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, recession-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.
“Congress will rise June 1st, as most of us expect. Rejoice when that event is ascertained. If we should finish and leave the world right side up, it will be happy. Do not ask what good we do: that is not a fair question, in these days of faction.” —Congressman Fisher Ames, May 30, 1796
In Do Not Ask What Good We Do, Robert Draper captures the prophetic sentiment uttered by Fisher Ames over two centuries ago. As he did in writing about President George W. Bush in Dead Certain, Draper provides an insider’s book like no one else can—this time, inside the U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the bitterly divided political atmosphere we live in, because of the combative nature of this Congress, this literary window on the backstage machinations of the House is both captivating and timely—revealing the House in full, from the process of how laws are made (and in this case, not made) to the most eye-popping cast of lawmakers Washington has ever seen.
About Robert Draper
Robert Draper is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic and a correspondent to GQ. He is the author of several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He lives in Washington D.C.
A House Divided - Books About the Tea Party Class of 2010
The New York Times Book Review – July 20, 2012 (Excerpt)
Last summer, as a vote neared on the incendiary question of whether to raise the national debt limit, Jo Ann Emerson, a moderate Republican representative from Missouri, argued with a freshman House colleague about the potential consequences of a failure to act. A Republican vote against extending the nation’s borrowing authority would risk a financial-market meltdown, she insisted; her colleague replied that the risks were justified. “We’ve spent way too much money,” he told her. Arriving home that night, Emerson asked her husband to pour her a big glass of wine, declaring: “I cannot believe that I had this conversation with somebody who was elected to Congress.”
Emerson’s amazement vividly illustrates how radical the freshman class of 2010 seemed, even to many members of their own party. Those freshmen, many elected under the Tea Party banner, came to Washington with little interest in the advice of experts or the way things had been done before. They were there to shock the system.
The debt vote showdown is the focal point of “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” Robert Draper’s engaging and often funny chronicle of the year in the House of Representatives following the Tea-Party-powered 2010 elections. A skilled magazine writer and a biographer of George W. Bush, Draper reports mainly from the perspective of freshmen like the unnamed representative who left Emerson agog. He draws colorful portraits of members like Jeff Duncan, an evangelical Christian from rural South Carolina who said he sensed “the presence of evil” during a trip to Guantánamo Bay in a way that had last struck him after he had blundered into a black-magic shop. And there’s Blake Farenthold, a conservative talk radio host from Corpus Christi who ran for Congress hardly expecting to win; when he prevailed after a recount, he was plagued by anxiety dreams. (Draper also sketches a few Democrats, including the notorious Anthony Weiner, cast as an obnoxious showboat and abusive boss whose sexual humiliation is little mourned by his colleagues.) [Read the full article...]
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THE BLEEDING HILLS A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss
I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith. - 2 Timothy iv. 7
The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
THE BLEEDING HILLS
