Kill Switch

Starred review from November 23, 2020
Jentleson, who served as deputy chief of staff to former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, debuts with an engrossing primer on modern-day congressional gridlock. Frustrated by Republicans who had been using the filibuster at an unprecedented rate to obstruct President Obama’s Cabinet-level and judicial nominees, Reid invoked the so-called “nuclear option” in 2013 and changed Senate rules so that only a simple majority, rather than a three-fifths supermajority, was necessary to end debate on presidential nominees. (Legislation still requires a supermajority.) Citing Merrick Garland’s thwarted Supreme Court nomination and a gun control bill that failed to pass despite the support of 55 senators and 90% of the public, Jentleson argues that Senate rules empower “a minority of predominantly white conservatives to override our democratic system.” His suggestions for reform include doing away with supermajority requirements except where they’re mandated by the Constitution, fixing filibuster rules to revive “real debate,” and democratizing how Senate majority leaders are chosen. Jentleson skillfully clarifies many arcane legislative procedures and brings a wide range of historical episodes to vivid life. Readers will be galvanized to make the issue of Senate reform a priority.

December 4, 2020

Jentleson's informative and timely work chronicles the history of the Senate and delves into the inadequacies of this legislative body. Given that this book is written by a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid, one might throw out the hypothesis due to partisan lenses. But Jentleson, public affairs director at Democracy Forward, takes care to trace the key points in the development of minority rule as well as legislative tools associated with it, from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to the 2018 midterms. Unlike a bill, readers will not get lost within the legislative process in this comprehensive yet accessible account. What emerges is a picture of how the filibuster and cloture rules and the centralization of power within the political party leader's hands create the tools that Senator Mitch McConnell has effectively used during his time as Senate Majority Leader. However, Jentleson deftly explains how both parties are at fault in terms of quashing majority viewpoints. In the prolog, the author suggests practical ways the Senate can be reformed to prevent and undo gridlock. VERDICT A startling read that will provoke tough questions about governance, this is highly recommended to all interested in government reform.--Jacob Sherman, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2021
Provocative portrait of a dysfunctional--by design, it seems--U.S. Senate. The Senate has been in a long state of decline, writes Jentleson, public affairs director at Democracy Forward and former deputy chief of staff to Sen. Harry Reid. That fall was "set in motion by senators themselves, who found that suffocating the institution with genteel gridlock served their interests," especially during Jim Crow, when obstructionism was a handy technique for blocking civil rights legislation. However, when Jentleson arrived at the Senate, those tools "had come to be applied to all Senate business." Don't like a piece of impending legislation? Invoke the filibuster, which was not meant to be used by the Senate in the first place--and particularly not as Mitch McConnell and company have honed it down to be, so that the stand-your-ground-and-jabber filibuster of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has been replaced by one in which a senator doesn't even have to be present on the floor. By this means, along with advancing requirements for supermajorities when simple majority rule ought to hold, the Senate of the last 20 years has managed to avoid accomplishing almost anything--and the minority is definitely in charge, as it was in 2009, when Senate Republicans represented only 35% of the U.S. population. "The most fundamental characteristic of democracy--the idea that majority rule is the fairest way to decide the outcome of elections and determine which bills become law--is baked into our founding ideas and texts," argues Jentleson, but that's not the way it works, and that explains the continuing stranglehold of McConnell--whose major legislative achievement seems to have been to define corruption as requiring "only a direct, quid pro quo exchange"--even now that he's no longer the majority leader. The author proposes reforms, but given all he's outlined here, they seem unlikely ever to be heard. An astute and maddening account of a broken institution and, in turn, a broken democracy.

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