According to Steven S. Smith, the contemporary Senate is afflicted with a “syndrome.” A “combination of minority-motivated obstruction and majority-imposed restrictions” (p. 3), the condition is brought about by extreme partisan polarization, individualistic behavior, and a media and public unwilling or unable to hold senators accountable for their procedural antics. A pathological development of the Senate’s conventions and rules that permit “unlimited debate,” according to Smith this syndrome is the most striking feature of the body today. Smith believes that we have reached a point at which the Senate can no longer embrace both the constitutional principle of majority rule and its institutional tradition of super-majority cloture. American politics have made them incompatible.

The Senate syndrome is a scourge that has evolved slowly and often stealthily. In Part I of the book, Smith explains in detail the numerous events and personalities that have delivered us to this point. The procedural framework for today’s battles was crafted in the early twentieth century with the establishment of Rule XXII, but it was not until the 1960s that minorities began to exploit Senate rules aggressively. The emergence of a divisive agenda, particularly on civil rights, greater ideological polarization, a burgeoning workload, and electoral incentives to act independently and firmly within the public eye encouraged obstruction from individual and small groups of senators. Majority party leaders responded to each upping of the ante with procedural innovations designed to mitigate gridlock. Complex unanimous consent agreements, tracking, side-by-side amendments, the filling of the amendment tree, a new byzantine appropriations process, and the restrictions on secret holds were all engineered in response by exasperated leadership. Indignant minorities then threatened retribution, largely in the form of more obstruction. They understood the public cares little for procedural matters and is more likely to hold the majority party in contempt for poor management than it is them for their intransigence. Because the Senate is a continuing body and two-thirds of its membership must assent to formal rules changes, this all generally unfolded incrementally. There were important escalations, but they tended to be exceptions. The cloture threshold was lowered and types of measures subject to filibusters expanded periodically—for example, most notably in 1959 and 1975.

Americans did not see the true character of the Senate syndrome until 2005. In that year, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) threatened to deploy the “constitutional” or “nuclear” option and use his control of floor proceedings to win and then have upheld a ruling from the chair that dilatory tactics designed to prevent a dispositive vote on appointments were out of order. Frist did not push the button, but as the cycle of obstruct and restrict continued, particularly when Republicans were in the minority, his successor, Harry Reid (D-NV), did and in November 2013 established a precedent that effectively prohibited action preventing votes on nominations to the executive branch and federal bench below the Supreme Court. Ultimately, predictions of Armageddon proved inaccurate and aggrieved Republicans decided against bringing the Senate to a standstill. The historic ruling did nothing to stem the syndrome, however. Now fragile, the Senate remains tenuously in one piece.

In Part II, Smith delves more deeply into the causes and consequences of the cycle of obstruct and restrict. This is where the social science is more sophisticated and the analysis deeper and fresher. Chapter 9, on the role played by the media and public in the process, is especially illuminating, although some of the arguments about their culpability could have been developed more. It would be particularly interesting to subject media coverage of Senate obstruction to a rigorous systematic test to see if Smith’s hunches about how they describe dilatory behavior and to whom they attribute blame for the body’s gridlock are correct. Little empirical work has been done on the electoral costs of Senate obstruction, but Smith has at least outlined an agenda for future research. The discussion of battles between Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) and members of the conservative coalition over cloture reform during the 1950s in Chapter 2 are fascinating. The coverage of the controversy surrounding the question of whether formal curtailing of obstruction can be undertaken by ruling and a simple majority of senators or requires the two-thirds needed to alter enumerated rules, particularly in Chapters 7 and 10, will inform even many close observers of Congress. The treatment of the aborted and then successful efforts to restrict obstruction in 2005 and 2013 is rich and new and constitutes an important scholarly contribution in itself.

Although to many the outline of this story is familiar, the book makes essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand how the contemporary Senate works. I believe the book is especially suited to a graduate seminar on Congress and individual chapters will prove useful and accessible to undergraduates. At one point, Smith recognizes Dick Fenno as “perhaps the most prominent scholar of congressional politics in the late twentieth century” (p. 357). The mastery of detail, ability to detect and isolate important patterns in data, use of appropriate methods, judicious drawing of conclusions, and eminently readable prose have been a hallmark of Smith’s considerable work on Congress for three decades now. The Senate Syndrome is no exception and justifies a description of him as a Fenno of the early twenty-first century.

Smith’s exposition of the syndrome is consistent with most of the research on the history of the Senate. It clearly constitutes one of the institution’s most serious challenges. The Senate has moved away from informal and freewheeling operations built upon a clubby culture and is now becoming more formal and rigid, its civility and deference to seniority and tradition shattered by ideological polarization and an ethos of individualism. At the same time, its general procedural character has changed little. It is in the business of making laws, approving executive nominations and treaties, and checking the other branches of government. Collectively, its members represent heterogeneous interests. But it clings to conventions and rules that permit a cohesive and determined minority many opportunities to obstruct its work. So far the pressure created has been relieved by incremental change that does not fundamentally alter the state of affairs. Smith believes that at some stage—possibly quite soon—something transformational will happen. This is more likely to be a procedural revolution than an overhaul of American politics and culture. No legislative body, however august and exclusive, can keep social forces at bay indefinitely.