Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith goes inside America's power center in Washington, DC to reveal how the game of governing was played in the 1980s.

This text draws on papers and comments presented, shortly after the inauguration of President Clinton, at a Government in Gridlock conference co-sponsored by Brookings and the committee in the Constitutional System. The contributors are present and former members of Congress and officials of the executive branch, Washington journalists, public opinion analysts, and political scientists. They discuss the possibilities for ending governmental gridlock now that the US executive and legislative branches are in the hands of the same political party for only the second time in close to a quarter...

As the budget battles of 1995 clearly demonstrated, conflict between the parties can greatly hinder the legisative process. In this sequel to Beyond Gridlock?-- a study published at the beginning of the Clinton administration, when government was in the hands of one party-- the contributors address

Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith's new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas.

In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington's corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle...