Customer Reviews

Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After a yearlong bombardment of spin and simplistic explanations of what was happening in the 2008 campaigns, serious readers needed objectivity and scholarly review of those elections and that is what they get in Epic Journey. While the author's attention to the presidential campaign is both natural and justified, the analysis of congressional and state elections found in Chapter Six is most useful and well presented. The final chapter, Seven, addressing potential campaign and electoral ramifications of this past campaign on future campaigns, is most thought provoking. From insightful observations about the future of the Electoral College debate, to recognition that the 2008 campaign probably changed the campaign-finance system permanently, to issues like early voting and registration fraud, the authors make the book more than just a review of the long campaign of 2008. The entire read is comfortable and escapes most of the academic-sounding jargon. The authors do a nice job of refuting a number of relevant misconceptions about political history and some common wisdom repeated throughout the campaign. If there is a weakness, it may be in the insufficient attention they gave to the economic downturn that was revealing itself in the late summer and early fall of 2008.

No one would have guessed a black man could take the White House two years ago. "Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politic" tells the story of the 2008 presidential election and how it's a historical snapshot of American politics. Discussing the effects of George W. Bush's term, "Epic Journey" is a fine historical read that will give readers a more complete and comprehensive understanding of the recent past. "Epic Journey" is a fine addition to any political collection.

Ceasar presents a solid and readable enough presentation of the facts that I really can't quarrel with (Most of it I remember on my own). Perhaps that's why I really couldn't get that into this as a self-proclaimed "analysis" of the 2008 election from a historical perspective. Ceasar does do a great job putting the election poll numbers, demographics, finances, and electoral college functioning in historical context. In my opinion, the last chapter of the book should have been left out.

It's only 2010, and the repercussions of the election are pretty much all hypothetical to this point. Ceasar diverges on some interesting thought experiments about what the future might hold, but to be honest his assumptions are just that, not analysis, at least not until the mid-terms coming up in November.

Moreover, it's in the final chapter when Ceasar is musing that he sort of tips his hand as he gets carried away with how the Republicans may reclaim power by playing it careful and allowing the Democrats to self-destruct (a point that arguably had some prescience as of this writing in August).

The bottom-line is that this book is solid for its data, but the analysis of the failures of the various candidates, where not obvious, where certainly only a matter of perspective rather than absolute truth. There exist any number of explanations for why other candidates did not succeed, none of which are mentioned as competing theories. As such, the analysis feels more like a bathroom than a picture window into what went on culturally and socially in the 2008 election. For example, the author all but dismisses race as a factor in the election, which, following the news as I did for the entire 2007-2008 primary and general election season, I find incredibly hard to believe. Ceasar insists at several moments that race was simply a background factor and that most of America simply didn't care about it as much as the candidates and pols might have. Race is a major historical theme in ALL of American history, to discount it in the election of the first African-American president seems incredibly naive.

This is a good read and it is written well. Pretty easy to understand and doesn't get boring too often. I enjoyed it (:

I really enjoyed reading Epic Journey. It was an easy read that examines the political history leading up to the 2008 Democratic windfall. The authors do a great job presenting the facts and forces that had given the Republicans their moral majority following Reagan and how they lost it. It was as entertaining as it was full of facts and concise political analysis.

The right wing bias in this book is incredible.

In the course of just a single chapter, it is claimed that the Democrats in 2006 were as corrupt as the Republicans like Tom DeLay and Bob Ney, along with Jack Abramoff, but that just didn't catch on with the public, Bush's surge was an overwhelming success, Bush's 2nd term was hampered by Democratic filibusters in the Senate (the problem with the Democrats was a lack of a filibusters).

Nearly every single point in the book has a rightwing slant to it.