New Book Challenges "Broken" Senate at a Defining Moment

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While President Donald Trump dominates the political landscape, Ira Shapiro asserts that the health of our constitutional system depends on the Senate's ability to reverse its long decline, in his new book Broken: Can The Senate Save Itself And The Country? (Published January 15, 2018 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers).

Shapiro, the author of critically-acclaimed 2012 book, The Last Great Senate, describes the Senate's long fall from "hallowed ground" to "scorched earth," assesses the Senate's performance in the first year of the Trump presidency and offers an insightful prescription of how to fix the Senate so that it once again becomes a fully functional and productive body.

His book, which has been ranked No. 1 new release for books on government by Amazon ahead of its release, is getting attention from people like former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who says: "Shapiro's narrative history takes a wider lens to describe how dysfunction in the Senate helped open the door to Donald Trump." 

Shapiro, who once worked on an overhaul of the ethics policy for the Senate, shares his insights on the following:

• The experience of working in the Senate of the 1970s and 1980s.
• How the greatest Senate leaders operated.
• Why today's Senate is dysfunctional and broken.
• How should the Senate deal with, and check, President Trump.
• How the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation compares to Watergate.
• Whether the Senate can restore itself while Senator McConnell remains a leader.
• The changes in Senate rules and practices which can make the institution function more efficiently and more fairly.

Shapiro's government career includes serving as legislative legal counsel to Senator Gaylord Nelson. Shapiro also served as Minority Staff Director to the Governmental Affairs Committee, Staff Director and Chief Counsel to the special Senate Committee on Official Conduct, Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, and the first Chief of Staff for Senator Jay Rockefeller.  

"History will ultimately remember and judge this Senate for the role it plays in ending the radical and dangerous Trump presidency," Shapiro contends. "But for anyone counting on the Senate as a thoughtful, moderating check on the president, the rushed passage of a terrible tax bill last week was a bitter disappointment. The jury remains out on whether the Senate is capable of stepping up to its constitutional responsibilities."

SOURCE Ira Shapiro