{"id":279444,"date":"2020-12-22T03:28:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T08:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=279444"},"modified":"2020-12-22T03:28:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T08:28:50","slug":"obama-book-offers-key-insight-about-how-laws-really-get-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/12\/22\/obama-book-offers-key-insight-about-how-laws-really-get-made\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama book offers key insight about how laws really get made"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
In his 750-page book, Obama\u2019s legislative insight comes early, on pages 33 and 34. (File Photo:<\/a> Barack Obama\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amid all the attention on former President Barack Obama\u2019s new book<\/a>, what may not have shown up in the reviews is mention of a two-page summary that, for legislative scholars like me, includes what may be the shortest and perhaps best description of how legislatures really work, even for political scientists.<\/p>\n

Based on his time as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, the brief passage crystallizes the inner workings of the legislative process. As a scholar who has observed and studied state legislatures<\/a> and Congress for almost 50 years, I know there are hundreds of autobiographies by former members of Congress, former U.S. senators and former state legislators \u2013 all of whom offer lessons about what goes on in their respective chambers.<\/p>\n

But none is so succinct as Obama\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Legions of accounts<\/h2>\n

One of the first legislative memoirs I read, in about 1972, was \u201cCongress: The Sapless Branch<\/a>,\u201d written a decade earlier by Joseph Clark, who then represented my home state, Pennsylvania, in the U.S. Senate. I became fascinated with the idea of legislators evaluating their own institutions \u2013 and even proposing reforms to make them work better.<\/p>\n

Most legislator autobiographies are heavy on personal journeys, describing why and how they ran for office, what happened during the campaign and their legislative successes once elected. These sorts of books include former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri\u2019s 2015 \u201cPlenty Ladylike<\/a>\u201d and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky\u2019s 2016 \u201cThe Long Game<\/a>.\u201d They pay little attention to the performance of the legislature or the wider political system \u2013 though McConnell does note the contrast between politics and reality, the difference between \u201cmaking a point and making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are exceptions to this. For instance, in Philip J. Rock\u2019s memoir, published after his 2016 death, \u201cNobody Calls Just to Say Hello<\/a>,\u201d the longtime Illinois Senate president carefully explains how at least a dozen important decisions came about.<\/p>\n

In his 750-page book, Obama\u2019s legislative insight comes early, on pages 33 and 34. Obama recounts an early speech opposing tax breaks to corporations using facts and figures that he felt certain were convincing. When he finished, Senate President Pate Philip came over to his desk:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a hell of a speech,\u201d he said, chewing on an unlit cigar. \u201cMade some good points.\u201d Then he added:<\/p>\n

\u201cMight have even changed a lot of minds,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you didn\u2019t change any votes.\u201d With that he signaled to the presiding officer and watched with satisfaction as the green lights signifying \u201caye\u201d lit up the board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama went on to describe his view of politics in Springfield
\nas \u201ca series of transactions mostly hidden from view, legislators weighing the competing pressures of various interests with the dispassion of bazaar merchants, all the while keeping a careful eye on the handful of ideological hot buttons \u2013 guns, abortion, taxes \u2013 that might generate heat from their base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama explained that it wasn\u2019t that legislators \u201cdidn\u2019t know the difference between good and bad policy. It just didn\u2019t matter. What everyone in Springfield understood was that 90 percent of the time voters back home weren\u2019t paying attention. A complicated but worthy compromise, bucking party orthodoxy to support an innovative idea \u2013 that could cost you a key endorsement, a big financial backer, a leadership post, or even an election.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that passage, Obama describes the central weakness of representative democracy: Nice-looking political institutions don\u2019t work the way they seem, partly because organized special interests keep them that way, and more importantly, because \u201c90 percent of the time voters back home weren\u2019t paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legislators respond to people and interests they see and hear. Usually that means other politicians, lobbyists and their staffs. Without an attentive public, the public interest loses out.<\/p>\n

We all know better than we live<\/h2>\n

His account reinforces a truth I first struggled with in 1981 while interviewing an Indiana legislator for my dissertation. I asked him if he looked for information to better understand legislative proposals. He told me, \u201cI can\u2019t help but think that you think that our problem is that we don\u2019t know what we should be doing here. It\u2019s just like in farming, I already know how to farm better than I farm.\u201d<\/p>\n

People already know the facts of how to live healthier, work more effectively and save more money. And politicians largely know how to address what the public actually needs. It is motivation and discipline that are often the obstacles, not a lack of knowledge.<\/p>\n

Academic books and articles are useful for understanding pieces of the legislative process. But they, and lawmakers\u2019 own reflections, seldom so clearly reveal \u2013 as Obama captures \u2013 how legislators understand it.<\/p>\n

[You\u2019re too busy to read everything. We get it. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve got a weekly newsletter.<\/em> Sign up for good Sunday reading.<\/a> ]\"The<\/p>\n

David Webber<\/a>, Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Missouri-Columbia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Amid all the attention on former President Barack Obama\u2019s new book, what may not have shown up in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":158112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-david-webber-university-of-missouri-columbia","mauthors-the-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279446,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279444\/revisions\/279446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}