No one can dispute that Congress is broken. The Senate has been particularly dysfunctional in recent years. In the House, at least, a majority can pass bills. But, even now, there are issues that don’t fit into the red/blue framework, where senators of good will can work across the aisle to find common ground. When you dig beneath the partisan bickering, you’ll find that actual legislating still goes on, albeit on increasingly shrunken turf.
Most people would agree that Teddy Kennedy was an outspoken liberal, but his name is tied to the much-reviled No Child Left Behind education bill signed by President George W. Bush. Whether you like teaching to the test or not, it was this willingness to work with the Republicans that made Kennedy the most effective senator of the last half-century. These days, big legislation like NCLB is seemingly impossible, but the principle is the same. To be an effective senator, you have to build relationships with the other side and work constructively with legislators who you may be denouncing in public. Maybe you disagree about the proper size of government but you both have parents with Alzheimer’s disease. You can agree to set aside more money for the NIH to do research on prevention and treatment.
This is why I find it encouraging that Cory Booker had a three-hour lunch with Ted Cruz last week.
“We went to a place close to the Capitol and we sat, what was going to probably be an hour meeting, we sat for three hours,” Booker said. “He and I sat for three hours looking for common ground. We found some good areas that we agree on.”
The newly installed senator said that the pair discussed the economy, and he praised Cruz’s intelligence.“There was no filibusters going on, he did not read ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’” Booker cracked. “We had probably one of the best constitutional law discussions since I got out of law school. And I loved it, we just had a great intellectual discussion, but we quickly moved to … there are trends in the economy that have nothing to do with partisanship that are just bad.”
Citing wage stagnation and youth unemployment, Booker added: “We talked about what the facts were and then started trying to find ways we might get solutions.”
Getting Ted Cruz to drop his act for even fifteen minutes and talk seriously about policy is an accomplishment in itself. I doubt their conversation will lead anywhere, although it might, but the meeting was not a stand-alone for Sen. Booker.
Booker said his meeting with Cruz was just one of many he has planned. In fact, he said he intends to sit down with every Republican in the Senate.
“I’m going to meet with every single Republican, every single one of my colleagues,” Booker said, saying he has been working with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and has met with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
If you can get John McCain and Orrin Hatch to speak candidly, they’ll speak in glowing terms about Teddy Kennedy. Sen. Hatch, in particular, worked constructively with Kennedy over the years. As recently as March 2009, they teamed up to pass the Serve America Act to expand AmeriCorp.
Known as the Serve America Act, the Kennedy-Hatch bill would triple the number of AmeriCorp volunteers to 250,000 and boost the educational stipend they receive to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of teaming community service with tuition assistance.
It creates new “corps” focused on health care, clean energy, education and disaster response.
“This is something that will do an immense amount of good in our society,” Hatch said. “People don’t go into national service because the pay is good, they do it because they have a desire to give back to their country and their community.”
Reading that seems almost anachronistic. Could something like that really have occurred during Obama’s presidency? Yes, it did.
Sen. Booker seems to understand what it is going to take for him to have any influence in the Senate. I take that as a positive.
“Senators of good will can work across the aisle to find common ground.” – Cokie Roberts
This fills me with dread. But Booker is smart, and he must see some personal gain in pretending that ‘sitting down with every Republican’ is an active achievement, so maybe it’s not that bad.
Yeah … he knows it sits well with the Beltway Media .. that’s what it really is all about .. makes them all gooey inside
I don’t know Cory Booker. I’ve never met him. But my impression is that he’s totally opposed to cynicism. He knows how to pull off a political stunt to make a point. He’s a total pro at that, but living in trailer in a crime-infested part of Newark takes “stunt” to a whole new authentic level.
I do not think Booker is meeting with Republican senators to please the media. He’s doing it because building relationships in the Senate is the best way to get your priorities through.
I wish everyone in the country would watch some CSPAN footage of, say, the Senate HELP Committee marking up the Affordable Care Act, so they could see how senators act when they are actually at work rather than posturing on the Senate floor. While Republicans like Enzi, Grassley, and Coburn introduced a few poison amendments and complained periodically, they also worked very hard to make the law work better, introducing dozens of amendments that the Democrats readily agreed to.
That’s where the real influence lies. Ted Cruz could have a good idea and have people reject it just because they don’t like him. Especially now that senators can’t trade pork-barrel projects the way they used to, personal relationships are strongest currency there is in the Senate.
Probably because I’m Midwestern and all but that kind of thing just screams attention getting narcissism to me. Im not saying he is though most politicians have to be. Different styles for different areas of the country.
While Republicans like Enzi, Grassley, and Coburn introduced a few poison amendments and complained periodically, they also worked very hard to make the law work better, introducing dozens of amendments that the Democrats readily agreed to.
Yet they all(Enzi, Grassley and Coburn) voted against it when the final bill came up for a vote. What does that say, exactly?
It says that the surface level of politics is a whole lot different than the substance of politics.
Well, I’m kinda naive, so I like to think that the plan is
A) make the Beltway Media gooey inside,
B) leverage the gooey feeling into REVOLUTION!
That is, if a new senator was interested in real social change, this would be a wise first step. Make the idiots fall in love with you.
I’d be v. interested to see Boo’s top ten examples of effective, helpful ‘Big Legislation’ that passed in the past 10 years with help from the ‘other side’, both from the left’s and the right’s perspective.
I suspect that the right’s passed a lot more of their preferred ‘big legislation’ with our help, then we’ve passed ‘big legislation’ with theirs … and that that’s partly because we praise guys like Booker for things like this.
I’d have to do some research to properly answer your question, but I think the way you are thinking about this is a little off.
First, there are things I can think of off the top of my head, like the S-CHIP re-authorization of 2009 that were made possible because of significant Republican support. I already mentioned the expansion of AmeriCorp.
But the focus here isn’t on major legislation. It’s on the influence of individual senators. Major legislation is rare, and it is usually accomplished because of national trends and years of hard work, not by individual senators. Where senators have influence is in the invisible details of major legislation, but more often it’s in the appropriations process.
As a senator, you’re going to hear from constituents on a regular basis about either problems they are having with some unintended quirk in the law, or with something the law doesn’t address, but should. If you’re an effective senator, you can get those things addressed, and they often have little to no partisan component to them.
For someone like Booker, if he has a good relationship with the chairman of a committee, he’ll be in a good position to get his pet projects taken care of. If the Ranking Member likes him, he may not raise objections that he otherwise would.
This all goes on during the mark-up of bills, which most people pay no attention to. But it’s how laws are made and money is spent.
Not to pick on her, but I think one reason Barbara Boxer is such an ineffective chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee is because she doesn’t have warm relationships with anyone on the other side. I like her environmental politics, but I’m ready for someone else to take that gavel. She’s done absolutely nothing. And, while I recognize that she has to deal with climate-deniars and folks who are in the pocket of the oil industry, I believe there are other senators who could at least make some small amount of progress.
That’s very well said, and a good point. And I’m not sure I really disagree, as much as emphasize things different. However, I think
A) that the conservative and liberal visions of governance are almost entirely incommensurate. So you’re talking about a 5% overlap where both sides agree that there’s a (minor) problem and find it politically feasible to address the problem in a sensible way.
And B), for every time Booker gets his pet project taken care of, he’ll have to help Cruz get his pet project taken care of. Which can be, as you say, an effective (in unutterably juvenile; my kid’s fellow third grade students are expected to work productively with other little kids they don’t particularly like) way to deal with quirks of the law.
But that 5%, or 10%, is such small ball. And it locks in ‘small ball’ as outer limits of the possible. It proves that government is ineffective, too, that government can’t tackle any of our real problems. Which feeds the conservative movement and starves ours.
I also suspect that the larger issue is that you see our political system as fundamentally functional, if often inept and corrupt, and many of your commenters see our political system as fundamentally broken, if often producing marginal gains.
Actually, I don’t see “our political system as fundamentally broken.” It’s working extremely well for that segment of the population that has historically most often controlled it: the rentiers and cheap labor capitalists. The rubes only awaken intermittently and just long enough to demand a few additional crumbs before falling back into their world of delusions which makes them so much easier to exploit. If not for the New Deal policies that over-delivered on the crumbs, the second gilded age would have arrived much earlier.
Well, broken for us. I guess there’s a way in which a car without an engine isn’t a fundamentally-broken vehicle but a perfectly-functional lawn ornament!
Booker is ambitious and he knows exactly who facilitated his rise to Senator. Wouldn’t be surprised to see him switch parties in a few years as the openings for “moderate Republicans” that appeal to “independents” increases.
I wish there were moderate Republicans like Cory Booker.
The cynicism in this thread is just depressing.
Why? Booker is a tool. Why else would Shmuley Boteach, as one example, be one of his BFF’s. He also defends Wall Street. So yeah, his Newark stuff is a stunt.
the simplicity of your argument makes me want to chug antifreeze.
Then support Scott Brown.
Should have said “21st century moderate Republican.” Not to be confused with 20th century liberal and moderate Republicans that had some sense of public decency and public service. Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Jeffords were the last two of that breed and Booker isn’t in that mold.
NJ had a chance to elect a real Democrat to replace the deceased real Democrat Lautenberg. Instead they went with the guy Christie chose. And if anyone thinks Christie did that for free, have some bridge access lanes for sale.
Right, because there’s no difference at all between Brown and Booker.
I pity you, Marie. The world you choose to see around you seems to be a miserable, benighted one.
Yeah, the old whiny “if you can’t see any difference between neo-lib/neo-con Democratic X and neo-lib/neo-con Republican Y” there is something wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with those that acknowledge having to vote for the lesser evil.
Decades of doing that may even have slowed down the process of increasing income/wealth for the “haves” and decreasing income/wealth for the “have nots.” Unfortunately, decades ago, US income/wealth inequality was already too high — particularly for minorities.
Decades of doing that may have slowed down the process of undoing women’s rights to contraceptives and abortion. An issue that should have been settled decades ago — before regressive Democrats and Republicans agreed that women shouldn’t have such rights.
Doubt that the “lesser evil” had much impact on the National Security State — this waste is a bipartisan effort.
There’s something very wrong with those that don’t acknowledge how little difference there is between the domestic policies championed by Reagan and Bill Clinton.
You make my point for me. In your worldview, there is something very wrong with pretty much everything. “Very wrong” seems to be your default setting. I find it pitiable. Not “wrong” – that’s your word, not mine – just depressing and defeatist. It’s not how I choose to see the world.
There’s enough there to know that Booker’s going to be on the wrong side of some bad votes. A big strike one was his support for the Iran sanctions.
Right along with Clinton: ‘Let’s Be Clear,’ Military Option for Iran ‘on the Table’
An old Rock-n-Roll musician has more sense and guts than an old wannabe POTUS — Look To Your Own House: Roger Waters Fires Back At Critics’ Charges of Anti-Semitism
worth noting is that Kennedy soon denounced NCLB, and said Bush reneged on his side of the deal.
Which, to me at least, shows that you can’t trust the current breed republicans.
Yeah, it’s a problem.
And I’m not in the camp that thinks that are political differences can be resolved over dinner.
But a senator can have influence or not. And even if you are out there throwing bombs in the media every day like John McCain, you can still be effective in legislating if you build relationships on the other side of the aisle.
Because McCain and Kennedy were friends, it made it easier for them to work together on immigration reform. They didn’t succeed, but that wasn’t their fault. They also failed in 2001 to pass a patient’s Bill of Rights.
Or, let’s go back into the Wayback Machine:
Exactly. In almost every case I can think of that Dems worked to pass Republican initiatives, we woke up with a hangover.
The hangovers wouldn’t have been so bad — they don’t last but a few hours. It was the fingers, toes, ears, limbs, etc. that were lost in the bargains.
Look, I’ve always been an advocate of politicians getting together away from the Capital, and talking.
But talk is much, much different, from actual action.
No one doubts Ted Cruz’s mental intelligence.
The man is fiercely bright!
It’s his lack of emotional intelligence, that is the concern.
OY!
Capitol, not capital.
Of course, in theory this is what every newly elected senator should be expected to do, and what has likely been done since 1789. And it certainly seems like Booman is correct, Booker is personally opposed to cynicism. Indeed, most political leaders must work against cynicism. Cruz, for example, must really get his conserva-cogs to believe he and his allies do want to destroy all vestiges of the New Deal, and abolish the job-destroyin’ EPA for example.
So personal contact and cultivating connections is how members of any small political body would have to operate if anything were ever to be accomplished. It’s not even totally surprising that wingnut Cruz would agree that “wage stagnation and youth unemployment” are in some sense seen as “problems” by Cruz. At least privately to a new colleague.
But in the braindead era of Late Conservatism, in which Cruz is a new leader, the ultimate stumbling block is that Booker will find there are simply no possible “solutions” to admitted problems for which he and Cruz (and all the rest of ’em) could ever find “common ground”. Because there will never be an accepted “common ground” cause of any national problem, and the conservative “solution” will have to involve less demonic gub’mint for every domestic concern.
Less gub’mint regulation is the litmus test for whether a proposed “solution” can possibly work. More Freedumz for corporate CEOs and plutocrats is the necessary ingredient of every “conservative” solution. If Booker wants to buy into that lunacy, they he’ll find lots of common ground, but no actual “solutions”, of course.
Kennedy worked his magic because there existed some Repubs who were play acting as “conservatives” and who wouldn’t have dreamed 20 years ago the level(s) of self-retardation, spite, illogic and ignorance that the “conservative” movement would evolve into between Speaker Gingrich and President Food Stamp. Repub Elders like McFool and Orrin and Grassley (who may have been open to reason in days long gone by) are not respected “leaders” of the GOoP, they are hated phonies to today’s rabid radical Repubs—the ignorant, rage-filled rabble that Cruz has cultivated and empowered. Those pathetic old guys now have to play the game of out-Cruzing Cruz. Profiles in courage, but that’s the reality.
Even the fabled touch of Teddy couldn’t do a thing with what’s on the opposite side of the senate aisle today, no many how many scotches he might drink with them. Comity is from a bygone era, intentionally wrecked by the “conservative” movement, which has demonized and denounced compromise and all Dems as lib’rul communist/fascists. All of which I fear Booker will (quickly) learn in coming years, just as Obama was forced to. Anyway, I hope Booker isn’t spending too much taking all these wingnut TP bozos to lunch!
Sadly, all too true.
Yet, if you are going to serve in the Senate and accomplish anything, the old rules still apply.
The difference is, you shouldn’t expect much.
Yeah. The “old” rules. Booker is an opportunist. That’s the old rules.
Nothing has changed, Booman. Nothing except the tactics.
The strategy?
Win at all costs; then reap the rewards.
Booker and Cruz?
Perfect together. Two sides of the same newest, ascending portion of the PermaGov. Look at their corporate donors. I’ll bet they had a lot to talk about. A lot in common. Bet on it.
Calvin Jones writes above:
That makes you want to chug antifreeze?
Shmuley Boteach, eh?
The titles of many of his projects make me start to reach for the antifreeze.
“Shalom In The Home!!!””
Please!!!
Another candidate for the
middling…errr, ahhhh…muddling of America via the Oprah Show/PBS level of middle class trance-hype.No wonder they’re allies.
Considering the general level of your political preferences it is also no wonder you approve as the country goes to hell in a handbasket that also contains such muddled class cultural propaganda crap.
Marx woulda seen through him in a NY minute.
Groucho Marx, that is.
All of these PermaGov/PermaCulture hustlers gathered up into one stinking crump wouldn’t weigh as much Abe Lincoln’s foreskin.
WTFU.
Goodbye.
I must be going.
AG