein's The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track. It's a fine book, in part because it is the product of genuine collaboration between two seasoned Congress watchers who care very much about the institution, and American government.

My main criticism of the book has always been that Mann and Ornstein underestimate the corrupting influence of money, which has always been present, of course, but which looms larger now than ever before. Perhaps I should ask the Fellows to read Robert Kaiser's So Damn Much Money (see my post of January 4, 2010, adorned by a wonderful picture of Congressman Murtha), along with The Broken Branch.

Mann and Ornstein themselves continue to evolve. In the Outlook section of today's Washington Post, Ornstein has a piece called "A Very Productive Congress, Despite What the Approval Ratings Say." It turns out, Ornstein argues, that the 111th Congress has been one of the most productive in history. And he makes a pretty good case. So, is Congress still broken? That will be my query for this Wednesday's seminar session.