Jay Cost diagnoses the problem, with a lot of help from James Madison. Jay Cost’s new book is about political corruption. Not Watergate or blue-dress corruption but the kind that is often not illegal. A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption is “about corruption as a permanent, institutionalized feature of our government.” This has happened despite the fact that “our Founding Fathers were frankly concerned about corruption, so much so they designed a system to prevent it from occurring.” Cost knows politics, and his book is a chronicle of history and is honest about reality. We talk a bit about A Republic No More and its implications. — KJL