THE PARTY IS OVER

Lofgren draws on 28 years as a professional staff member in Congress to expose deep, disturbing trends in Washington.

“Creative and constructive work is always harder than demagoguery or fear-mongering,” writes the author. “We have had too little of the former and too much of the latter during recent decades.” Lofgren tears into Congress’ “high measure of low cunning,” especially among Republicans, whose use of “political terrorism” illustrates the party’s principal objectives: delay and gridlock, obstruction and disruption. They consistently play to their base but with no positive workable agenda, and the cries for a reduction of the debt are often followed by the desperate need to increase defense spending. Lofgren astutely points out that defense spending is the personification of inefficient spending, and it creates no jobs. As "chicken hawks" play to the crowd and their fears of illegal aliens, drug wars and terrorists, talk-show personalities stir up the more radical elements until rational thought can no longer be found. The author distinctly lays the blame for the current situation at the feet of the Bush/Cheney administration, which nearly perfected the propaganda with the War on Terror, the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. Lofgren certainly doesn’t excuse Democrats, who often fail to offer a good alternative; plus, they lack the fanatics that drive the far right. President Obama must also assume responsibility for continuing some of the more heinous practices of the Bush administration, though the author neglects to mention the fact that the obstructionist Congress has thwarted him at every turn.

A well-argued call for more sanity in American politics.