A politically astute, timely book that will also have great historical value for future campaigns.
The Face the Nation moderator eases our fears about the 2016 presidential campaigns by showing other historical horrors related to our highest office.
With a delightful conversational style featuring casual asides and plenty of incisive commentary, Dickerson (On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News’ First Woman Star, 2006) relates historical blunders and boondoggles concerning our “national conversation about what we believe, our national purpose, and how to keep ourselves on track.” The comparisons to our current state can’t be missed, as Dickerson references attempts to repair an American system operated as a republic by elites. He states that America was not created as a democracy. The Founding Fathers looked to check the popular will using the Electoral College, state election of senators, limited suffrage, and the nominating caucus. Across the years, candidates acting as people’s champions have tried to change that, with little success. Dickerson’s many years of experience covering politics informs his intriguing inside looks at how certain stories begin and how they grow. He says a story moves around the campaign trail with a new expletive added every third telling. Throughout the book, the parallels to today’s news are unavoidable. The fight to stop Barry Goldwater in 1964 featured George Romney, and the current #NeverTrump movement involves his son Mitt. What is most fascinating is how one moment can absolutely kill a campaign; witness “Dukakis in the tank,” Howard Dean’s scream, and Ed Muskie’s tears. Sometimes, a strange campaigning style can be a candidate’s best asset—e.g., middle America loved Harry Truman’s off-the cuff attitude and his whistle-stop tours. At the beginning of the book, the author includes a helpful “Timeline of U.S. Presidential Elections,” which lists election years, the winner, and other major candidates.
A politically astute, timely book that will also have great historical value for future campaigns.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-4048-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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