Valuable for specialists and political journalists.
The enduring importance of geography in American politics.
Many argue that partisan gerrymandering causes cities to lose to rural areas in countywide, winner-take-all elections. That is too simple an explanation, writes Rodden (Political Science/Stanford Univ.; Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism, 2005). Much more important is the geographical location of a political party’s base. In many states, urban areas are largely Democratic. The Democrats often win majorities there but fall short in pivotal districts outside the city that decide control of Congress and state legislatures. In this data-dense book, the author takes a deep look at the familiar urban-rural political divide, examines its implications for democracy (not good), and suggests ways to reduce polarization. He also shows how similar patterns affect elections in other Western democracies. In an intriguing section, he traces the roots of the American divide to the era of labor unrest before World War I, when left-leaning workers lived in urban working-class neighborhoods. In industrial Reading, Pennsylvania, they could win majorities in urban city council wards but found it harder to achieve victory in wards with more white-collar workers and business owners. Today, with the rise of the knowledge economy, this “pattern of political geography” continues even though city residents are now a far more heterogeneous collection of urban interest groups (working poor, immigrants, young progressives, etc.). Democrats cluster in “growing, affluent city centers like Seattle and San Francisco, as well as in smaller knowledge-economy hubs like Durham and Ann Arbor.” They fight “a perpetual battle for the party’s soul,” pitting firebrands against those trying to soften the party’s reputation to win rural votes. “A victory for the left is a victory not only for the urban poor…but also for universities, laboratory scientists, and social progressives,” writes the author. As Rodden argues, only electoral reform—a switch to representation in proportion to overall vote share—or major demographic shifts can reduce the underrepresentation of urban interests.
Valuable for specialists and political journalists.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5416-4427-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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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