The Strange Death of American Liberalism [Hardcover]

H.W. Brands (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the word liberal become a term of abuse in American political discourse? From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinetly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended, and historically anomalous, period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed - and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Defining liberalism somewhat simplistically as "a prevailing confidence in the ability of government preeminently the federal government to accomplish substantial good on behalf of the American people," Brands argues that Americans have always been oppositely inclined and that only wartime exigencies in both WWII and the Cold War allowed for a period when the liberal expansion of government could triumph. (His similarly truncated view of conservatism renders "family values" and Joseph McCarthy as "pseudo-conservative.") A skilled biographer (T.R.: The Last Romantic; etc.) and professor of history and liberal arts at Texas A&M University, Brands makes this argument primarily through a string of engaging presidential narratives, but he sets them against a background of public opinion (though offering only broad generalizations, for instance, based on sporadic reference to specific polls) on the role of government. He's deft at presenting complexities in concise form, as in his exquisite contrast of JFK and LBJ, but offers some questionable judgments as well (such as that Nixon was a liberal). Though it's not a Great-Man view of history, this approach suffers from a profound neglect of broader historical considerations, such as the role of race in American politics, party dealignment after 1968, a renewed elite hostility to the welfare state after the 1973-1974 recession and a host of other factors necessary to clarify the rise and fall of American liberalism. By concentrating on Americans' general loss of trust in government and ignoring continued strong support for specific programs (substantiated by numerous studies), Brands perpetuates the illusion that no such complexities need be considered.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Brands (Texas A&M) is a prolific and versatile historian who has written books about the Revolutionary era (The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin), the late 19th and early 20th centuries (TR: The Last Romantic), and the Cold War era (e.g., The Devil We Knew). He describes his latest, less a scholarly work than an extended essay, as an "argument." The case Brands argues is that postwar American liberalism was itself a product of the Cold War and that, with the end of the Cold War threat, Americans returned to their traditional skepticism toward government, a change that in effect ended liberalism, too. While Brands makes some good points, though discursively, his mission is only to make them; he does not attempt a larger, richer, and subtler story. Not Brands at his best, but an optional purchase for academic libraries. Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300090218
• ISBN-13: 978-0300090215
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,819,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

H.W. Brands taught at Texas A&M University for sixteen years before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. His books include Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Traitor to His Class and The First American were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Liberalism and Big Government, April 12, 2004

By 

James Ferguson (Vilnius, Lithuania) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Strange Death of American Liberalism (Paperback)

Brands attaches liberalism to big government like most conservatives, yet notes repeatedly how conservatives have embraced big government when the times suited them. The book is less an autopsy on liberalism than it is a study how big government has evolved, gathering mass like a snowball until it became a behemoth no one wanted to claim responsibility for.

He notes how the growth in big government has corresponded with each of the major wars, dating back to the American Revolution, but once the wars were over a skeptical public generally demanded that government be reduced. Not so after WWII, when Truman initiated the Cold War which stretched nearly 40 years and saw the most substantial growth in liberal policy, which Brands attached almost exclusively to the dawn of the Nuclear Age. What began as the Truman Doctrine was expanded under successive presidents, including Eisenhower, which saw sweeping reforms in domestic policy more or less tied to national security interests. I think Brands stretches the connection a bit too far, but he makes many salient points as to how Cold War ideology and Liberalism were intertwined, most notably in the Kennedy-Johnson years.

Many of the federal programs became institutionalized, such as welfare and social security, reaching the status of sacred cows that later conservative presidents were afraid to touch. But all that came crashing down with the collapse of the Cold War, which Brands noted began with our withdrawal from Vietnam. Even when Reagan tried to revive the Cold War in the 80's, he found little support among the electorate or in Congress. Instead, Reagan focused on delimiting the domestic policies of the federal government by reducing the tax base which supported them. Yet, the Reagan years saw a soaring of the federal deficit, as he continued to pour money into National Defense, and was unable to get all the cuts he sought in domestic spending.

While this book provides an interesting recap of the growth of big government, it offers very little into the contemporary liberal ideology beyond the Cold War paradigm. Brands sees these two as inextricably intertwined, and I think here is where his argument unravels as he tries to tie too many loose strings together in what is a rather short book on the subject.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting if Sketchy Argument, December 25, 2002

By 

Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Strange Death of American Liberalism (Hardcover)

H.W. Brands has developed an interesting thesis in his recent book "The Strange Death of American Liberalism" that neither liberals nor conservatives will much like.

Liberalism, Brands argues, is a centralized political arrangement that can only thrive in the U.S. during wartime. Because of the depth of Americans' distrust of the central government, the natural political fallback position of Americans is conservatism. Only during war do Americans drop this instinctual distrust of the federal government and allow it to take over new responsibilities.

So why do some Baby Boomers think that liberalism is a natural and permanent condition in U.S. politics, simply in need of resuscitation? Brands says the duration of the Cold War fooled them. Whereas wars involving the U.S. had been relatively short in the past, the length of the Cold War allowed for a more sustained intrusion of the central government into Americans' lives than ever before.

As Brands' book is only 170 pages long, he merely breezes through U.S. history (surprising for a historian), but nevertheless gives an interesting historical sketch as a preliminary test of his hypothesis. He argues, for example, that the basic nature of both progressivism in the early 20th century and the New Deal in the 1930s were both fairly conservative. On the other hand, he also buttresses his thesis by showing the solid advances in power made by the federal government during WW1 and WW2.

One of the more surprising bits of data that Brands gives is a poll in 1939 that asked Americans whether the U.S. federal government was spending too much money, not enough, or just the right amount. 61% answered that the government was spending too much. Only 10% said too little. And throughout the 30s, even with unemployment rates never dipping below 10%, and once going as high as 25%, most Americans thought it should be a priority for the government to balance its budget and reduce its debt. On the eve of FDR's second administration, 50% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans said they hoped it would be more conservative than his first administration.

Conservatives are probably gleeful to read this. Is there any more palatable thesis to conservatives than that their political philosophy is the natural state for Americans? But while Brands' interpretation of U.S. history is likely to provide some succor for conservatives, his reading of the importance of Reagan will probably turn their stomachs. Reagan, according to Brands, could not overcome the public's distrust of the federal government to enlist its support for new foreign adventures beyond Grenada, or for a more general support of the Cold War beyond increased defence spending.

It's here that Brands' argument becomes strained. Aren't huge increases in defence spending still a sign of American trust in the central government in at least one regard? Brands' book is so short that he never gets around to properly answering these kinds of questions. He says that others must take up his hypothesis to test its explanatory power. Brands should have spent the time to answer these questions himself.

"The Strange Death of American Liberalism" was published just prior to 9-11, but if its hypothesis is correct, such an event might prove to be the resurrection of liberalism as Americans turn once again to the federal government for solutions to problems that only it can provide. But whatever its relevance to current events, this book gives an interesting twist to the traditional conservative/liberal divide.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is the Return of Big Government Hegemony Around the Corner?, December 4, 2001

By 

Steve Iaco (northern new jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Strange Death of American Liberalism (Hardcover)

"The Vietnam War and Watergate combined to undermine the American public's confidence in government?" How many times have you heard a variation on this theme to explain the long, precipitous decline of activist government?

H.W. Brands posits a novel and provocative twist on this well-worn theory. To wit: skepticism toward government is the natural condition in America, and the retreat from Post-War liberalism over the past 30 years has merely marked a return to historical normalcy. Only during war time, Brands argues, do Americans turn to the Federal government for solutions to the nation's problems, and it was the Cold War that allowed government to flower so spectacularly in so many aspects of American life. The Post-War period was not a cycle, but an "anomaly," Brands avers. "The appropriate image was not a pendulum, but a balloon . . . When Vietnam destroyed (Americans') confidence, the balloon deflated, and expectations of government descended to their traditional low level. Pendulums swing back on their own; balloons require refilling."

While Brands acknowledges that his argument will hearten conservatives and discomfit liberals, he is no right-wing ideologue (as his chapters on Reagan's Presidency will attest). Rather, he's a distinguished Texas A&M historian and author of highly acclaimed biographies on Theodore Roosevelt and Ben Franklin.

By Brands' lights, recent events may, in fact, suggest brighter horizons ahead for believers in government activism. Only a credible national security threat, he maintains, can refill the balloon, and revive American's faith in government. That threat, of course, is on us now. Does that suggest that Wellstone or Daschle or -- heaven forbid -- even Hillary could take up residence at 1600 Pennsylviania Ave come 2005? Only time will tell.