With breathtaking oversimplification, Lazare, New York editor of In These Times, reduces America's problems to the inefficiencies wrought by its Constitution. Tracing the Constitution from its creation by a group of elitist ``Country gentlemen,'' Lazare argues that it was anything but revolutionary. Indeed, he contends, the Constitution epitomized an antique, deeply conservative Whig tendency that he calls the ``Country'' ideology, which favored a balanced government of limited and narrowly defined powers, commitment to traditional English liberties, decentralization, and rural self-sufficiency. This thinking, discredited by 1787 in rapidly industrializing Britain itself, remained in full flower in post-revolutionary America, Lazare asserts. Plainly, he thinks the creaky constitutional machinery and its checks and balances, designed to protect popular freedom against concentrations of arbitrary power, was excessively cumbersome and pernicious from its inception, and he points out that it has nearly broken down or failed to respond in several national crises, most spectacularly the Civil War. Lazare seems to think our Constitution has never worked well, and he attributes every modern national problem to the obstacles it poses, from judicial review to equal state suffrage in the Senate. Although he denounces the Constitution as an ``antidemocratic'' document, his principal objection seems to be that it produces inefficient, chaotic government. He proposes transforming the House of Representatives into a sort of British Parliament and making it supreme over the Senate, the executive, and the Supreme Court, thereby eliminating the checks and balances he so detests. But instead of making a good case for reform, Lazare takes us on an iffy historical survey, overdoes his argument for constitutional inefficiency, and ends with some pedestrian proposals. A British backbencher would be amused by the suggestion that parliamentary government is efficient and democratic, as would an American by the author's asserting the moral authority of the House of Representatives. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100085-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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