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The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation Paperback – August 18, 2009
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From the author of the landmark bestseller What's the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate―and lucrative―conservative misrule
In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us.
Casting his eyes from the Bush administration's final months of plunder to the earliest days of the Republican revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters―the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.
It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.
Stamped with Thomas Frank's audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet―and his most important.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHolt Paperbacks
- Publication dateAugust 18, 2009
- Dimensions5.29 x 0.71 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100805090908
- ISBN-13978-0805090901
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A no-holds-barred exegesis on the naked cynicism of conservatism in America.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Written with barbed wit and finely controlled anger, he skewers such juicy targets as libertarian strategist Grover Norquist and Michelle Malkin.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Glorious… Often brilliant… Frank's gloom is leavened by an eye for the unexpected and the absurd.” ―Los Angeles Times
“Well-researched and witty… Provides a powerful liberal antidote to the high-volume rantings of Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Fox News.” ―Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Frank's gifts as a social observer are on display… His analysis of why there are so many libertarian think tanks in a country with so few libertarians is dead on. In Thomas Frank, the American left has found its own Juvenal.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Frank offers one damning anecdote after another. The Wrecking Crew explains how cynical conservatives have wrested control of the government by railing against its very existence, all while using federal perches to funnel billions into the pockets of lobbyists and the corporations they represent.” ―Time
“Thomas Frank is back with another hunk of dynamite. The Wrecking Crew should monopolize political conversation this year. It's the first book to effectively tie the ruin and corruption of conservative governance to the conservative ""movement building"" of the 1970s, and, before that, the business crusade against good government going back at least to the 1890s.” ―Salon.com
“Tom Frank has hold of something real. The Wrecking Crew can be good, spirited fun. Frank captures a quality of exuberant bullying in those of his conservative subjects he knows well enough to identify individually, rather than categorically.” ―The New Yorker
“Frank's sentences inhale and unfurl with a wit and verve…” ―The New York Observer
“Conservatives in office have made their share of blunders and mistakes, and Frank is at his finest in depicting some of the stunning instances of hypocrisy and idiocy in the period of Republican rule.” ―The New York Post
“Smart, thoroughly researched, and written with wit and panache.” ―The Wichita Eagle
“A welcome read. There is no doubt that Frank is helping to restore the journalistic and literary standards to political books. Elegant… The Wrecking Crew has the rhetorical power to illustrate the dire consequences of a government sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder. One finishes the book feeling as if one's political vision has been brought into focus.” ―The Courier-Journal
“A superb follow-up to What's The Matter with Kansas?... Thorough reporting and incisive historical analysis. With genuine outrange and blasts of polemic, but Frank never allows The Wrecking Crew to become just another seething right- or left-wing political tract preaching to the choir.” ―The Oregonian
“Frank brings invaluable insider perceptions, ardor, and precision to his lancing inquiry into the erosion of democracy and the enshrinement of the mighty dollar… An electrifying, well-researched analysis of ‘conservatism-as-profiteering.' This staggering history of systematic greed with inject new energy into public discourse as a historical election looms.” ―Booklist (starred review)
“The author of the best-selling What's the Matter with Kansas? Examines the political, social, and economic consequences of several decades of deliberate and lucrative conservative misrule, revealing how Washington has been remade into a world of economic disparity, lobbyists, and incompetence.” ―Forecast
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Wrecking Crew
How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the NationBy Frank, ThomasHolt Paperbacks
Copyright © 2009 Frank, ThomasAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780805090901
Chapter One
Golconda on the Potomac
The richest county in America isn’t in Silicon Valley or some sugarland preserve of Houston’s oil kings; it is Loudoun County, Virginia, a fast-growing suburb of Washington, D.C., that is known for swollen suburban homes and white rail fences of the kind that denote “horse country.” The second richest county is Fairfax, Virginia, the next suburb over from Loudoun; the third, sixth, and seventh richest counties are also suburbs of the capital.1 The Washington area has six different Morton’s steakhouses to choose from, seven BMW dealerships,2 six Ritz-Carlton installations, 3 three luxury lifestyle magazines, and a Capital Beltway that is essentially an all-hours Mercedes speedway. There are malcontents all over America with a ready explanation for why this is so: Washington is rich because those overpaid federal bureaucrats are battening on the hard work of people like us, gorging themselves on the bounty that the IRS extracts out of the vast heartland. In blog and barbershop alike they rail against big government like it’s 1979, moaning about meddling feds and cursing the income tax as a crime against nature. As a way of explaining the stratospheric prosperity of Washington today, however, this old, familiar plaint makes as much sense as attributing the price of stocks to the coming and going of sunspots. After all, it isn’t FTC paper pushers who buy the six-thousand-square-foot “estate homes” of Loudoun County, and even the highest-ranking members of Congress drool to behold the fine cars and the vacation chateaus of the people sent to lobby them by, say, the pharmaceutical industry. The reason our barbershop grumblers don’t get it is that their myths don’t account for the swarming, thriving fauna that populates the capital today. Conservative Washington is, by and large, unknown territory. The private offices to which it has delegated the nation’s public business are not included on the tourist’s map. Its monuments are not marked. Its operations are not well understood outside the city. But Washington’s newfound opulence gives us our first clue as to what those operations entail. Washington is a strange place under any circumstances. If you happen to come here from the urban Midwest, as I did, the city seems alien and hopelessly unreal. The blue-collar workers who make up a good portion of the population elsewhere in America are a minority in Washington, with lawyers outnumbering machinists, to choose one example, by a factor of twenty-seven to one. There are few rusting factories or empty warehouses in Washington—and few busy factories or well-stocked warehouses either. The largest manufacturing outfit in town, at least as of the early 1980s, was the Government Printing Of.ce.4 The neighborhood taverns one finds on nearly every street corner in Chicago are almost completely absent, as are the three-.flats that house much of that midwestern metropolis. While the capital has desperately poor people in abundance, members of the political class have almost no reason to mingle with them. If you stay within the boundaries of the federal colony, you will meet only people like your tidy white-collar self: college graduates wearing ID badges and speaking correct American English. In one residential neighborhood I visited, a full 50 percent of the adult population possess advanced degrees. The city is a perfect realization of the upper-bracket dream of a white-collar universe, where economies run on the information juggling of the “creative class” and where manufacturing is something done by .filthy brutes in far-off lands. In the hard-hit heartland this fantasy seems so risible as to not require attention. In Washington and its suburbs, however—where there are hundreds of corporate offices but little manufacturing—it is thought to be such an apt description of reality, such a pearly pearl of wisdom, that the city’s big thinkers return to it again and again. The malls and offices and housing developments of northern Virginia so overwhelmed Joel Garreau, the man on the “cultural revolution” beat at the Washington Post, that in describing them he slipped into the past-tense profundo: the region’s “privateenterprise, high-information, high-education, post-Industrial Revolution economy,” he raved in 1991, “made it a model of what American urban areas would be in the twenty-.first century.”5 Washington has boomed before, and it’s even been proclaimed a model for the world before—most famously during the thirties and forties, when the federal government looked like the savior of the nation and maybe even of the planet. The city was occupied then by an army of “New Dealers” who were talented, idealistic about the possibilities of government, and young—far younger than the gray old gentlemen who had previously run the place. Today we naturally think of Washington as a young person’s town, thanks to all the fresh-faced interns and aides and paralegals who fill its offices. But in the thirties this was a novel development, made possible by the stock market crash and the Depression, which closed other doors and utterly destroyed the traditional American faith in limited government and benevolent business. Disabused of the old myths, and unable to get a job, the class of 1933 went to Washington instead of Wall Street. They lived in group houses, drank hard, and threw themselves into building the new regulatory state. It’s not a calling that anyone associates with glamour anymore, but excitement and high patriotism are constant themes in the literature of the New Deal period. One account from 1935, for example, described the city’s “mood of adventure, the exhilaration of exciting living which the humblest office-holders share with the Brain Trust [the president’s close advisers] as co-workers in the great experimental laboratory set up in their city.”6The stories of that period always seemed to follow the same pattern: how the bright young man arrived in the city, fresh from law school, where he was put to work immediately on business of the utmost urgency; how he went for days without sleep; how he marveled at the awesome abilities of the people the administration had brought to Washington. I know of none in which the young man came to Washington to get rich. When the New Dealers grew older, of course, they found ample opportunity to pile up the coin, often by guiding business interests through the bureaucracies that they themselves had created.7 But in those early years, when business had failed so spectacularly and when the country looked desperately to Washington for relief, public service became the object of a sort of cult.8 Liberalism was something strong and bold in those days, and making government work was at the very heart of it. This was the period when the United States developed a first-rate bureaucracy, and the famous law professor Felix Frankfurter attributed its appearance to the epochal migration of idealistic youth to the capital (a movement for which Frankfurter was partially responsible). “The ablest of them—in striking contrast to what was true thirty years ago—are eager for service in government,” he wrote in 1936. “They find satisfaction in work which aims at the public good and which presents problems that challenge the best ability and courage of man.”9 Like all historical myths, the legend of the capable and selfless New Dealer is surely overdrawn. Even so
Continues...
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Product details
- Publisher : Holt Paperbacks
- Publication date : August 18, 2009
- Edition : Reprint
- Language : English
- Print length : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0805090908
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805090901
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.29 x 0.71 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #710,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #57 in Political Parties (Books)
- #279 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #1,101 in French History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Questions frequently asked Thomas Frank.
- Kansas, really?
- Aren’t you one of these liberals that you’re always scolding?
- Is it true that President Trump uses “The Wrecking Crew” as a field manual?
- “The Baffler” – what’s that all about?
- You don’t look particularly cool. Why do you write about coolness?
- Why aren’t you, like, a college professor or something?
- Why all these books about politics? I mean, that’s hardly the right subject for a culture critic or whatever it is you call yourself.
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Customers find the book well-written and easy to follow, with meticulous research and clear explanations. They appreciate its historical content, with one customer noting it covers critical events in modern political history. While customers enjoy reading it, some find the content depressing.
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Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, finding it clearly documented, readable, and sharp, with a presentation that is easy to follow.
"...Even though it is six years old, it still compliments this book enormously. Highly Recommended...." Read more
"...Excellent account and thoroughly footnoted" Read more
"...It is so well written and full of information one reading is simply not enough. It's actually extremely..." Read more
"...He personalizes the story, and makes it a very easy read...." Read more
Customers praise the book's depth, noting its meticulous research and thorough documentation.
"...Mr. Frank's arguments are factual and powerfully presented. Seventy-four pages of notes add credibility to his argument...." Read more
"...informative and instructive ... but it is completely devastating, and I am not sure..." Read more
"...Dare then to read this carefully documented book--definitely impressive and definitely DEpressive ...." Read more
"...The book is meticulously researched and I'm impressed with the author's encyclopaedic knowledge of the whos, whats and whens in politics...." Read more
Customers appreciate the historical content of the book, with one customer noting it covers critical events in modern political history, while another describes it as a must-read for patriotic Americans.
"An interesting view of what the various conservative movements have been up to since the 80's...." Read more
"...He personalizes the story, and makes it a very easy read...." Read more
"...marries individuals with movements and critical events in our modern political history...." Read more
"...book is well researched, and foot-noted so there is no mistaking the history as being true...." Read more
Customers find the book enjoyable to read.
"...It's all here, very readable and entertaining. Frank is a fine writer. --..." Read more
"I definitely enjoyed reading this book. Thomas Frank goes into extensive detail on the history behind the conservative movement...." Read more
"...not a best seller there is some thing that is very wrong...it is enjoyable to read and keeps you glued to the material..." Read more
Customers find the content of the book depressing, with one customer noting it's less engaging than the author's previous work.
"...the library and skimmed it for the most part because it was too depressing in parts...." Read more
"...Like a lot of political books, deeply depressing, but that's just what I get from it. I'd give it five stars, but it is relentlessly partisan...." Read more
"...the Conservatives--which I adore--and as a result it is less interesting than his last book: "What's The Matter With Kansas"...." Read more
"Depressing reading, but well documented and credible." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2010Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseThis is a still unfolding story, a story about Americans waking up one day to find they have no rights, no living wage, and no liberties because the country was being changed into a plutocracy and they didn't even know it. That is what Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas" contends in this frightening story of America's path to its own destruction for the benefit of the few.
According to Frank, it began with the rebirth of conservatism after the last New Deal president left office, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Their goals were to create a market place that was unregulated and unfettered with safety practices, consumer protections, or tax burdens. This meant taking over government, dismantling it agency by agency, selling its functions to private investors, and marketing their whole plan to a somnambulistic and apathetic public. They have made great strides in taking over what they despise and blaming it when it fails.
The 1980's saw the rise of the Young Americans for Freedom and the Jack Abramoff's and the Karl Rove's who were committed to advancing this agenda by any means necessary. They made powerful friends, were elected to office, became lobbyists and were successful in getting contributors.
The next step was transforming government in two ways: selling it to private industry and appointing people to positions of power who were incompetent or bent on destroying it. People like John Bolton became America's ambassador to the very symbol he hated, and Elaine Chao to head the Department of Labor. She would advise employers that they could avoid paying their employees overtime by designating them as managers.
The real tour de force is the marketing campaign that Grover Norquist planned in detail years ago and refined ever since. It was important to point out government's incompetence, that private industry was far more productive, that the collapsing economy was due to government interference, not Wall Street greed. It was overregulation not a lack of regulation that contributed to the collapse. Seeking a fair wage now became class warfare. Under the pretense of protecting the citizen from shady trial lawyers from are the "cause of jury awards" that cause the increase of costs, these conservatives are really protecting the corporations from lawsuits and limiting the constitutional rights of the consumer. While the Republicans were reducing taxes and running up the debt, they were saying how it would stimulate the economy. The debt has only become a measure of fiscal irresponsibility when the Democrats are in power. Then, when austerity is called for, the debt becomes of paramount importance and the best form of debt reduction is elimination of entitlement programs. Mr. Frank believes that even social security is still not safe from the clutches of these zealots. Congress now dances to the tune of corporate interests and contributions, not of their constituents. They intend to remove our protections, and widen the gap between those who have and those who don't.
Mr. Frank's arguments are factual and powerfully presented. Seventy-four pages of notes add credibility to his argument. His writing style is persuasive and his presentation is easy to follow.
If things continue as they do, the Capitol Dome may not be the most dominant feature of the D. C. landscape. It might just be the Golden Arches.
Benjamin Franklin answered, when asked what kind of government we would have said, "It's a republic if you can keep it."
Also Recommended:
Klein, Naomi, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY. 2007. First Edition.
Wolf, Naomi, "The End of America, Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot." Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007.
Johnston, David Cay, "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill." Penguin Books, 2008. This is how the wealthy have used their power to get the government to subsidize their economic agenda. It is highly recommended.
Johnston, David Cay, "Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--And Cheat Everybody Else." Penguin Books, 2003. The subtitle says it all. Even though it is six years old, it still compliments this book enormously. Highly Recommended.
Leopold, Les, "The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity--and What We Can Do About It."
Mencimer, Stephanie, "Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Their Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Rights to Sue." Free Press, 2006.
Mann & Ornstein, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America, and How to Get it Back on Track." Oxford University Press, USA, 2006.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2025Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseWhile millions are cheering the destruction of their government, few understand just what it has been doing for them since the days of FDR, after the disastrous 12 years of GOP free-wheeling.
Simply by proclamation all diseases will be eradicated. There will be no bird flu, covid, nor any more pandemics because the government agencies formed to protect the citizens of the US are being destroyed. Your friends, neighbors, and family will sicken and die but the mantra ‘what you don’t know, won’t hurt you’ will be heard on all ‘wrong-wing’ news media.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2009Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseA scathing well documented account of and analysis of the The Neo conservative movement and their calculated abuse of power. Neo cons professed to despise the concept of "big" government but the book shows the neocon despised the citizens more. After professing a mandate after the slimmest of "victories" the cheney bush administration continued the Texan governors businesses by and for his cronies. It is ironic that no one ever grew the government budget deficit like this character who professed that government should be run like a business.
Whether the main motive was to prove government was incapable to succeed or outsource to cronies whose main qualification was who they did what favors for , the result was to take a surplus left by Clinton and siphon off not only the tax money but creating an enormous deficit never seen before. The books premise is that driving the economy to the brink of disaster will in effect result in making liberal agenda improbable to function as stated on Page 264 which sums it up succinctly -"Deficits defund liberalism".
Neo cons wanted to siphon money away from the government programs intended to provide some public good in order to pay back political favors. Appointments were made also based on favors rather than qualifications. The Katrina incident was where things really blew up. The figure that bush appointed to head FEMA was close to an imbecile. The trailers that were allotted to victims whose homes were damaged were filled with toxic levels of formaldehyde. This from a president who early in his first term decided that allowing higher levels of arsenic in the drinking water would be good for business too. Neo cons defunded government programs , they favor defunding programs rather than shutting an agency down so that after killing the budget they can say look at what a poor job that agency did. Likewise by placing a friend without proper qualifications as head of an important program that the neo cons despise will lead to that programs planned failure.
Prices were driven up and wages were bid down for working people. CEO salaries however grew along with the money going to lobbyists and political contributions. While manufacturing during the Reagan-bush1-gingrich-cheney-bush2 days was moving from the Midwest to the south to the Marianas to the Philipines, K street lobbyists offices expanded and the payments which went through K street increased at a rate much greater than other facets of the economy. Lobbyist were invited by neo cons to write the legislation which then becomes law of the land.
Unlike Republican presidents like Roosevelt and Eisenhower and figures such as Goldwater who believed in fiscal responsibility and who were patriotic believers in the country; the -bush2 administration was filled by vile individuals who as Neo conservatives were capable of the basest acts
and were less interested in the well being of the country or preserving a link between the past and present than their own self aggrandizement.
Excellent account and thoroughly footnoted
Top reviews from other countries
S WoodReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 2, 20095.0 out of 5 stars The Enemy Within
This book is a historically informed, fantastically well written look at the U.S. political system with particular emphasis on the Conservative Republicans who have dominated it for so long.
Franks, who has obviously put a lot of effort into researching this book, digs deep into the activities and thinking of right wing conservatism which has given the U.S. such nefarious characters as Ollie North, Ronald Regan, Tom De Lay and the recently departed (well just the Oval office, but hey I liked the sound of it) George W. Bush.
A convincing case is made, and with plenty of evidence not least from their own mouths, that the conservatives interest in making Government work for the ordinary people of the U.S. is pretty much non-existant. The picture of the so-called conservatives that he paints is not exactly pretty for anyone with a commitment to democracy: the rampant cronyism in appointments to the civil service (loyalty to the "conservative" cause above integrity and ability), mercenary lobbying for the rich and corporations at the expense of their constituents, a total contempt for professional civil servants, their crude totalitarian mentality as well as breath taking mendacity.
The case that the conservatives are intent on damaging government as a force for the common good of Americans is comprehensively made. The immense deficits they run up, the running down of regulatory bodies, the Labor department, the incompetent but politically correct right wingers they appoint to government bodies . . . the list could be endless. The chapter on the Mariana Islands (taken by U.S. at end of WW2) is a revelation. The islands are exempt from many U.S. laws - it's a neo-liberal utopia: low taxes, little or no protection for labor who are all contracted from neighbouring poor countries (ie. indentured servants) who endure low wages, long hours and live under an abusive regime where they can be deported at their employers whim. This IS the conservatives/neo-liberal ideal in reality. All this is supported by conservative lobbyists such as the recently jailed Bush buddy Jack Abramoff who puffed it up as the "laboratory of liberty" (for whom?) and characterised attempts to apply labor and other regulatory laws and rights for the workers as having the same effect on the islanders (the business owners that is) as the Nuremburg laws had on the Jews.
Fluently written and thoughtful with a biting sense of humour this is criticism at its best, and the target thoroughly deserves it. It is an interesting insight into the American system of "Democracy" and not withstanding the recent election of Obama it is still a book with much relevance.
If you havent read Franks already its worth getting a hold of his earlier two books One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy and What's the Matter with America?: The Resistible Rise of the American Right.
wolfloverReviewed in Canada on April 27, 20145.0 out of 5 stars liked this book
Format: KindleVerified Purchasefinally a book that allowed me to understand the mentality behind the destruction that i have seen and experienced....at least gave me the comfort of the fact that no...I was not crazy...explains it all. Does not make it right but at least I understand the thoughts behind the brand. I will expect no great things just the same old same old...I am a liberal and will remain that way.
M ClarkReviewed in Germany on January 23, 20194.0 out of 5 stars Techniques used by conservatives to wreck our government
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseThomas Frank's book describes how conservatives are deliberately working to wreck the US government in order to achieve their ideological aims. He describes techniques like defunding of programs they do not like and appointing the least competent people to run agencies that they hate. The book essentially ends with the financial crash of 2008 but the techniques described can also be seen in the Trump administration.








