But Jentleson says that it’s ultimately the filibuster that has endowed those Republican senators with formidable powers of obstruction. There is, of course, the structural imbalance baked into the institution itself: Electing two senators per state, regardless of population, has meant that Republican senators since 2000 have represented a minority of Americans - even when Republicans have controlled a majority of the seats. In “Kill Switch,” Jentleson explains how “the world’s greatest deliberative body” has come to carry out its work without much greatness or even deliberation, serving instead as a place where ambitious legislation goes to die. Now Adam Jentleson, who served as a senior aide to the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, has written an impeccably timed book about the modern Senate using a very different metaphor. More typically, though, the Senate is deployed as a blunt-force weapon - that, at least, has been the argument from a growing chorus of Democrats. It’s an apocryphal story, but an evocative one nonetheless, casting the Senate as a fail-safe institution whose work is invariably carried out with wisdom and patience. Adam Jentleson a New Book Says the Senate Is Brokenīy Jennifer Szala – New York Times – January 25, 2021Īccording to lore, George Washington came up with the metaphor of the Senate as a “cooling saucer,” tempering the House’s blazing hot cup of tea.

Calhoun, the prominent South Carolinian who historian Richard Hofstader called “the Marx of the Master Class” based on his strong advocacy of the sovereignty of the states iunder the Constitution, as a means to preserve the institution of slavery, and creating an uncompromising political schism that led to the Civil War. The author describes Mitch McConnell as the modern version of John C. The author believes that a dramatic increase in the filibuster’s use has impaired the ability of the country to address its problems by preserving power in the hands of a minority that seeks to obstruct efforts to do so. A new book, “Kill Switch”, by Adam Jentleson, relates the history of the filibuster and other procedural arcana that he believes is at the heart of the dysfunction of the U.S.

With an ambitious legislative agenda, and thin majorities in both houses of Congress, the Biden administration is just beginning to face the full force of organized Republican obstructionism.

Kill switch adam jentleson