Thomas E. Mann Quotes

Further-more, partisan attachments powerfully shape political perceptions, beliefs and values, and incumbents enjoy advantages well beyond the way in which their districts are configured.

The single-minded focus on scoring political points over solving problems, escalating over the last several decades, has reached a level of such intensity and bitterness that the government seems incapable of taking and sustaining public decisions responsive to the existential challenges facing the country.

In the House, Republican prospects have been buoyed by several successful rounds of redistricting, which have sharply reduced the number of competitive seats and given the Republicans a national advantage of at least a dozen seats.

Private sector labors unions continue to suffer losses in their membership while public sector and service unions grow.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

Responsibility for overseeing the implementation of election law typically resides with partisan officials, many with public stakes in the election outcome.

Today's Republican Party ... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.

The country has sorted itself ideologically into the two political parties, and those partisan attachments have hardened in recent years. It will take an extraordinary event and act of leadership to break this partisan divide. I thought 9/11 might provide such an opportunity, but it was not seized.

All of this suggests that while citizens became more comfortable with President Bush after September 11 and thought him to have the requisite leadership skills, they continue to harbor doubts about his priorities, loyalties, interests, and policies.

First, his job approval ratings have been trending down for many months, a trend that has accelerated in recent weeks as the war on terrorism has been supplanted in the public's mind by corporate scandals, stock market declines, and a growing sense of economic insecurity.

Incumbents are safe, but party majorities are not. This fosters symbolic votes, message politics and little serious legislating in Congress.

Beer soothes the upset soul.

Democrats do best in urban centers, Republicans in outer suburbs and rural areas.

Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders).

Incumbency adds a layer of advantage on top of this party dominance. But rather than foster an environment in which members of Congress feel free to buck popular sentiment and wrestle seriously with the problems confronting the country, it reinforces the ideological divide between the parties.

I don't believe in a golden mean; I don't believe you find policy wisdom between two polar points. I don't dismiss that possibility, but I look at the platform that's so ideologically based, that's so dismissive of facts, of evidence, of science, and it's frankly hard to take seriously.

He (Newt Gingrich as a freshman congressman) was both passionate about his goals and coldly analytical in his means.

While Republican voters have remained universally supportive of their President, Democrats and Independents are returning to a more naturally critical stance.

The increase in straight-ticket party voting in recent years means that competitive congressional races can tip one way or the other depending on the showing of the candidates at the top of the ticket.

Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order - the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process - was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption.

In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.

Second, the President's popularity has not translated into increased support for the Republican party or for the policies and approaches on domestic policy championed by the President.

But presidential approval also became a surrogate measure of national unity and patriotism.

I will keep faith with death in my heart ... For the sake of goodness, for the sake of love, Let no man's heart be ruled by death ... The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the .emotions, as the inviolable condition of life.

We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way.

Since the debt limit simply accommodates debt that has already been incurred, raising it should, in theory, be perfunctory. But politicians have found it a useful shibboleth for showing their fealty fiscal discipline, even as they vote to ratify the debts their previous actions have a beginning the country to pay. The symbol of railing against debt has proven politically beneficial, even if not substantively meaningful.

America is an outlier in the world of democracies when it comes to the structure and conduct of elections.

Whose best and most fruitful gift was the power of admiration, which made it possible for me to learn. Now, as in my youth, I am looking up to the truly great creations of the past, which I see high above my own and which alone deserve the name of greatness.

In never-ending efforts to defeat incumbent officeholders in hard times, the public is perpetuating the source of its discontent, electing a new group of people who are even less inclined to or capable of crafting compromise or solutions to pressing problems.