“It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System

Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (Basic Books, 226 pgs., $26)

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, who together have about 70 years of Washington punditry on their resumes, make a bold gambit in their latest book. They drop any pretense that both sides are equally at fault in the current impasse in American politics.

Their verdict: “One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier.”

It is “awkward and uncomfortable, even seemingly unprofessional” to heap blame lopsidedly, the authors write. And then, all hand wringing aside, they go to it with gusto.

They describe the Republican Party circa 2012 as “ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government.”

These are two down-the-middle observers of American politics, Mann from the liberal Brookings Institution and Ornstein a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

They argue that things have deteriorated, calling their new book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.”

The title came to them as they watched the fight over the debt limit in the summer of 2011. Their retelling of what they characterize as a “hostage-taking” by Republicans forms a big piece of the book.

In addition to indicting the Republican Party, the authors name names, particularly one: Newt Gingrich.

In 1978, Gingrich set out to deliberately intensify the public’s hatred of Congress, they write, so voters would buy into the need for sweeping change and throw the bums (majority Democrats) out.

“His method? To unite his Republicans in refusing to cooperate with Democrats in committee and on the floor,” they write.

Gingrich led the Republicans to take the House in 1994 and became speaker. Mann and Ornstein see the wellspring of today’s poisonous political climate in that election.

What Mann and Ornstein are attempting is tricky. How do you write frankly about the polarization of Washington without being, well, polarizing? They mostly pull it off, remaining eminently fair even as they call out those they believe are responsible.