Mike Lofgren's THE PARTY IS OVER is a distillation of what a lot of people have been saying about what is wrong with Washington for sometime now. I suspect that I am like a lot of the other unwashed who had no idea who this man was until the publication of this book that is as scary as a cancer diagnosis. Mr. Lofgren until his recent retirement was a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees so he has an insider's view of what goes on on Capitol Hill. Taking no prisoners, he writes with authority and, unlike so many of the authors churning out books on Washington, he includes footnotes, something that a lot of journalists apparently have forgotten about. I was so pleased to see him describe Bob Woodward-- who has moved light years away, in my opinion, from those days when ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN inspired a whole generation of idealistic young people to go into journalism-- as someone who with his "'just so' stories and improbable recall of dialogue he never heard, has served as a vehicle for senior White House personnel to dispense self-aggrandizing gossip." I have railed for years about Woodward's telling us what persons he never interviewed "thought" since he usually uses only anonymous sources and expects us to take him at his word.
But I digress. Mr. Lofgren's chapter on "Media Complicity" is about just one of the things wrong with Washington. But he does remind us that so-called neutral journalists have become stenographer's for "self-serving factions in government operating under a cloak of anonymity." In addition to the media, Lofgren takes on Wall Street, the religious right, taxes and the rich, anti-intellectualism, the obsession with war, and how all these are tied into the current Republican party, but he also reserves a chapter for the Democrats and finds that they are not a whole lot better.
As I said earlier, much of what this writer says is not new; he just gets it all down in one place and says it so well. Some of his observations: There is no divine plan guaranteeing America's global preeminence. In other words God may not be on our side. Under the current broken system, politicians are in a permanent campaign mode from the moment they are sworn in. The Constitution, contrary to the crazies, was written by fallible human beings. He finds that members of Congress are equipped with a "low cunning" since they got elected. Small businesses, in spite of all the rhetoric about letting them create jobs by doing away with regulations and taxes, account for only 7.2% of total employment in the U. S. , according to the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. He debunks the myth that half of Americans pay no taxes. While they may not pay income taxes because of low incomes, they pay a lot of other taxes, payroll taxes for example, one of the "most regressive" forms of taxation. Mr. Lofgren attributes much of what is wrong with current Washington to Newt Gingrich, an "old reprobate," who is of course such an easy target. And I was glad to see him call out Saxby Chambliss for linking Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden in the 2002 Senate race in Georgia thereby winning the election. Whether or not you like Cleland, surely a triple-amputee who had received both a Silver and Bronze Star for his military service in Vietnam--Chambliss never served in the military-- can hardly be labeled as aiding the enemy. Lofgren also reminds the reader that Mitch McConnell said publicly that his mission was to insure that President Obama was a one-term president. Such statesmanship!
Lofgren's chapter on "A Devil's Dictionary" is about how Republicans have seized control of the way Americans speak about public life and Democrats do not understand the power of language: "homeland" and "homeland security," "entitlements," "the war on terrorism shortened to "war on terror," "collateral damage" instead of "dead civilians." These and other words and phrases have become a part of our contemporary American political terms. The author offers his own list of over twenty words. Darwin's theory of evolution is an evil doctrine that "denies the teachings of the Bible." "Pro-life" is "the unconditional support of the first nine months of a human being's existence. After that period has expired, the same human being has an unconditional right to be executed by the state, sent off to war, or die without health insurance." And one more: The Tea Party is composed of people "covered by Medicare who hate socialized medicine."
In his chapter "A Low Dishonest Decade" Lofgren discusses among other both depressing and scary topics Bush's rush to take the country into the war in Iraq: "Despite the elaborate efforts of the Bush administration to disguise the Iraq was as an exercise in self-defense, it was clearly a war of aggression." He also reminds us that despite the government's continual build-up of more expensive and technical weapons, that "two-thirds of the thousands of military casualties in the decade ahead would come from primitive homemade bombs." Finally by Lofgren's numbers, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the establishing of the Homeland Security Department and increasing the budgets of the State Department and Veterans Administration come to $4 trillion "of the $12 trillion slide in the fiscal picture since 2001."
There is much more in this book. In the final chapter the author puts forth possible solutions to the mess he has described. Among them he suggests that young people go into public service and take back government, but his first proposal is that elections be public funded and that political cammpaigns only run from Labor Day until November. This would let politicians who are elected spend their time governing rather than being in a perpetual race for reelection. That would be quite wonderful; would it not? Mr. Lofgren speaks of and decorates the cover of his book with blue donkeys and red elephants-- and while I hope against hope that his suggested solutions come to fruition-- sadly I see another animal, a pig with wings.
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Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
One of the the best non-partisan essay on the contemporary crisis of the American ...
Reviewed in Canada on February 3, 2017
Thomas Beale
Read this to understand why US politics is useless spectacle
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2012