A game plan that should not die: what today's Democrats can learn from Ted Kennedy's maneuvering his way through and around a Republican Congress.

AuthorLee, Frances E.

Lion of the Senate: When Ted Kennedy Rallied the Democrats in a GOP Congress

by Nick Littlefield and David Nexon

Simon & Schuster, 528 pp.

With the U.S. Congress in Republican control, perhaps for a long time to come, Democrats and progressives need insight on how to be an effective minority party. Lion of the Senate, a new book by two members of Senator Ted Kennedy's domestic policy team, Nick Littlefield and David Nexon, may be able to offer some advice. Lion of the Senate is a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the 104th Congress (1995-96) from the vantage point of Senator Kennedy's senior policy advisers. The working title of the book had been "Stalling the Juggernaut," because so much of the account focuses on how Democrats successfully resisted the Republican push to enact the Contract with America. But the book also details how Kennedy, despite his minority-party status, was able to assert policy leadership and achieve significant legislative successes during those years. The book will undoubtedly be of interest as fine-grained history. But readers are likely to ask whether it might also offer a blueprint for a successful minority party in the contemporary Congress.

The story of the Republican Revolution has been told many times, almost always from the Republican perspective. The standard account centers on Speaker Newt Gingrich, who rose to leadership on the strength of a large, ideological class of freshmen elected in 1994, pressed an ambitious policy agenda, and faced numerous setbacks and embarrassments, but in the end had consequential effects on budgetary, welfare, and tax policy. Littlefield and Nexon offer a new perspective on those years, detailing how Democrats coalesced in resistance, deployed the Senate filibuster and the presidential veto to halt the Republican legislative drive, and then, via bipartisan wheeling and dealing, succeeded in enacting some key Democratic priorities, including raising the minimum wage and expanding access to health insurance.

A minority party in Congress always faces the strategic dilemma of whether to prioritize accommodation or confrontation. Politics and policy frequently trade off against one another in these circumstances. Members of a minority party can often exercise limited legislative influence by participating in the majority's efforts and trading their support for policy concessions. But in so doing, the minority party loses the ability to clearly define issues for voters in...

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