The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With this intelligent and expansive book, Los Angeles Times political correspondent and columnist Brownstein dissects the hyperpartisanship that he believes has unnecessarily inflamed our differences and impeded progress against our most pressing challenges. The first half of the book examines the roots of this hyperpartisanship, beginning with the 1896 election of William McKinley, which the author argues ushered in four decades of fierce partisan division. The 1938 resurgence of the Republican Party marked the start of the age of bargaining, with presidents and legislators crossing party lines to govern through consensus. The author believes both parties became more ideologically consistent during the 1960s, resulting in a sorting out of the electorate that eventually led to today's partisan divisiveness. This thorough history lays the groundwork for Brownstein's incisive analysis of the contemporary Republican and Democratic parties. He resists blaming any one party or president for the state of contemporary American politics, instead attributing partisan divisions to interest groups, changes in congressional rules and practices and the realignment of the parties and electorate. This sophisticated though lengthy book lays out a complex history with lucid precision, painting a damning portrait of contemporary politics that's sure to provoke and captivate readers interested in American politics and history. (Nov. 1)
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Review

"In this vital, deeply-felt and well-argued book, a superb journalist combines his unexcelled knowledge of current-day American politics with his strong sense of history to show us how our system has degenerated - and how we might climb out of the mess."
-Michael Beschloss

"This is a masterful work - a unique blending of first-rate historical writing with penetrating contemporary analysis, which, taken together, provide fresh perspectives on how we might move beyond the partisan divisions that plague us."
-Doris Kearns Goodwin

Hooray! A clarion call for common sense. This is an important, timely, and fascinating book. Ron Brownstein describes how American politics became so polarized and partisan, explains why this is so damaging to our nation, and suggests ways we can reverse this trend. Every voter should read it right away, for the sake of our democracy. (Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute)

"For over a decade now, Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein has set the pace for smart, cutting-edge, political journalism. Now, in The Second Civil War, he delivers a sobering analysis about how shrill hyper-partisan bickering has hijacked public policy. This is a truly important Centrist Manifesto which deserves a wide audience. With all the hatred going on, this fair-minded book is a lonely bugle call from the Washington Battlefield."
-Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of The Great Deluge.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition first Printing edition (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201390
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201394
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #524,613 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, impeccably researched and argued, September 28, 2008

By	Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (Hardcover)

Why is is so difficult for Congress or the President of the United States to get anything done? Why is it that our elected leaders cannot tackle so many of the deep and important challenges facing the nation? Journalist Ron Brownstein attempts to answer these important questions in this provocative and illuminating book.
Full disclosure: I know the author. We both covered national politics, he for the Los Angeles Times and I for Reuters in the 1996 and 2000 presidential race. We were friendly but and not personal friends, although, I deeply respect his judgment and talent.
Brownstein argues that partisan politics have become so bitter, toxic and divisive that neither party has any interest in cooperating with the other even when the national interest demands it. Both parties have become beholden to their political bases which have become bitterly antagonistic, professing loyalty to widely divergent cultural values. Yet, in order to get anything done, it remains necessary to build bipartisan coalitions. It may be possible to narrowly win elections based primarily on energizing the base, as Bush did in 2004, but when important national challenges loom, a president who has not reached out to the other party invariably finds it impossible to govern effectively on the shaky basis of such a narrow majority.
In an exhaustive historic review, Brownstein goes through previous periods of American history. The Republicans from the 1890s to 1929, governed in a similar way -- and were turned out of power after they were blamed for the Great Depression for decades. In the 1940s and 1950s, both sides reached out more to the center, forming bipartisan coalitions. In those days both parties were much more diverse than today. There were southern Democrats who were more conservative than many Republicans and moderate Republicans more liberal than many Democrats. Was this a golden age of bipartisan cooperation? Hardly -- the southern Democrats were mainly concerned with preserving their racist, exclusionary Jim Crow society.
In analyzing our current predicament, Brownstein puts most blame on the Republicans -- Gingrich, Tom DeLay and the Bush-Karl Rove team who set out deliberately to exclude Democrats from power and to rule for the benefit of their own narrow segment of society. Democrats, in order to survive, had to respond in kind and themselves have become tougher, less willing to compromise and more interested in frustrating the other side than cooperating to do the nation's business.
But history teaches that a party that governs for the benefit of the few eventually awakens the wrath of the many. The pendulum always swings -- as it is about to do again.
For more about me and my latest book The Nazi Hunter: A Novelgo to www.alanelsner.com.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Disappointing, April 13, 2008

By	Wanderer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (Hardcover)

Brownstein's book provides a wealth of detail and some really interesting US political history for a little over a century. The book is well researched, at least in a historical sense. I don't believe he absolutely proves his case that partisanship is the worst that it has ever been because it has clearly been very bad in the past. Unfortunately, though I believe Brownstein tried very hard for impartiality, his bias, perhaps unwitting, shows through. Republicans are nearly always excessive and provocative, Democrats are nearly always only responding to Republican over reach. Democrat solutions are almost always conveyed as the only realistic ones. To be fair, he doesn't completely whitewash Democrats, it's more a matter of scale. As to be expected, he gives major media a pass for the most part, while indicting Fox for partisanship. Even so, I would have give the book four stars instead of three simply because of the useful information it contains and the fact that it's well written. But when the 'Fairness' doctrine is offered up as one of the solutions to the problem that was a real crippler. Any objective observer knows that there is no problem with people's access to opposing points of view, the only problem is that the liberal left for decades had almost total control of the media and they simply can't accept that the right now has at least a semblance of a public voice. Too bad the LA Times mentality showed through in the end.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sober look at a century of politics, December 28, 2007

By	Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Ronald Brownstein's new book, "The Second Civil War", offers up much to be digested in history, calculation, process and outlook. The author, a distinguished contributor to the national political scene, has studied American politics from McKinley to Bush. We seem to be right back where we started from, with a mid-twentieth century romp through bipartisanhip.

Brownstein's book is a fair comparison of how the country felt and voted at any given time since 1896. The era from McKinley to Hoover more or less matched the hyperpartisanship of today, while FDR's time through the 1980s allowed for compromise and historic legislation. While this is a comprehensive work of age-old politics, it's really more about the last fifteen years....the era of Clinton and "W". This is the part of "The Second Civil War" where Brownstein makes his mark and it's clear he has some distinct opinions. The Gingrich crowd, never a particularly likeable American flavor favorite, began the ball rolling in earnest toward a "take-no-prisoners" approach to Congress, heightened only by the intense partisanship of the Bush presidency. In so many words, Brownstein points out that because of this, we've lost more than we've gained and it will take years of rebuilding to set things straight. He's right, of course, and I kept wondering while reading this book if we've really hit the political nadir just yet in America.

I highly recommend "The Second Civil War" for its insight and depth. Ronald Brownstein has done a remarkable job in putting this book together and it should be read by all who have a serious interest in American politics and those who care about where this country might be headed in that regard.