by Mike Lofgren
First published 2012
Mike Lofgren arrived in Washington during the early 1980s expecting a brief tour of duty on Capitol Hill. Instead, he spent twenty-eight years watching American politics deteriorate from inside the system. Lofgren argues that the Republican Party transformed from a rational political organization into something unrecognizable, while Democrats became a party of the living dead. His resignation followed the debt ceiling crisis, which represented a new low point in legislative dysfunction. Lofgren exposes the strategic bankruptcy that drives modern Republican tactics and the tired incompetence that characterizes Democratic responses. Obama and his allies receive criticism, but Lofgren reserves his harshest judgment for Republican operatives who sacrifice the country's financial stability for political gain. The book combines humor with outrage as Lofgren dissects everything broken in contemporary Washington politics.
Genres: american, political-science, non-fiction, 21st-century, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: insider-perspective, political-commentary
Setting: Washington, Capitol Hill
Period: 1980s, 2010s
240 pages · Hardcover · Viking