Amazon.com Review
As a national political correspondent through seven presidencies, Robert Shogan has seen many rounds of the dance between Congress and the White House. The Fate of the Union attempts to illuminate the fundamental rules of the game for American politics, and how the separation of powers created by the Constitution's framers has hamstrung modern presidents and resulted in gridlock. From the 1992 presidential campaign to the first two years of the Clinton presidency, through the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and Clinton's reelection two years later, Shogan addresses major political turning points and considers the impact of divided government on the nation. He writes:
As the decade of the 1990s has demonstrated, the limitations of our political and governing system are a constant source of frustration; but consensus politics, as propounded by Bill Clinton, is not the answer. The basic fallacy underlying the strategy of consensus is the theory that Americans, as Lyndon Johnson once put it and as Bill Clinton seems to believe, 'share a fundamental unity of interest and belief.' The trouble is that on only a very few public issues do Americans have common interests and beliefs.Shogan argues that consensus politics probably isn't a very good strategy and that political parties should instead slug it out over ideas, with the spoils going to the victor. He also suggests that--given the constraints of the Constitution, not to mention the rigors and expenses of mounting a political campaign these days--American political discourse probably isn't going to get much better any time soon. --Linda Killian
Product Description
The dreary presidential campaign of 1996 and Clinton's disillusioning presidency matched the convulsive pattern of events which yanked the nation in every direction except forward throughout the final decades of the twentieth century. The swings of the previous decade with the Republican ascension in Congress and the Democratic presence in the White House, were less an aberration than a continuation of the disruptions that haunted the post-depression American political system.The Fate of the Union: America's Rocky Road to Political Stalemate illustrates how the circumstances of each quadrennial American presidential contest have piled on the next, melding into the past and suggesting the future. The book explores the Clinton presidency as a continuum: first, placing it in the context of recent predecessors-from Truman to Bush-and then relating to the events that lead to his election in 1992, shaped his inaugural term, and enabled him to win four more years in the White House.Author Robert Shogan's timely examination shows that short of a thorough changing of the Constitution, the best prevention for an ever-worsening political system is to guard against self-delusion.
