Former White House counsel John Dean evaluates the current state of the three branches of government, and finds serious problems with them all due to Republican rule.

The former White House counsel faults Republican mismanagement for the current state of the government

John Dean has become one of the most trenchant and respected commentators on the current state of American politics and one of the most outspoken and perceptive critics of the administration of George W. Bush in his New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse than Watergate.

In his eighth book, Dean takes the broadest and deepest view yet of the dysfunctional chaos and institutional damage that the Republican Party and its core conservatives have inflicted on the federal government. He assesses the state of all three branches of government, tracing their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Unlike most political commentary, which is concerned with policy, Dean looks instead at process--making the case that the 2008 presidential race must confront these fundamental problems as well. Finally, he addresses the question that he is so often asked at his speaking engagements: What, if anything, can and should politically moderate citizens do to combat the extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and increasing focus on divisive wedge issues of so many of today's conservative politicians?

With the Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, the stakes for the 2008 presidential election have never been higher. This is a book for anyone who wants to return government to the spirit of the Constitution.

Questions for John Dean

Amazon.com: Broken Government is a book unabashedly about governmental "process," which, I'm sure your publisher told you, is not considered the sexiest of topics. But you make the case that voters are actually often more concerned with process than with policy. Could you explain?

Dean: Actually, my wife was the first to tell me that "process" is not sexy. In fact, if you think about it, process can be quite sexy. Allow me to translate into a different context. Dating, seduction, and courtship are all types of processes, while the object of one's efforts is a policy decision. The kind of car you drive is a policy decision, but the way you drive it is a process matter. To take the leap to government--the machinery of government is the process, while what we do with that machinery is policy. Most Washington insiders are more interested in process than they are policy because it is truly the name of the game. In making the case that many voters are actually more concerned with government process than policy, something I have intuitively known for a long time, I relied on empirical research which was uncovered by a team of political scientists at the University of Nebraska. In addition, early responses to the book have confirmed that voters are deeply interested in these operations, when they have discovered what the book is about.

Amazon.com: You assess the state of each of the three branches of government and conclude that Congress, after the Democrats took over from your former party, the Republicans, at the beginning of this year, is "broken but under repair." Congress's approval ratings have remained even lower than the president's. Do you think they are fixing their broken institution?

Dean: Congress has traditionally had the lowest approval ratings of all the branches. In the book I explain why this is the case, along with the irony that most voters give their own representatives and senators high approval ratings, claiming it is merely the rest of them they don't approve of. After explaining the repairs that the Democrats have instituted since regaining control of the legislative branch, I explain that it is a Republican tactic to do all within their power to not allow the Democrats to get public credit for making Congress work again. Indeed, Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 election after years of doing all they could to literally destroy Congress--it was really quite remarkable how they attacked the institution that they were part of, but it worked. Voters concluded that Democrats could not run Congress. After the GOP took control in 1995, they ran Congress not as a deliberative body but in a dictatorial manner that literally excluded Democrats, which meant over half the nation was not represented in Congress. Not surprisingly, by 2006 the efforts of the GOP to make their Congressional majority permanent through blatantly corrupt means and methods had backfired, and enough voters realized what was happening to take away control.

Now the GOP is back to trying their best to make the Congress not function, so that voters will put them back in control. The reason approval ratings are sinking is the GOP is succeeding--and the Democrats inexplicably refuse to talk about what the GOP is again doing to the process, and the media is not reminding voters. If Democrats continue to ignore process issues, if they refuse to make them an issue in 2008, not only will they lose but so will democracy as we know it.

Amazon.com: The battles between the White House and the Democratic Congress over the release of documents to congressional oversight committees raise all kinds of echoes from the Nixon era. How strange is it to see your old assistant in the Nixon White House counsel's office, Fred Fielding, return to the White House as point man in fighting some very similar skirmishes with Congress over executive privilege?

Dean: I cannot imagine why Fielding, whom I brought into the government in 1971, returned to the Bush/Cheney White House as counsel. I suspect his friend Dick Cheney leaned hard on him, for they needed help. Fielding has credibility on Capitol Hill, and while they may not like his stonewalling them, they know he is doing his boss's bidding and they understand that he is no doubt trying to get his boss to do the right thing. Fielding has never worked on the Hill, and his entire worldview of government is from the White House. When all is said and done, I think Fred will be viewed not as his own man, but just another who drank the Kool-Aid. I also know Pat Leahy and John Conyers, who chair the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, who are even more seasoned at the Washington game than Fielding. So it is going to be an interesting battle in the days ahead.

Amazon.com: What's particularly striking is that the White House appears to be winning those battles, or at least stalemating them successfully. What do you think this administration learned from Watergate? Why do you think they have been able to hold the line against congressional oversight?

Dean: No question that this administration learned from Watergate, and the landscape has changed significantly in the past three decades. When I returned to writing I never contemplated I would be writing political commentary, but when others were not talking about what was so obvious to me, I felt I had to do so. Republicans have taken Nixon's disgraced tactics and approach to presidential power as their starting point. They have learned that if caught, deny it. If that doesn't work, ignore the fact you have been caught and just keep doing it, and claim you have the inherent power to do so. They can get away with it because right-wing talk radio and Fox Cable News have become the cheering section that did not exist during Watergate. As for oversight, during the first six years of the Bush/Cheney administration, the GOP-controlled Congress could not even spell the word "oversight." Only now are we approaching real tests of whether the Democratic Congress will go the distance to get the information they are entitled to have.

Dean: Senator Goldwater said during the 1964 presidential campaign--and I have found him saying the same thing years later in speeches--that when history looked back on his political philosophy that he would be called a liberal. Goldwater conservatism is actually drawn from classic liberalism. I particularly admire Senator Goldwater's positions on "process" issues, the way he rejected the incivility and intellectual dishonesty that has overpowered conservatism. While he did not like big government--in fact, nobody does and he was merely ahead of his time in raising the issue--he believed that which was essential must function in the best interest of all Americans, not merely Republicans. He never embraced the Reagan mantra that government is the problem not the solution. I always thought Senator Goldwater's definition of conservatism a good motto for good conservative governance: "a conservative draws on the wisdom and best of the past to apply it to the present and the future." Today, conservatives are drawing on the worst of the past, not because they are true conservatives; rather they are radicals more interested in power for themselves and other Republicans instead of serving the general public interest.

John Dean does an excellent job of analyzing not just the Bush Administration, but other administrations started to destroy the intent of our government -- a must read for anyone interested in government or politics.

Sadly, Dean has wasted his notable experience and writing skill in a predictably transparent partisan attack on, ironically, bi-partisan conservative attacks on the Constitution and balance of powers. For young people unfamilar with history -- note the irony that Dean knew about criminal activity in the highest postions of the executive branch in the early 70's and did not act to defend the USA and the constitution -- yet when his own skin was at risk he sang like a canary to force his friends and associates in jail. Trustworthy? Credibility? You judge.

Note that Dean cites exactly ZERO incidents of indiscretions/abuses committed by democrat/liberal pols while focusing his rant on lesser republican indiscretions. Oftentimes he boldly quotes prominent arch-liberals who themselves have been or are under investigation -- Conyers, Kennedy, Wright, Clinton, et al.

In summation, Dean asserts that democrats/liberals are predominantly bi-partisan defenders of the Constitution and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches -- in contrast, it is republicans/conservatives that are the only self-serving, partisan, power hungry pols in Washington since Nixon.

Contridiction abound almost within paragraphs. For example, Dean condemns republicans under Gingrich for undermining the Clinton, while democrats who conducted investigations ad nauseam against Bush and Reagan are commended for balancing Federal power.

Incredibly and confusingly Dean contridicts himself on virtually the same page in a rant in the appendix when he states that the US will likely be hit with a terrorist nuclear device and a few sentences later quotes a "respected" source that claims the global war on terror is a overblown myth

In addition, Dean's book is filled with emotional invective and personal attacks and lies (he incorrectly cites Libby as the source of the Plame leak) -- he continually resorts to personal smears against conservative pols, including one passage in which he calls a former conservative pol as a "beast".

Note that history has shown how seriously wrong Dean's biased view of cooperative and sound democrat/liberal governance since the recent Pelosi/Reid has been the least productive, least convened, and most derilict in recent history (the politically motivated recent shutdown in the wake of the oil crisis as an example)

Unfortunately another potentially beneficial and informative work on the real threat of future executive branch abuses by a learned and articulate formerly well-connected bureaucrat has been tarnished and wasted by the fog of ideological blindness.

This book was disappointing, especially after reading Dean's previous book, "Conservatives Without Conscience," which was much more on point and accurate.

The main problem with Dean's analysis is that he blames almost every government malfunction on the GOP, with the most emphasis on the last 8 years, but also on Reagan. While Bush and his party lap-dogs have done a lot of damage and deserve to be criticized, it is irresponsible to blame them entirely for all the deception, crony-ism, and corruption in D.C. And that's what Dean does - He deducts that everything will get back to "normal" when democrats regain control of congress.

Dean must have a short-term memory, because the practice of hiring party hacks and cronies to run government agencies for political expediency and power goes back to Woodrow Wilson, Hoover, and exploded under FDR. And the trend has continued ever since. Has Dean ever heard of the Bay of Pigs or the Branch Davidians at Waco? And the Clinton's... I guess Dean believes that everything with that Administration was on the up-and-up without any conflict of interest.

Dean is constantly asserting that he's a "Goldwater Republican," but he continually belies this by questioning the very foundations of Goldwater conservatism, and accusing the basic philosophy of conservatism to be counter-effective to efficient and civil government. That opinion is fine if you believe in more liberal approaches, but to say you're a Goldwater Conservative and then espouse liberal talking points is talking out of both sides of your mouth. (Especially in the last chapter where he gives hypothetical scenarios where conservative principles are played out in policies leading to the demise of what he believes is holy. God forbid the supreme court defend the 2nd amendment!!). Dean is clearly confused if he thinks he's anywhere near conservative.

This doesn't mean that some of his points aren't well taken - his criticism of the Bush administration is on target, citing abuse after abuse from things such as general White House procedures in communicating with the opposition party in Congress, to by-passing Constitutional protocol and the system of checks and balances.

But Dean missed badly with his blasting of Republicans stacking the Supreme Court. He seems to think that it's okay for Democrats to nominate liberal judges, but it's some sort of crime against the people for Republicans to nominate conservative judges. To call it a double standard is a gross understatement. According to Dean, liberal politicians are always fair and civil, never resort to crony-ism, never make back-room deals, and always, always have America's best interest in mind - they are lily-white and without sin.

Of course, history says otherwise.

For a more interesting and accurate take on the current GOP debacle, I would recommend "Impostor" by Bruce Bartlett, and "Conservatives Betrayed," by Richard Viguerie. Also worth mentioning is "The Elephant in the Room," by Ryan Sager.

The GOP deserves to be lambasted, but honestly so.

I've read all three of John Dean's recent book trilogy, and this one is great, too. Being a former "Raypooblican" as some call it, he can put his finger on the basic flaw in Republican thinking, and then demonstrate how it works/doesn't work "on" the American people. Authoritative fear-thinking is demonstrated once again.

I just finished reading John Dean's latest book, "Broken Government, How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches". It is not light reading, but it is enlightening.

Dean carefully details the long slow demolition of our government by the Republican Party. He starts with Regan and works carefully up to the current administration and the evidence is very startling. Though they may have moved at a glacial pace, the GOP has systematically dismantled the three branches of our government and molded them into something our founding fathers would scarcely recognize.

At least one quarter of the book is notes and appendices chocked full of facts that support Dean's premise. Starting with the legislative branch, which he calls "broken but on the mend", he shows how political rancor and ham handed politics has replaced the collegial attitudes that the legislature once had. The Republicans, once in control, shut out the democrats and any opposition to an extent that is shocking. Only now, with the Democrats back in the seat of power has some of the bipartisanship returned.

In the Executive branch, one that Dean lists as completely broken, the powers of the President have expanded enormously. The "unitary executive" theory has governed the GOP's ideology for many years and steadily the executive branch has become primary in the governmental process. This is extra-constitutional and not at all the role you might have learned in school. The president, through use of signing statements and raw power grabs resembles more of a dictator than the second branch of our government.

Finally the Supreme Court and the judicial branch is in sore need of repair. The shift of judges especially on the Supreme Court toward a judicial fundamentalism has and will change the freedoms of our country. The next president will most likely be appointing one of two justices and their ideology, which was once not supposed to be an issue, could change everything. This alone is a strong argument against John McCain.

Dean's book is not an easy read, but for anyone who has been following the process of our government, it is a must. He is scholarly yet readable. Unlike his previous books, this one has an earnestness of a man on a mission. His mission is to pull our country back from the brink of something very different from the democracy we grew up with. That alone should make you nervous and willing to devote a few days to reading his book.