It's Even Worse Than It Looks

Norman Ornstein's work at the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann's work at the Brookings Institution had brought them into the public eye before, as well as giving them the respect of other political analysts. They previously collaborated on the well-regarded book The Broken Branch.[2] The two have worked in Washington D.C. for more than forty years, Ornstein in particular having written columns for Roll Call and served as an election analyst for CBS News. According to NPR, "they're renowned for their carefully nonpartisan positions."[4]

The authors analyze the current U.S. Congress, and they conclude that the lawmaking body is now almost completely ineffectual. Two sources of the problem are given. The first is the serious mismatch between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, in their view. They state that the groups "have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and [in] a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act".[2]

Mann and Ornstein specifically criticize the rightward shift of the Republican Party, highlighting the use of administrative and parliamentary tricks as a means of avoiding clear votes on certain issues. The authors describe the party as "an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."[4][5]

The book was published several months before the 2012 United States presidential election. Its publication, especially at a time of heightened public political interest, brought attention to the asymmetry between the parties' tactics for winning elections and the tendency for the media to succumb to false equivalence in political reporting. Prior to the book's release, the authors were routinely cited as nonpartisan, balanced sources by the national press.[5][6]

The Economist gave the book a mostly favorable review, saying that Mann and Ornstein had "devoted a good deal of thought to ways the system can be rescued and improved, to their great credit." The book's "constructive ideas" received additional praise.[2]

The Hill journalist Juan Williams described the book as insightful and praised the authors, writing that the work "fillets the traditional media for perpetuating a principle of false equivalence in its coverage of the two parties,...masking the GOP's unalloyed march toward the fringes of the right wing."[1]

Michael Brissenden of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation also lauded the book, writing, "Two respected centrist scholars, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, have written a book that moves past the bland and lazy conventional wisdom. They argue, with a truckload of evidence, that the blame in Washington lies overwhelmingly with Republicans...Our national politics has turned a strange corner. And it is a cop-out to say that both parties are equally to blame. Strained attempts to be evenhanded distort the reality we face...The book is titled It's Even Worse Than It Looks and it is both fascinating and alarming."[1]

The book received renewed attention in 2021, as its analysis was applied with some accuracy to the political situation at the time.[7]

• 2012 in literature
• Political polarization
• Politics of the United States
• Why We're Polarized

• It's Even Worse Than It Looks - Basic Books (Official Website)
• Panel discussion with Mann and Ornstein on It's Even Worse Than It Looks, May 9, 2012, C-SPAN
• Washington Journal interview with Mann and Ornstein on It's Even Worse Than It Looks, May 23, 2012, C-SPAN