Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller
Find it in a WorldCat library
Compare prices at major online bookstores
|
|
The durability of the American electorate's move to the right is the central, if underlying, question of Samuel G. Freedman's new book, The Inheritance. Freedman, a former reporter for the New York Times whose previous book, Small Victories, was a finalist for the National Book Award, wisely avoids answering this question directly. His avowed purpose here is to lend depth and complexity to our understanding of the citizens who have often been dismissively labeled The Silent Majority, Joe Six-Pack, and Reagan Democrats, and who in recent years have "swung the pendulum of ideology from left to right." In that attempt Freedman succeeds admirably.
The Inheritance is a chronicle following three families over three generations as they move up the economic ladder from immigrant roots, out of Democratic urban strongholds and, ultimately, out of the Democratic Party itself. The cast of characters includes a fervent union officer and Democrat whose grandson becomes a key aide to New York conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Lewis Lehrman; a Baltimore Democratic machine functionary whose granddaughter becomes a Republican Party staffer bringing the Gringrich revolution to New England, and a domestic worker and local Democratic activist whose grandson helps topple the standard bearer of liberal politics, Mario Cuomo. In remarkable ways, these families' histories illuminate the powerful array of social, political, cultural, and economic forces that first transformed the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-urban Democratic Party of William Jennings Bryan to the inclusive liberal coalition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then splintered that coalition during the 1960s and 1970s along lines of class and race. Freedman has done his homework, and the result is a book with a depth and drama that is unusual in a nonfiction political narrative.
In telling this tale, Freedman generally avoids broad-scale analysis, preferring instead to let his story speak for itself. But he spices his narrative by pointing out some of the large ironies in our modern-day politics. For example, about an upstate New York suburb that "presented the image of private enterprise acting wisely when least fettered," he writes, "what might be called the hidden history of suburban America . . . was one of immense intervention by activist government. Federal policy helped create the suburban culture of home ownership and automobile travel." And Freedman is particularly sharp in presenting the drama and impact of a series of bellwether political races in New York state.
In the end The Inheritance is a somewhat disturbing book. Mere demographics appear to be more important than idealism or ideology in driving political change in America. The most committed of the third-generation conservative activists becomes disillusioned and drops out because of political corruption in his own party. Another of these activists succeeds in re-electing a barely functioning incumbent to preserve a legislative majority. The picture that emerges from these linked histories should be a caution to the political extremes: in victory lie the seeds of defeat. Or, as Dick Morris might say, "It's the center, stupid."
©1996, ProMotion, inc.