The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule Review

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The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule ReviewFollowing up on his masterly examination of the paradox under which Red Staters consistently vote Republican against their own economic self-interest (WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?), Thomas Frank sets out to trace the present-day conservative Republican approach to government in THE WRECKING CREW. What he demonstrates is deeply disturbing even though it has remained on display virtually every day of the entire Bush II administration.
According to Frank, the conservative worldview is totally committed to "the ideal of laissez faire, meaning minimal government interference in the marketplace, along with hostility to taxation, regulation, organized labor, state ownership, and all the business community's other enemies. "The conservative movement promotes the interests of business exclusively over all else in accordance with the motto, "More business in government, less government in business." So-called "big government," also tagged as the liberal state, is the enemy; in fact, virtually all government is the enemy, other than the national defense.
Mr. Frank follows the conservative movement from the turn of the Twentieth Century through the Depression and New Deal, focusing most heavily on the movement's rebirth under Ronald Reagan and on into the new millennium. Along the way, he discusses the growth of lobbying as a major force in converting the nation's capital into a massive feeding ground for corporate special interests. Frank also highlights the manner in which conservatives have repeatedly run the country into huge spending deficits in order to "defund the left" while simultaneously politicizing government management positions by favoring ideology over competence. The end result under Republican conservative stewardship is government that demonstrates itself as ineffectual and incompetent, offering but further proof that big government is inherently incapable of working and needs to be outsourced to private, professional concerns who can do the job correctly (and then inevitably failing to do so).
THE WRECKING CREW is filled with fascinating side observations, such as its note that the movement has always lionized bullies, from Joe McCarthy to Bill O'Reilly, from Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay to George Allen and Michelle Malkin (whom Frank describes hilariously as "a pundit with the appearance of a Bratz doll but the soul of Chucky"). The book's most effective and outrage-generating section has to be its chapter on the Marianas Island of Saipan. Frank casts Saipan, with all its corruption, nepotism, income inequity, slave labor sweatshops, and local political control exercised in the name of big business as the perfect and ultimate model of the conservative movement ideal, a truly horrific prospect. He also notes, properly, that the morass that is today's Iraq is equally a product of the attempt to force fit these same free market ideals to a foreign country, implemented (so the Bush Administration hoped) by inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears young idealogues, home-schooled ultra-Christians with college degrees from the likes of Patrick Henry College, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and Pat Robertson's Regent University. Saipan and Iraq constituted "laboratories of liberty," modern-day "capitalists' dreams" whose realizations are (or at least should be) shameful American nightmares.
There is little good news in THE WRECKING CREW. Author Frank shows that our national government has been hollowed out under Republican conservative control, savaged into an ineffectual husk. Furthermore, he illustrates clearly that this was no mistake, that it is part of a deliberate process not just to privatize government and eradicate government regulation but to make these changes permanent by destroying the liberal left (and with it, of course, the Democratic Party). Frank demonstrates well that present day politics has truly become, to invert von Clausiwitz's famous maxim, "a continuation of war by other means." Regrettably, one side of the battle continues to play the game as politics, as elections won or lost and citizens swayed or not, while the other side approaches it as an act of war, a no-holds-barred contest in which the only goal is the complete and utter destruction of the other side.
THE WRECKING CREW is compelling and informative even as it paints a bleak picture of an America being driven rightward and increasingly toward the excesses and inequities of the pre-New Deal era. We all know how that era ended in October, 1929.
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Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush Review

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Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush ReviewRichard J. Ellis's "Presidential Travel" is a useful discussion of the evolution of the manner in which presidents have undertaken trips both within the United States and to other nations. As expected, the change over time is one of ever increasing complexity, concern for security, more logistics, and larger entourages.
Ellis documents well not only the journeys, but preparations for them, and the responses they engendered within the U.S. For instance, his discussion of Lincoln's train trip to Washington in 1861 clearly indicates the relationship between the chief executive moving through the population and the expectations of the populace when confronted with a presidential visit.
Perhaps the fundamental change to presidential travel came as a result of the development of transportation. When a president traveled by horseback or in a carrage, even on the boat on a waterway, the trip was both slow and arduous, and required close contact with the people living along the route. Railroad travel separated the president somewhat from the people along the route as it roared past houses, farms, and fields and the president could stay in a private car. But even then the so-called "whistle stop" tours engaged the public. With the advent if air travel, the president's accessibility to the public took a much more difficult turn as he then flew from location to location without many, if any, intermediate stops along the way. The classic image of George W. Bush flying in Air Force One over the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 rather than participating in the action on the ground brought home the disconnectedness of presidential travel from fellow citizens of the U.S.
Ellis explicitly uses the story of how presidential travel has evolved to ruminate on the creation, especially in the twentieth century, of the image of an imperial presidency far removed from the people presumably served. This is an important issue worthy of consideration. The result is an accessible, reflective discussion of this subjectPresidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush OverviewIn office less than half a year, President George Washington undertook an arduous month-long tour of New England to promote his new government and to dispel fears of monarchy. More than two hundred years later, American presidents still regularly traverse the country to advance their political goals and demonstrate their connection to the people.In this first book-length study of the history of presidential travel, Richard Ellis explores how travel has reflected and shaped the changing relationship between American presidents and the American people. Tracing the evolution of the president from First Citizen to First Celebrity, he spins a lively narrative that details what happens when our leaders hit the road to meet the people.Presidents, Ellis shows, have long placed travel at the service of politics: Rutherford "the Rover" Hayes visited thirty states and six territories and was the first president to reach the Pacific, while William Howard Taft logged an average of 30,000 rail miles a year. Unearthing previously untold stories of our peripatetic presidents, Ellis also reveals when the public started paying for presidential travel, why nineteenth-century presidents never left the country, and why earlier presidents--such as Andrew Jackson, once punched in the nose on a riverboat--journeyed without protection. Ellis marks the fine line between accessibility and safety, from John Quincy Adams skinny-dipping in the Potomac to George W. clearing brush in Crawford. Particularly important, Ellis notes, is the advent of air travel. While presidents now travel more widely, they have paradoxically become more remote from the people, as Air Force One flies over towns through which presidential trains once rumbled to rousing cheers. Designed to close the gap between president and people, travel now dramatizes the distance that separates the president from the people and reinforces the image of a regal presidency.As entertaining as it is informative, Ellis's book is a sprightly account that takes readers along on presidential jaunts through the years as our leaders press flesh and kiss babies, ride carriages and trains, plot strategies on board ships and planes, and try to connect with the citizens they represent.

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Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (American Presidential Elections) Review

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Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (American Presidential Elections) ReviewAs the editors note in the forward to this book, "[e]very election seems `critical' at the time it is held", yet only a very few prove to be truly pivotal in terms of reshaping the national political landscape. The presidential election of 1896 is one of those that deserves to be ranked in that select category. As R. Hal Williams explains, over the course of the contest between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, "[n]ew voting patterns replaced the old, a new majority party arose to govern the country, and national policies shifted to suit the new realities." Williams's book, a volume in the "American Presidential Elections" series published by the University Press of Kansas, offers a history of the campaign, one that details just how and why it changed the nation in such profound and lasting ways.
Williams begins his study by providing the background to the election with a description of the political environment of the period. American voters began the decade by handing the Democratic Party a series of victories in the elections of 1890 and 1892, culminating in the return of Grover Cleveland to the White House. In the decades prior to the 1890s, the parties were closely matched, with presidential election usually decided by a mere percentage point or two - an environment that Williams notes made politicians cautious and denied any one party the majority needed to carry out bold initiatives. Exploiting discontent with Republican policies, Democratic candidates scored a series of victories at the start of the decade, victories which seemed to signal a realignment in their direction.
Yet these victories soon proved to be pyrrhic. Cleveland's inauguration coincided with a growing business panic, one that triggered a painful economic depression. Exacerbating the problem was a demand for gold that drained the government's reserved to dangerously low levels. Though many Democrats demanded that currency be made redeemable in silver as well as gold, Cleveland instead sought to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, a move that earned the enmity of many within his party. As Williams notes, silver took on a symbolic importance out of all relation to its actual economic significance. Most Democrats soon moved to repudiate the unpopular Cleveland, while the pro-gold standard Republicans profited from voter discontent with both his party and his administration.
With victory in the upcoming presidential contest increasingly likely, a number of Republicans sought their party's nomination. Williams argues, though, that it was never much of a contest, with McKinley easily sewing up the nomination well before the party's contest. He emerges in these pages not as Mark Hanna's colorless puppet, but as a shrewd politician who worked hard for several years to become the Republicans' frontrunner. While no less ambitious, Bryan faced a more challenging path to his party's nomination one dependent upon several breaks that all went his way. As Williams points out, both men's campaigns presaged the presidential contests of the century to come: Bryan's for his systematic touring of the country to win over voters, McKinley's for the move away from the "military" style of campaigning that prevailed after the Civil War in favor of one that marketed the candidate and his issues to voters. Though Williams argues that Bryan performed better than any other Democratic candidate would have, McKinley's victory proved to be the most lopsided in nearly a quarter-century, ushering in a period of Republican political dominance that would last until the Great Depression.
With an extensive background as a historian of the politics of the era, Williams is a sure guide to the context and events of the 1896 presidential campaign. His book provides an insightful study of the contest, one that explains its role in shaping the history of our country. The attention Williams gives to the role of the third party campaigns is especially commendable, for while they played perhaps only a minor role in shaping the outcome he shows how the reflect the pivotal issues of the election. All of this makes Williams's book the go-to account for anyone seeking to understand this pivotal presidential election or politics in the 1890s, one that will serve as the standard by which other books in the subject will be measured for decades to come.Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (American Presidential Elections) OverviewThe presidential election of 1896 is widely acknowledged as one of only a few that brought about fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party came to power, and national policies shifted to reflect new realities. R. Hal Williams now presents the first study of that campaign in nearly fifty years, offering fresh interpretations on the victory of Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In tracing the triumph of gold over silver in this fabled "battle of the standards," R. Hal Williams also tells how the Republicans--the party of central government, national authority, sound money, and activism--pulled off a stunning win over the Democrats--the party of state's rights, decentralization, inflation, and limited government. Meanwhile the People's Party, one of the most prominent third parties in the country's history, which also nominated Bryan, went down to a defeat from which it would never recover. Williams plunges readers into a contest that set new standards in financing, organization, and accountability, and he analyzes the transition from the long-dominant "military style" of campaign to the "educational style" that appealed to a savvier electorate. He also presents key players in new light: he views Bryan not simply as a gifted speaker whose "Cross of Gold" speech took the Democratic convention by storm, but as a more calculating politician with his eye squarely on the nomination; he depicts McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna not as the one-dimensional fundraising machine painted by history but rather as a shrewd, insightful politician who understood what was required to get his man elected; and he presents retiring president Cleveland as an increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant chief executive whom the Democrats repudiated in a way no other party ever had a sitting president.With the Republicans' star on the rise and the Democrats banished to the South and the cities, the 1896 election was more than a victory of one party over another, it marked the emergence of new ways of politicking that makes this campaign especially relevant for twenty-first-century readers.This book is part of the American Presidential Elections series.

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