Six. Credit Claiming and Blaming

While Congress has not become more partisan in its lawmaking efforts, and while majority parties have not become more effective at enacting their agendas, Americans still perceive contemporary lawmaking as deeply and increasingly partisan. This chapter seeks to understand one possibility why this is the case: that lawmakers' public statements in reaction to successful legislative action create a different impression than that found by looking at roll-call breakdowns and the substance of legislative accomplishments. However, looking at lawmakers' public comments in New York Times and Washington Post articles about legislative successes, this chapter again finds little change over time. Lawmakers today are negative and partisan in their reactions to legislative successes, but no more so than they were in the 1970s. Any perceptions that legislative outcomes are more partisan than in the past must rely on sources other than members quoted in media coverage