filibuster review

Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright, 2021)

I grabbed this book almost at random off the library shelf, but it turned out to be exactly what I wanted: a history of the Senate filibuster, filling in lots of gaps from what I previously knew of Senate history. I already knew that the filibuster was a bug in the Senate's rule of unlimited debate, being an exploitation of that rule to stop debate, but I hadn't known that, before the further exploitation of the rule in the 1980s, almost the only successful filibusters - that actually stopped bills instead of just delaying them - were applied to civil rights bills. Even racist Southern senators, who would sanctimoniously declare that unlimited debate was the Senate's hallowed tradition - it is, but holding the floor to stop debate isn't - were perfectly happy to vote for cloture, the overriding of a filibuster, when the topic was something else. Like the 3/5ths clause, the filibuster is tainted from its origins.

Jentleson tells clearly the complex story of the revisions of Senate rules that inadvertently led to the situation we have today, where filibusters need not hold the floor but only be signalled by intent and are applied to every bill, so that every one needs a 60%+ majority to pass. It's also clear that the "nuclear option," to require only a 50%+ vote to pass, is not an explosion but a reversion to normal Senate rules. What isn't clear is why, having already applied the "nuclear option" to nominations for lower judges, Harry Reid couldn't change the rule further to apply it to Merrick Garland's nomination.

Though Jentleson earned his knowledge as an aide to Reid, the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of recent Republican obstruction from their point of view, explaining why they do it. McConnell's refusal to allow any Democratic bills or nominations to pass was a desperate attempt to propitiate the radicals in his caucus, who'd depose him as leader if he didn't. And Chuck Grassley? A Republican senator described in Obama's memoirs as having previously supported everything in the Obamacare bill, but who told Obama he wouldn't vote for it even if they gave him everything he wanted, but wouldn't say why? It turns out that it's because McConnell would threaten to deprive him of the Judiciary committee chairmanship, next time the Republicans got the majority, if he broke ranks. But of course he couldn't say that: it'd sound too venal and self-serving.

There's a few small factual quibbles. John Quincy Adams didn't make a deal with Henry Clay to throw him the presidency in 1825 in return for making Clay Secretary of State. That's what Andrew Jackson charged, but Adams was simply too naive to realize his integrity would be questioned. Also, at times I think Jentleson relies too heavily on Robert Caro for the historical material on Lyndon Johnson, but not always.