• Government cannot govern unless political machines or something like them exist and work, because machines are uniquely willing and able to negotiate compromises and make them stick.
• Progressive, populist, and libertarian reformers have joined forces to wage a decades-long war against machine politics by weakening political insiders’ control of money, nominations, negotiations, and other essential tools of political leadership.
• Reforms’ fixations on corruption and participation, although perhaps appropriate a long time ago, have become destabilizing and counterproductive, contributing to the rise of privatized pseudo-machines that make governing more difficult and politics less accountable.
• Although no one wants to or could bring back the likes of Tammany Hall, much can be done to restore a more sensible balance by removing impediments which reforms have placed in the way of transactional politics and machine-building.
• Political realism, while coming in many flavors, is emerging as a coherent school of analysis and offers new directions for a reform conversation which has run aground on outdated and unrealistic assumptions.

Rauch also explores possible realist solutions, such changes to campaign finance laws, congressional earmarks, primary elections, and transparency rules.