It's Even Worse Than It Looks

Norman Ornstein's work at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann's work at the Brookings Institution had brought them into the public eye before, as well as giving them the respect of other political analysts. They previously collaborated on the well-regarded book The Broken Branch.[2] The two have worked in Washington D.C. for more than forty years, Ornstein in particular having written columns for Roll Call and served as an election analyst for CBS News. According to NPR, "they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions."[4]

The authors analyze the current U.S. Congress, and they conclude that the lawmaking body is now almost completely ineffectual. Two sources of the problem are given. The first is the serious mismatch between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, in their view. They state that the groups "have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and [in] a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act".[2]

Mann and Ornstein specifically criticize the right-ward move of the Republican Party, especially the use of administrative and parliamentary tricks to keep from having clear votes on some issues. The authors describe the party as "an insurgent outlier--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".[4][5]

The book was published the same year as the 2012 United States Presidential election. The election campaign brought attention to it as a descriptor of a major aspect of the campaign, the imbalance between the two major parties in the political degrees they went to win elections, and the difficulty the media had in avoiding false equivalence storylines. Prior to the book, the authors were routinely cited as sources by the national press.[5][6]

A mostly favorable review came from The Economist, the publication remarking that Mann and Ornstein have "devoted a good deal of thought to ways the system can be rescued and improved" to "their great credit". The book's "constructive ideas" additionally received praise.[2] The Hill published praise from journalist Juan Williams, who stated that the work "fillets the traditional media for perpetuating a principle of false equivalence in its coverage of the two parties... [masking] the GOP's unalloyed march toward the fringes of the right wing". He additionally labeled the book "[i]nsightful."[1]

[T]wo respected centrist scholars, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, have written a book that moves past the bland and lazy conventional wisdom. They argue, with a truckload of evidence, that the blame in Washington lies overwhelmingly with Republicans. . . . .Our national politics has turned a strange corner. And it is a cop-out to say that both parties are equally to blame. Strained attempts to be even-handed distort the reality we face. . . . The book is titled It's Even Worse Than It Looks and it is both fascinating and alarming."

Reporter Michael Brissenden of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commented that the authors had assembled "a truckload of evidence" in support of their views, Brissenden considering the book "both fascinating and alarming".[1]

• 2012 in literature
• Political polarization
• Politics of the United States
• Why We're Polarized

• It's Even Worse Than It Looks - Basic Books (Official Website)