Norman Ornstein Quotes (32 Quotes)

To a large degree the durability of this compromise is going to depend on the actions of President Bush. He can keep it or blow it up. It depends on what kind of judges he nominates.

But, after the terrible lapses that occurred here, they are going to be on the defensive, and the ability to push other things onto the agenda will be limited.

There's no question that it will hurt him and it will hurt him significantly. He's still getting the solid support from his base. The question now is whether his performance with the hurricane begins to affect his performance with his base.

By any standard this is a low point. It will be interesting to see if Bush goes for a conservative, in-your-face appointment to the Supreme Court to rally the base, which has been more critical than before but has not turned on him.

The pivotal moment in the 1992 campaign was when the first President Bush said, 'The economy is not as bad as you think it is'. If this president reaches a point where he's suggesting the same thing -- and that's not far from where they are now -- then they have a problem.

It would have gone past us as just one of those moments where each side was teeing off against the other. But that event punctuated things, and I do think it made a difference in the coverage of the hearings.

Having a lot of time left as president is a good thing for him, because it gives him the opportunities and time to get out of some of these holes.

When you have a dramatic expansion of the ability of individual members to direct federal funds or to designate contracts, you are creating the most fertile environment for corruption imaginable.

The pending complaint on DeLay was on the Texas case (over political fund raising),

In some ways there's a real desire to get out of it because you don't want to be saddled with a loss, but if you leave now it's like opting out of the battlefield in the middle of the war and there may be some backlash.

Congress as a whole needs to step back and look at the way it conducts its business. It's not just lobbyists influencing members of Congress, it's members of Congress shaking down lobbyists for money.

Some members are pulling the blanket over their heads and hoping the storm will pass. For others, there is also a genuine belief that if you just jump in a spasm of reaction, you could do some things detrimental to a good deliberative process.

It's a self-perpetuating system involving interests, members of Congress, people in the executive branch and patronage positions and so on.

I think it's clear we're in damage control now.

There is extreme nervousness about November. The last thing that members want is to be out there in a tough campaign, where the wind is at your face, defending the indefensible.

The Republicans will make a bonfire under Jim McDermott,

It's the most expansive vision of the executive power of a president in our lifetime. To suggest that (Congress has) given him a blanket authority to do what he has done is a vast stretch.

Even those people in the leadership who've done commendable jobs may find themselves in the cross hairs just because it's possible there will be a more widespread desire for change.

The fault line here is really among the fiscally conservative Republicans, who are uneasy about deficits.

If you passed a steroids bill now while letting the deficit careen out of control and not doing much to get Iraq on track, they would attract a lot of ridicule for spending their time on it,

It was very significant two years ago when Greenspan endorsed the first Bush tax cut plan. So his basically lukewarm attitude now, saying that some of these ideas are good things in principle, but not at the expense of large deficits, has to weigh heavily on those moderate Republicans.

I think if you took a secret ballot in the Senate and House, you'd get a majority of Republicans joining on to those libertarian concerns. But the majority of Republicans in both houses see themselves more as field soldiers in the president's army than as independent actors in an independent branch of government. ... That group is very reluctant to challenge their president and to do so in a way that gives Democrats a political issue.

There's a sense that there is a culture of cronyism and corruption and incompetence

Lobbying is in the DNA of the political process ... and you're never going to get around human nature. So you can't legislate perfection here, but it's very clear that we've gotten lax, and there's an awful lot of money and politics in Washington.

What Gore needs, to counter the anti-Clinton, anti-Gore sentiment that's out there for a number of Democrats, is strong labor backing. And this issue is a thorn in the side of organized labor. This is a headache. It's not yet the level of a migraine.

What they've done, at least, is to give themselves a little breathing room from what was going to be a really ugly confrontation, and one that was a complete lose-lose for Republicans, no matter what.

We build people up who have positions of power or visibility and venerate them and then have to show they have feet of clay.

It's a disaster for DeLay. They've not only formally started the process, but this is a public petition.

That would have been a big plus for the president. You get the blame when you're the top dog. And in this case, I think there is no doubt that we had inadequate preparation and we've had inadequate response.

You have smart people and a lot of money at stake. People are going to find loopholes.

If we're going to end up with a lower turnout special election, that's one in which a Republican may be able to do a little better. But I've got to believe that you're still going to see a backlash. If the special election takes place around the time that indictments are handed down, it's going to be bad news for Republicans.

Let's face it. When you're the governor of New York and even mentioned as a presidential candidate, you're going to be under an enormous microscope.