DO NOT ASK WHAT GOOD WE DO

Eye-opening look at the current House of Representatives, widely regarded as the definitive book on the Bush Presidency.

With public approval for the House of Representatives at a record low, celebrated Washington D.C. journalist and author Robert Draper has written a penetrating account of the legislative branch’s raucous “lower body” following the history-making 2010 midterm elections. Not only an inside look at the storied “people’s House,” DO NOT ASK WHAT GOOD WE DO is a high-octane narrative, following several current representatives on both sides of the aisle—including four of the hot-blooded GOP freshmen—through the past year’s tumultuous legislative session. Between a fervently antigovernment Republican House majority serving as the party’s “point of the spear” against the Obama administration (yet roiled internally by the demands of its 87 freshmen) and a Nancy Pelosi-led Democratic minority determined to regain power at whatever cost, the fevered antics captured in Draper’s tale constitute a case study in Beltway dysfunction, helping to explain Congress’s abysmal 9% approval rating. From the scandalous fall of Anthony Weiner to the tragic shooting of Gabrielle Giffords to the sound and fury of the debt ceiling fiasco, DO NOT ASK WHAT GOOD WE DO is, at bottom, an epic depiction of why Americans have lost faith in their government institutions.
The title is a direct quote from one of the nation’s first House members, Fisher Ames, who was lamenting the divisions already emerging in Congress by the mid-1790’s. In DO NOT ASK WHAT GOOD WE DO, Draper validates the 200-year old cautionary lament of Fisher Ames by exposing the House of Representatives’ zero-sum machinations.