Word: ornstein
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Burgeoning factionalism has a healthy side: it draws fresh people into public activity. Yet no matter how well it satisfies particular narrow causes, sooner or later it must damage larger public values. Eventually, as Political Scientist Norman Ornstein of Washington's Catholic University puts it, "You have too many decision makers and too many groups trying to exercise a veto over decisions, and with that you reach a paralysis in government." In the extreme, there could be worse things than paralyzed government. There could come a breaking of that basic spirit of accommodation and mutual respect that...
...there was another side to the story. Along with a wistful new look at Carter, there were new questions about Congress. Norman Ornstein, an authority on Congress, marveled throughout the Panama debate at the intensity of the struggle for a treaty plainly necessary for America in the modern world. Why should the national interest be so hard for the Senate to discern? he wondered. He offered part of an answer. Those highly educated and staffed members of the 95th Congress, so renowned for their independence, are too often more concerned about gaining political popularity by defying the President than they...
...Ornstein believes that the majority of this Congress, having come to their positions in a political decade marked by corruption and cynicism at the top, often look down the Hill when Carter speaks and instinctively declare themselves against the President unless he can prove them wrong. Deliberation, debate and even outrage are all vital elements of the democratic process. Determining when legislators should enlist in the larger cause is not an easy thing. But observers like Ornstein fear that at times we are being ill served by dozens of members of Congress who claim their right to determine foreign policy...
...alarmed. Complains South Carolina Senator Fritz Rollings: "There are many Senators who feel that all they are doing is running around and responding to the staff. My staff fighting your staff, your staff competing with mine. Everybody is working for the staff, staff, staff, driving you nutty." Contends Norman Ornstein, political scientist at Catholic University: "The staffs have vastly increased the work load. The more staff, the more meetings, the more hearings." Admits Indiana Congressman Dan Quayle: "It's very uncomfortable to be so dependent on staff, but I have to be. Seventy-five percent of the votes...
Born in Brooklyn, Ornstein was a two-time citywide high school math champion and wavered between physics and poetry before compromising on psychology at Queens College. He got his doctorate at Stanford, writing his thesis on the perception of time; later he collaborated with Psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo on a book called On the Psychology of Meditation. Ornstein is currently at work on seven more books. He is also teaching at the U.C. Medical Center in San Francisco, lecturing, traveling and organizing symposia on the nature of consciousness. A bachelor, he tools around in a hot orange Porsche 914 and lives...