Customer Reviews

America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton (The American Moment)

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America's Right Turn does an outstanding job of explaining how the New Deal Coalition of Franklin Roosevelt--a powerful and pervasive force in politics for over forty years--gradually slipped away. All good students of history already know that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is what ultimately led to the unraveling of Democratic Party unity. The solid south, which for years had blindly voted for the Democratic Party, no longer shared the values of a party that tried to include African-Americans, feminists, environomentalists and Union workers. In the mid-term elections of 1966 the Republican party picked up 47 seats in the House of Representatives, which made the Republican leadership smell blood. They learned the value of promoting wedge issues: race, religion, sexual orientation, etc...to get voters to forget about their pocket books and economic circumstances when they entered the voting booth.

The author of the book is clearly liberal and doesn't try to hide that fact. If you are a strong conservative you will have a hard time accepting reading some of the book. He accuses the Republican party of racism, class warfare and being economically recklessness. He blames Jimmy Carter for the Reagan revolution not because Carter was a liberal, but rather because Carter was too conservative! Furthermore he castigates Clinton as an idealistic Democrat that morphed into an economic conservative once he inherited a Republican Congress following the 1994 election. Clinton passed symbolic legislation to please the Democratic Party (for example the V chip) while he simaltaneoulsy passed welfare reform and NAFTA, two historically conservative issues.

The book is most effective when it illustrates the effect that the Conservative Revolution has had on the standard of living in this country. NAFTA enabled high paying blue collar jobs to leave the country and were replaced by low paying service sector jobs. Deregulation allowed the Savings and Loan scandal to take place, which led to massive government bail outs, etc...Massive government deficeits under Reagan, Bush and Bush have bankrupted our country for future generations.

I recommend the book because it effectively illustrates many of the pitfalls of the conservative revolution in this country. It also points out some of the tricks that Republicans use to control the electorate (wedge issues) and politicians (a massive defeceit that limits government programs). At times the book may seem to overestimate the value of "big government" but in era in which the term liberal is a bad word and conservatives control the government it is refreshing to read a book by an author that errs on the side of the left, rather than the right.

I will now end with one of my trademark haiku's:

'Merica's Right Turn
Huge Budget Deficeits--Ouch!
Limbaugh laughs...pops pill

Why has the political environment in the United States veered away from the New Deal liberalism of the middle third of the twentieth century toward an increasingly conservative position? This fine overview offers a well-grounded historical analysis of the process of rising conservatism and related questions. It serves as an excellent introduction to an important and complex topic. William C. Berman takes on an interesting and controversial issues in recent political history, and handles it in a relatively nonbiased manner although partisans on one side or the other will probably not acknowledge this.

Berman's account, which is designed for use in an undergraduate course on twentieth century history, takes a chronological approach to the topic. Beginning with the resistance to the policies of FDR to combat the Great Depression of the 1930s, he offers chapters that deal with "The Politics of Culture and Class, 1964-1974, "The Conservative Upsurge, 1974-1976," "Jimmy Carter and the Crisis of Liberalism," "The Triumph of Conservatism, 1980," "The Reagan Revolution," "Conservatism in Decline, 1985-1992," and "The Clinton Center." This second edition was published in 2001 so there is virtually no discussion of the election of 200o and the presidency of George W. Bush.

Berman emphasizes several benchmarks in the rise of conservatism to its current dominant place in the political life of the United States. The first is the now nearly mythical stomping in the 1964 presidential election by the Democrat Lyndon Johnson of Republican Barry Goldwater, a principled conservative who would rather adhere to his ideals than compromise for the sake of political office. Second, the development of conservative-leaning intellectual institutions that gave haven to thinkers and incubated the ideas that emerged in the 1970s to dominate the political discourse. Those ideas fueled the conservative movement, far more effectively than most people probably possible, during the political fights of the rest of the twentieth century.

Third, Berman emphasizes the rise of Ronald Reagan as a standard bearer not just of opposition to New Deal/Great Society liberalism but also of a coordinated and consistent ideology of what government should be and how it should behave. Efforts to put into place that alternative philosophy of governance and polity in a way that could not be dismantled by a Democratic successor to the Oval Office may have been Reagan's most lasting accomplishment, certainly Berman's account of the Clinton presidency suggests that may well be the case. Failing to forge a useful counter to the conservative forces in society and politics, Clinton moved increasingly to the center, some would say center right, to ensure his reelection in 1996.

Finally, and this was my most significant take away from this book, Berman makes explicit how the convergence of conservative economic ideas, conservative political philosophy, and social conservatism created a powerful coalition of strikingly divergent people who did not agree with each other on many issues but could work together toward a common general, if ill-defined, vision of the United States. I have read many other books that talk about this merger of ideas into a political juggernaut, however uneasily the disparate elements may have cooperated, but Berman's account is both more crisply written and clearly argued than many of these other works. Moreover, his refusal to take sides in the debate is both unusual and refreshing.

While some might see political bias in this book, the reality is that this is one of the most even-handed treatments of this important political movement I have read. Nothing, of course, is totally unbiased, and "America's Right Turn" is not either, but William Berman tries hard to offer a balanced perspective and overall he succeeds.

This book presents a good argument for why america turned right during the 60s and 70s ... I found it both interesting and informative. I would def. reccomend this book to anything interested in us history. i had to read this for a college history class and i honestly loved it

Granted, this book was written by some professors so it will not
be the best read in the world. However, the author's do a good
job of getting the main point of the book across -- that America
has become increasingly conservative since the early 1970's.
(Nixon would have fit in well with the Democrats today and Clinton certainly would have fit very comfortably with the Republicans in the 1970's). I thought the authors were pretty clear that the Clinton years (and all the scandals) could not yet be completed or analyzed (the book was written in 1998) and hindsight is usually needed when writing about history. In any event, the authors were not kind at all to the democrats of the 1960's and pretty much imply that the democratic party and its candidates in the 1970's was a wasteland -- look for comment on the Clinton scandals in the next edition. As far as the Reagan scandals (he told his lies and had his scandals too), I would try not to confuse objective analysis with a witch-hunt (conservatives think any criticism of Reagan is unwarranted, despite *his* scandals, and liberals do the same with Clinton and Kennedy). Rather, I suggest you
read this moderately interesting, rather short book with an open mind. (We all know about Clinton's scandals, but a pretty good objective analysis of a few of Reagan's blunders and scandals is Ambrose's Rise to Globalism).

I was forced to read this for an American History class. It has been my least favorite book that I have read in my entire college experience. Although it is a very detailed book, the conclusion at the end was very useful to sum up the jibber-jabber of the rest of the book. It was a little bit wordy, yet it did contain a lot of information about each of the presidents and how they contributed to the American economy and society and why America started to beome more conservative. Not a bad book for college professors to give to their students (information wise), but I would not read it on my own for pleasure (unless you like to put yourself to sleep).

(..) The Journal of Southern History in the back of the book calls this an "unbiased prose". I can not believe how far from the truth that is. The book speaks of the Republican conservatives as militants and pro rich and anti poor. Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage foundation in the early 70's is described specifically as a militant, yet it is interesting that James Carville and Paul Begala escape this label. Also Dick Morris is described as the brilliant tactician yet he is able to escape any moral qualifications, such as the famous immoral phone call with Clinton. Reagan and Bush are described as Presidents that gained success because they "exploited" the conservative mood of the country. They are described in the framework as men who are entirely in control of their success and failures, yet Clinton is described as the great synthesizer of circumstances that are out of his control. It is interesting the negative moral tone he attributes to Iran Contra of the Reagan Administration, yet when Whitewater is discussed it is pointed out that Clinton is faced with insidious attacks by the Republican Congress and that the Republicans are waiting in the wings, with the tone as though they circling vultures waiting for Clinton's imminent political death. He conveniently notes that there is no conclusive evidence in laying any guilt upon Clinton's involvement in Whitewater while leaving no mention that upon the outcome of Reagan's involvement in Iran Contra their was no proof that he contained any knowledge of the event. He pays considerable time and space to the desire of Reagan, Bush, the Christian Coalition, and the Moral Majority as being forces who are trying to infuse the issue of moral virtues on society, yet he fails to mention that due to the lack of interest of the Democratic party concerning morality that Clinton is the shining example of this moral complacency. He seems to view Clinton as this great Messiah. His election was the result of bringing back the Reagan Democrats into the party. He is a brilliant and shrewd politician that is able to effectively co-opt the Republicans and their agenda. He describes Clintons desire to govern at the center as a man who is trying to synthesize, yet fails to mention that another potential reason that he does this and this is a theory that is out there and also out during the time is that Clinton is someone who cares only about himself and his personal ambitions that are directly related to his moral depravity. He is a man who has no personal beliefs, heavily relies on focus groups in order to act at all so that he can attain personal glory in the spotlight. He is a man who, such as the Oslo accords, who needs to infuse himself into and be responsible for everything even though he played no role in the event. This just concerns morality. As far as the economy goes any jobs that are lost during the Reagan revelation are placed at the feet of Reaganomics, yet any jobs lost during the Clinton Administration are due to modernization and technological breakthroughs. Successes in the Reagan administration are qualified with rising debt, higher control of wealth by a fewer percentage of the population. Clinton on the other hand is a President who gains successes in spite of the Republicans that control congress. What were his successes according to Berman but higher taxes on the rich, an increase in minimum wage, welfare reform, and a booming economy? With more time and space quality counter arguments could easily be made to each. It is interesting how the welfare reform debate is framed in this book. It is framed as something that he wanted from the beginning and due to his desire for fairness he vetoed it twice due to Republican extremism and yet finally accepted it on the third time through with "reservations". Yet he fails to mention that as function of liberalism, one is effectively for everything. So, I would challenge Berman to find something that Clinton is not for. He speaks of symbolism of both Clinton and Reagan but fails to come to the conclusion that Reagan used Symbolism with Substance and Clinton used Symbolism without Substance, because Clinton is a man who would prefer to have the issue over the solution. I could go on and on and on.
The point here is not whether you agree with my views on Clinton or not, the point is that there are other views out there that Berman fails to explore. He needs to be more academically honest and analyze each Administration to the same standard. Instead, he continually holds the Republicans to one standard and fails to hold the Democrats to the same standard. It is clear that William C. Berman takes the predefining view in which Republicans are pro business, pro rich, malevolent men who need to be fought against by the Democrats, by such men as Clinton, who are pro labor, pro poor, pro minority and benevolent in their desires to create a better America. This book is a veiled academic propagandist piece that is bent to support that notion. I recommend this book to no one.

Earlier today I finished slugging thru "America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton" by, William C. Berman, which turned out to be the biggest load of left wing revisionist history dribble that I've had to choke down in ages. Of course it was for my current master's class at college. The people that praised on the back cover either never read the book, or were paid to say something nice about it.
The basic thesis of the book is that social engineering by the US Federal Government is good, no matter how many tax dollars must be spent, and that all white people who vote Republican are racists who hate poor people. No wonder colleges are getting such bad press these days as the breeding ground of liberals at the expense of the student body. This book even went so far as to say that most issues were too complex for the general public to understand, so the Federal Government needed to think for them.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Period.