At a time when the hapless U.S. Congress has received low approval ratings, Shapiro, a former Senate staffer and now an international trade lawyer, looks back at a golden era of lawmakers whoperformed admirably in a period of domestic and foreign crisis in the late 1970s. Using Capitol Hill documents, media accounts, and interviews with congressional and White House officials, he shows this was a time of active legislators on both sides of the aisle putting aside partisanship and ideology to create a national energy formula, strengthen the Panama Canal treaty, control a tax revolt, investigate Watergate, and stifle numerous crises in the Mideast. Shapiro ably paints the political stumbles of the “outsider” administration of President Jimmy Carter in dealing with a congressional powerhouse consisting of senators Robert Byrd, Howard Baker, Ted Kennedy, Jacob Javits, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Lugar, and George McGovern. The administration and the Senate were at odds over nuclear weapons reductions, OPEC schemes, and saving financially troubled New York City and Chrysler. In his chronicle of Beltway politics, Shapiro’s excellent account of wise, capable U.S. senators putting constitutional concerns over party and ideology to do the people’s business is a prime example of how Washington can overcome its present deadlock. Agent: Kathleen Anderson. (Feb.)
With his gift for lively narrative and vivid character study, Ira Shapiro brings to life a forgotten, unappreciated, and surprisingly productive period of modern political history, when the Senate rose above partisanship to serve as a ‘national mediator’ for the great issues of the day. The Last Great Senate is bound to become a classic among books on Congress and American politics.
Ira Shapiro has produced a historically and politically artistic work of great brilliance – a masterfully researched and smoothly integrated brief that categorically proves his hypothesis. If I had but one book to recommend to newly elected senators – and their aides – this would be the one.
If today’s voters want a sure-handed explanation of how the once-consequential debate in the U.S. Senate degenerated into a low-comedy revue, Shapiro’s book offers it – powerfully.
There couldn’t be a better time to reissue Ira Shapiro’s insightful and challenging book, The Last Great Senate. If every senator and Hill staffer could read and absorb the lessons of this perceptive work — following as it does in the rich tradition of such classics as Harry McPherson’s A Political Education and Robert Caro’s The Master of the Senate — it would go a long way toward breaking the gridlock in Washington. It’s an important book, and I highly recommend it.
At the center of some of the most important and interesting debates in our lifetimes, Ira Shapiro worked for, and with, many members of the Senate who will be considered giants long after we are all gone. Now, in The Last Great Senate, he writes with liveliness, an insider’s insight, and affection for the senators and Senate of the late 1970s. This is great history, and a great reminder that the problems we now have with the Senate are less about its rules and more about its people and our contemporary political culture.
The Last Great Senate deftly captures a four year period of the Senate’s history during which it could (generally) be relied upon to act diligently and with honor. With superior insight and analysis based on his years inside the system and his love of the institution, Ira Shapiro provides an ideal lens through which to view the current political stagnation in Washington, and ultimately to give us some hope that there could be another great Senate.
By reminding us of what the U.S. Senate was, Ira Shapiro awakens us to what this increasingly shaky pillar of American democracy still could be. In so doing, he gives us not only a riveting historical account, but also a prescription of how to restore health to our political system and true patriotism to public debate.
Library Journal
“Shapiro's thorough analysis and background stories of these senators remind readers that the Senate once worked despite partisanship. Readers interested in political science and government history will enjoy the author's engaging style and historical perspective.”
Boston Globe
"A sharply focused and instructive look back at the institution's bipartisan achievements of the late 1970s. The Senate that served during the uneasy years of the Carter administration was the last, in author Shapiro's estimation, to make hard decisions on a series of volatile issues not for political gain but for the good of the nation. The contrast to the political and personal rancor of recent years could not be more apparent.”
Christian Science Monitor
“A first-hand, blow-by-blow account of the personalities and issues that animated the Senate during the Carter administration…. There is something surprisingly thrilling about it all…. There is no mistaking that the Senate operated differently 30 years ago than it did today and Shapiro persuasively shows that most of that change has been for the worse. As a result, his book begs the questions: Is the root of that change in our leaders or is it in us? And can it be reversed?”
History News Network
“Fascinating…. The Last Great Senate provides an alluring account of a functional Senate. Citizens might profitably read it to appreciate that ideal, and then send their copy to their senators to suggest models for better behavior. Those might be first steps to shaping the next great Senate.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“If today's voters want a sure-handed explanation of how the once-consequential debate in the U.S. Senate degenerated into a low-comedy revue, Shapiro's book offers it — powerfully.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Shapiro, a former Democratic Senate staff aide, argues persuasively that the crucial middle ground needed for compromise in the 100-member elite body of Congress has disappeared.”
Steven R. Weisman, Author of The Great Tax Wars
"With his gift for lively narrative and vivid character study, Ira Shapiro brings to life a forgotten, unappreciated and surprisingly productive period of modern political history, when the Senate served as a 'national mediator' for the great issues of the day. The Last Great Senate is peopled with great personalities, from Ted Kennedy to Scoop Jackson to Hubert Humphrey, and from Howard Baker to Jack Javits and Bob Dole. It is bound to become a classic in the field of studies of how legislation is made, presidencies are unmade and results flow from calculation, courage and determination to rise above the fray in times of economic and national security crises."
Madeleine K. Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, 1997-2001
“By reminding us of what the U.S. Senate was, Ira Shapiro awakens us to what this increasingly shaky pillar of American democracy still could be. In so doing, he gives us not only a riveting historical account, but also a prescription of how to restore health to our political system and true patriotism to public debate.”
Publishers Weekly
“In his chronicle of Beltway politics, Shapiro's excellent account of wise, capable U.S. senators putting constitutional concerns over party and ideology to do the people's business is a prime example of how Washington can overcome its present deadlock."
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Given the desire to escape today's toxic Washington culture, there may be no timelier book than Ira Shapiro's The Last Great Senate…. And there may be no more appropriate writer to pen such a title than Shapiro. A senior Senate aide who brokered legislative compromises among leading Democrats and Republicans, Shapiro worked behind the scenes on matters ranging from the Foreign Intelligence Act to the Senate Code of Ethics. In elegant, if sometimes dense, prose, The Last Great Senate fulfills its promises to chronicle ‘courage and statesmanship in times of crisis'- specifically, the last half of the 1970s, when a series of signal compromises were worked out by senators of very different ideologies. The book is for the 112th Congress (the one now sitting) what then-Sen. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage was for the nation's Cold War leaders.…. Congress and all its members should read this methodically researched book. And not only them; political junkies and all those concerned about the direction of the nation will also want to immerse themselves in it. But for the country's sake, let's hope each and every U.S. senator reads The Last Great Senate before the next vote.
The U.S. Congress wasn't always gridlocked. Members of the Senate weren't always hyperpartisan. Controversial issues like SALT II and the Panama Canal Treaty would probably be DOA in Congress today, but Shapiro, who was on the staff of several senators during that time, reminds readers that during the Carter administration, the Senate passed controversial landmark legislation with bipartisan support, facing issues on their merits. Shapiro identifies important legislation and treaties debated in the Senate from 1978 to 1980, explaining positions and senators who played important roles on each side. He describes the debate and amendment process used to create a bill that could pass. He also discusses domestic issues the Senate battled over, such as government-backed loans to save New York City from default and a bailout for the Chrysler Corporation. Senators Ted Kennedy, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Robert Byrd, Howard Baker, and Ted Stevens, for example, found ways to compromise, allowing national interest to prevail over partisan and ideological rhetoric. VERDICT Shapiro's thorough analysis and background stories of these senators remind readers that the Senate once worked despite partisanship. Readers interested in political science and government history will enjoy the author's engaging style and historical perspective.—Jill Ortner, Sch. of Information & Lib. Studies, SUNY Buffalo
From a Washington insider, a scrambled but edifying examination of the last four years of the Senate's "era of greatness"—1977 to 1980. The class of '62 (a Democratic majority) presided over the Senate during the two ensuing decades that wrought the great civil-rights legislation, cut off funding for the Vietnam War, propounded environmental-protection laws and oversaw the Watergate hearings, among other epic national battles. Shapiro, now an international trade law lawyer in Washington, concentrates on the tail end of that brave, progressive and fluidly bipartisan run, when Robert Byrd of West Virginia (known as "the grind," having grown out of his bigoted early conservatism) acceded as majority leader, inheriting the inspired leadership mantle of LBJ and Mike Mansfield before him. By 1977, with the election of Jimmy Carter, the Senate had regained its democratic footing since being unsettled by the "imperial presidency" of Richard Nixon, and was receptive to Carter's urging for strengthening ethics in government. Despite Carter's tendency to circumvent legislators' input altogether, Byrd's diverse, youngish, dynamic Senate passed the ethics code, met the energy crisis, deregulated airlines, raised the minimum wage, passed the Panama Canal treaties, took on labor law reform, saved New York City and Chrysler from financial collapse, protected Alaska wilderness land and agreed to the peace proposal between the rancorous parties in the Middle East. All of these Herculean efforts required the experience and cajoling of now-legendary senators like Moynihan, Javitz, Kennedy, Ribicoff, Muskie, Church and Mondale. The progressive run would come to a screeching halt with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the decisive turn of the Senate, and populace, to the right. A work of broad, archival and anecdotal research by a writer with a good grasp of the messy era and times.
