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Search - Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives

Do Not Ask What Good We Do Inside the US House of Representatives
Author: Robert Draper

The U.S. House of Representatives -- a large, often unruly body of men and women elected every other year from 435 distinct microcosms of America -- has achieved renown as “the people’s House,” the world’s most democratic institution, and an acute Rorschach of biennial public passions. In the midterm election year 2010, r... more »ecession-battered Americans expressed their discontent with a simultaneously overreaching and underperforming government by turning the formerly Democratically controlled House over to the Republicans. Among the new GOP majority were eighty-seven freshmen, many of them political novices with Tea Party backing who pledged a more open, responsive, and fiscally thrifty House. What the 112th Congress instead achieved was a public standing so low -- a ghastly 9 percent approval rating -- that, as its longest-serving member, John Dingell, would dryly remark, “I think pedophiles would do better.” What happened?

Robert Draper explores this question just as he examined the Bush White House in his 2007 New York Times bestselling book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush -- by burrowing deeply inside the subject, gaining cooperation of the major players, and producing a colorful, unsparingly detailed, but evenhanded narrative of how the House of Representatives became a house of ill repute. Draper’s cast of characters spans the full spectrum of political experience and ideologies -- from the Democrat Dingell, a congressman since 1955 (though elbowed out of power by the party’s House leader, Nancy Pelosi), to Allen West, a black Republican Tea Party sensation, former Army lieutenant colonel, and political neophyte with a talent for equal opportunity offending. While unspooling the boisterous, at times tragic, and ultimately infuriating story of the 112th Congress, Draper provides unforgettable portraits of Gabrielle Giffords, the earnest young Arizona congresswoman who was gunned down by a madman at the beginning of the legislative session; Anthony Weiner, the Democrats’ clown prince and self-made media star until the New Yorker self-immolated in a sex scandal; the strong-willed Pelosi and her beleaguered if phlegmatic Republican counterpart, House Speaker John Boehner; the affable majority whip, Kevin McCarthy, tasked with instilling team spirit in the iconoclastic freshmen; and most of all, the previously unknown new members who succeeded in shoving Boehner’s Republican Conference to the far right and thereby bringing the nation, more than once, to the brink of governmental shutdown or economic default.

In this lively work of political narrative, Draper synthesizes some of the most talked-about breaking news of the day with the real story of what happened behind the scenes. This book is a timely and masterfully told parable of dysfunction that may well serve as Exhibit A of how Americans lost faith in their democratic institutions.

ISBN-13: 9781451642087
ISBN-10: 1451642083
Publication Date: 5/1/2012
Pages: 320
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Free Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 4
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Book Wiki

Common Title

Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives

Original Publication Date (YYYY-MM-DD)

2012-04-24

Real Places

Washington, D.C.

Genres:

History >> Americas >> United States >> 20th Century

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Search - Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives

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