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How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America
Penguin Press
November 2007
On Sale: November 1, 2007
496 pages
ISBN: 1594201390
EAN: 9781594201394
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
From one of America's most respected political commentators,
an epic, shrewd, and important big-picture analysis of the
forces that have made this era in American politics as
divisive and bitterly partisan as any since the Civil War. Few don't appreciate that in recent years American politics
has seemingly become much more partisan, more zero-sum, more
vicious, more willing to make mountains out of molehills,
and less able to confront the mountains of real problems we
face. And yet in poll after poll, the percentage of
Americans who identify themselves as either "very
conservative" or "very liberal" hasn't budged in more than a
generation. What has happened? In The Second Civil War,
Ronald Brownstein brilliantly diagnoses the electoral,
demographic, and institutional forces that have brought such
change over the American political landscape, pulling
politics to the margins and leaving precious little common
ground for compromise. Displaying the deep historical perspective for which he is
noted, Brownstein begins with a history of the evolving
climate for partisanship since the dawn of the modern
political era in 1896, presenting a fresh and bold
reinterpretation of American politics and the personalities
who have shaped it from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Offering both sweeping analysis and intimate detail drawn
from exclusive interviews with top officials and strategists
in both parties, The Second Civil War captures the currents
that have carried America to today's dangerous impasse, from
little-understood changes in congressional rules that made
it easier for parties to enforce discipline and discourage
compromise to the rise of special-interest pressure groups
to a vastly changed media environment that has become much
more vicious and much less serious. While there was no Golden Age, and in many respects the
increasing plurality of voices that get to have a say in our
politics is all to the good, the net-net is a system in
which compromise and conciliation are thwarted at almost
every turn and big problems that require broad consensus
continue to fester ominously, unaddressed and growing more
and more painful to face as we approach crisis situations.
But Ronald Brownstein ends with a menu of clear and
compelling ways out of our collective dilemma, largely
centering on the opportunity for unifying leadership. The
Second Civil War is not a book for Democrats or Republicans
per se but for all Americans who are disturbed by our
current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to
understand it-and move beyond it.
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