Off Center
Terry Gross was interviewing Hacker and Pierson as I made my way home through the rain last night. Sounds like a very interesting book.
Off Center
The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy
* Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Read more about Off Center and its authors at their website, www.hackerpierson.com.
Even though most Americans are politically moderate, American politics is careening to the right.Why? What can be done?
The Republicans who run American government today have defied the normal laws of political gravity. They have ruled with the slimmest of majorities and yet have transformed the nation’s governing priorities. They have strayed dramatically from the moderate middle of public opinion and yet have faced little public backlash. Again and again, they have sided with the affluent and ideologically extreme while paying little heed to the broad majority of Americans. And much more often than not, they have come out on top. This book shows why—and why this troubling state of affairs can and must be changed.
Written in a highly accessible style by two professional political scientists, Off Center tells the story of a deliberative process restricted and distorted by party chieftains, of unresponsive power brokers subverting the popular will, and of legislation written by and for powerful interests and deliberately designed to mute popular discontent. In the best tradition of engaged social science, Off Center is a powerful and informed critique that points the way toward a stronger foundation for American democracy.
JACOB S. HACKER is Peter Strauss Family Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University. PAUL PIERSON is professor of political science (Avice Saint Chair in Public Policy), University of California, Berkeley.
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Comment Guidlines: This space is for commenting on the post above, the ideas, the context,the author. Your ideas, strong but civil, are appreciated. Long cuts and pastes from elsewhere are not. This is NOT the place to create your own private BLOG. Links to other articles are fine, if appropriate. Line and paragraph breaks are automatic; e-mail address are never displayed.
HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
December 2nd, 2005 @ 9:01 am
What struck me, listening to this excellent interview, was how objective the two political scientists were: non-ideological, no particular axe to grind, just doing their job, telling it like it is. Their concern is not restoring Democrats to power, it’s restoring democracy to its rightful state.
Terry Gross kept asking a version of the question, Isn’t what the Republicans are doing just politics as usual? Wouldn’t the Democrats be doing the same thing if they were in power (or if they knew how)? And their answer was No, what the Republicans have done is to politicize the entire functioning of government. Where everything is politics, there is no room for governing. Supposedly the aim of politics is to get someone into office so he or she can get on with the higher calling of governing. At its best, this can happen on behalf of all of us — the exemplar for me is FDR, for whom winning campaigns was just a means to doing what had to be done to get the country back on course.
Arlie Hochschild writes about the commercialization of intimate life. What we are witnessing with the current gang of conservatives is the politicization of public life. Everything they touch is politicized: science is politicized, war is politicized, social welfare is politicized, health (meaning life itself) is politicized, and on and on. They have created a government where there is no room for governing. The stakes are very high indeed.
December 2nd, 2005 @ 9:15 am
Further thought: I think Off Center would be the right book to jump start the languishing Ruth Group Reading Group, a k a RGRG. Whatchoo say Sims? Would you moderate?
December 5th, 2005 @ 10:15 am
Bob, absolutely!
Sounds like a wonderful book, one that I could support wholeheartedly. The state of American democracy is such that it’s not just about partisanship anymore, not about bringing the Dems back to power – it’s about restoring true democracy to this country. With rigged elections, black box voting, partisan Supreme Court decisions, partisan redistricting plans, media domination, and the politics of personal attack turned into an art form, we no have a true democracy in this country.
My only question is when? I doubt the book would get the audience it deserves before the holidays, so we might want to go for January.