Grumet opens with Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where naïve Senator Jefferson Smith is manipulated by Senator Joe Paine and corrupt interests, then uses a nearly daylong filibuster to expose the truth. The scene represents the noblest popular image of the filibuster: a principled minority tool that lets an honest senator resist corruption and force the powerful to listen.

Grumet argues that the modern filibuster has become almost the opposite of that ideal. Once rare, demanding, and public, it has become routine and procedural, contributing to the Senate’s reputation as a place where nominees stall and legislation dies. The 2013 Democratic decision to use the “nuclear option” for most nominations, lowering the confirmation threshold to fifty votes, is presented as both a practical response to obstruction and a dangerous sign that Senate norms have broken down.

The chapter then traces the filibuster’s history. The Constitution does not establish it, but the Senate’s tradition of extended debate emerged from a broader constitutional concern for minority rights. Grumet shows how obstruction developed through conflicts over slavery, Reconstruction, the 1876 election bargain, and later House reforms under Speaker Tom Reed, who eliminated the House filibuster and strengthened majority control. The Senate, by contrast, preserved unlimited debate longer, only adopting Rule 22 for cloture in 1917 after President Woodrow Wilson complained about obstruction.

Filibusters became more prominent in the twentieth century. Huey Long normalized combative floor tactics during the New Deal, senators used a filibuster to defeat Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, and southern Democrats used extended debate to resist civil rights legislation. The 1964 Civil Rights Act became a turning point: after a fifty-seven-day filibuster, a bipartisan supermajority invoked cloture, ending debate and helping pass the bill. Subsequent reforms reduced the cloture threshold, but Grumet emphasizes that the rules have changed far less than senatorial behavior has.

Grumet identifies a procedural arms race as one cause of modern gridlock. Robert Byrd’s 1980 decision to “fill the amendment tree” blocked senators from offering amendments, leading minorities to retaliate by filibustering motions to proceed. Over time, majority leaders used tree-filling more often, especially Harry Reid, while minorities used filibusters more aggressively. The Senate increasingly relied on unanimous consent agreements, which meant that one senator could block action that previously required forty-one.

The deeper cause, Grumet argues, is the erosion of trust and personal relationships. He contrasts current dysfunction with Pete Domenici’s 1980s dispute with Russell Long, where Long protected Domenici’s amendment despite opposing it because Long had given Domenici his word. The chapter closes by weighing possible reforms: a negotiated détente over amendments and motions to proceed, a revived talking filibuster, or limits on filibustering the motion to proceed. Grumet favors rebuilding the Senate’s culture over simply changing rules, pointing to a 2014 bipartisan experiment by Lamar Alexander, Chuck Schumer, Barbara Mikulski, and Richard Burr that allowed open debate on child-care legislation and passed overwhelmingly.