Ezra's Bookshelf

Why Congress

by Philip Wallach · 337 pages · ~6 hrs

Politics & Government

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Philip Wallach's 'Why Congress' makes a passionate case for the legislative branch as essential to American democracy while honestly confronting its dysfunction. Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that Congress is designed to be the institution where Americans with different interests and values hammer out compromises that all can live with. When Congress works, it produces durable policy with broad legitimacy; when it fails, power flows to presidents and courts, producing backlash and instability. Wallach traces how Congress became dysfunctional, focusing on the rise of powerful party leadership at the expense of committees where expertise developed and bipartisan relationships formed. He shows how procedural changes, media incentives, and ideological polarization combined to make the legislative process increasingly performative rather than substantive. But Wallach is not nostalgic; he acknowledges that the decentralized Congress of the mid-twentieth century had its own problems, including empowering segregationist committee chairs. The book offers concrete proposals for reform while recognizing that no institutional design can substitute for a political culture willing to compromise. Readers frustrated with congressional dysfunction will find both a diagnosis of the problem and reasons for cautious hope that the institution can be revitalized.

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