Mark Schmitt on why an ability to wrangle the Senate is what will make or break the next president:
"The most troublesome task of a reform President," wrote Henry Adams, is "bringing the Senate back to decency." Adams was writing about the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, which began with an Obamaesque promise of national reconciliation and reform but was dragged into scandal by the senatorial kleptocrats of the day.
The Senate has changed since then -- its members are elected now, though no less likely to be millionaires -- but it's still true that the Senate is where ambitious presidencies die. Dozens of subtle explanations are offered for the early failures of the Clinton administration -- from the early missteps on gays in the military to the closed planning process on health care -- but they are as nothing next to the banal fact, proclaimed almost daily on the Senate floor by then Minority Leader Bob Dole, that, "you need 60 votes to do anything around here."
Read the rest (and comment) here.
--The Editors
