Ben and Joel are joined by author Robert Draper. He’s a former writer for Texas Monthly magazine; nowadays he’s a correspondent for GQ and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. He was the author, in 2007, of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush.” And he’s out with a new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside The U.S. House of Representatives.”

Questions considered in this podcast:

• How did the Tea Party change the House of Representatives? How have Tea Party candidates been changed by the House? How do they deal with the tension between their principles and the demands of governing?
• How has the Republican Party in Congress evolved over the years? What lessons did they learn from Ronald Reagan? And how does John Boehner still have his job as Speaker of the House?
• How did 2011's fight over the debt ceiling become such a "sugar-coated Satan sandwich"?
• What lessons can Democrats learn from the last few years? Did President Obama ever have a chance to govern in bipartisan manner? Or did he make too much a fetish of bipartisanship? And why can't Democrats figure out what they stand for?
• Have Twitter and Facebook made the job of Congress impossible?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "No No No," Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• "No Way," Sonic Youth
• "Stop The World," The Clash
• "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)," Otis Redding
• "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)," Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
• "Won't U Please B Nice," Nellie McKay

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