The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein

From Perlstein's webpage

Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and Rise of Reagan picks up where Nixonland left off, with Richard Nixon at the pinnacle of his power and then falling from the triumphant political height he had finally attained into the disgrace of his resignation. Nixon’s fall allowed the enigmatic former governor of California, pitchman, and movie star to emerge as a beacon for (extremely) conservative Republicans. As Perlstein provided a mini-biography of Nixon in Nixonland, so he provides a mini-biography of Reagan as the central character in The Invisible Bridge. These mini-biographies provide context for the roller-coaster narrative of political, social, and economic upheaval that Perlstein chronicles.

I began this period as a college sophomore, and as the book ends, I'm about to enter law school. In between, I married. To say that for all of my interest in politics, I wasn't paying as close attention to events as I might have is an understatement. In fact, I learned or was reminded of a lot that I didn't know or recall about this era, and for the most part, it wasn't a good time. The 60's were a time of significant change and some chaos, but events unfolded with a certain sense of hopefulness that was a counter-current to the shocking violence of that decade (1962-1972). The 70s, too, were a time of change, but the underlying theme during this period was one of pessimism and despair. Watergate, the War, inflation, crime, race relations, and a host of other problems poisoned the political atmosphere—except perhaps for one person: Ronald Reagan. He seemed (or was) oblivious to the downsides, except to use them (in his loose-with-the-facts way) as campaign fodder.

Perlstein is as much a chronicler as he is a historian. He rarely comments on the narrative, letting the facts speak for themselves (a deceptive turn of phrase). Indeed, one shortcoming of his work stems from his lack of comment and explanation. Perlstein bathes--perhaps more accurately, drowns--the reader in facts. (802 pages of text.) But other than following a central character (Reagan), Perlstein imposes no unifying theme or provides no explanation. I recall reading somewhere that Perlstein reported himself a disciple of R.G. Collingwood, the great British philosopher of history. Collingwood argued that history properly understood must (as it were) get inside the heads of the characters and experience their world and their choices as they did, but I don't think he argued that a historian could not use his own perspective, which has the benefit of knowing "the end of the story", to augment those original perspectives. But Perlstein takes little advantage of his perch from the future to provide further context. That said, Perlstein immerses the reader in the period by his exhaustive use of multiple original sources and thereby provides the reader with a “You Are There” feel.

Over the course of the three books that Perlstein has published to date, beginning with Before the Storm (which I haven't read yet), he's documented the tectonic shift to the right in the American political spectrum. This body of work provides a narrative background upon which other historians and social scientists can work to develop a more comprehensive account of this dramatic change. Could it have been different? If Nixon had served out his term, would the shift to the right have actually faded? (Nixon was by current lights a raging centrist.) One receives a strong sense of the randomness of change from Perlstein's narrative, and it leaves one with a feeling of "if only . . .” But here we are with a Republican Party more reactionary, nativist, and anti-intellectual than at any time in its history (starting with Lincoln). It maintains a libertarian and laissez-faire economics bent that provides a patina of intellectual respectability (and that accords with the money), but that aspect of the party trails in the wake of the angry voters, those cultivated by the simple, optimistic nostrums of the man with the invisible bridge, Ronald Reagan.

A Review of To Move the World: JFK's: Quest for Peace by Jeffrey D. Sachs

In this book well-known economist and public intellectual Jeffrey Sachs moves from the world of economic development and environmental concerns to an examination of how John F. Kennedy’s thought and rhetoric changed the dynamic of the Cold War. Sachs apparently came to this project through his friendship with Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy's primary speechwriter. Also, I suspect that Sachs came to the project because of his own quest to alter the dynamics in the world about global poverty, sustainable economic development, and ecological stewardship. In this book Sachs doesn't break any new historical ground. His main concern is to examine how the interplay of experience and rhetoric shaped the course of events both before and after the Kennedy administration.

Sachs notes that Kennedy had some important role models for his rhetoric and perceptions. First and foremost among these role models was Winston Churchill. However, his model was not simply the pugnacious Churchill of 1940 who defied the Nazis, but also the postwar Churchill, who, while warning of the spread of communism, also spoke in favor of peaceful talks. Perhaps in Churchill’s less eloquent but most apt words, more “jaw-jaw” and less “war-war”. This attitude of conciliation was carried forward by Dwight Eisenhower. Sachs notes a couple of Ike's speeches that struck a conciliatory note and that appreciated the dangerous dynamics that were developing between the US and the USSR. The most famous of Ike's speeches was his farewell speech, which Sachs describes is only one of two presidential farewell speeches that bears remembrance (the other was George Washington’s). In Ike's farewell speech, he warned of – indeed I think coin the phrase of – "the military industrial complex". Ike understood that there were strong pressures in the US (and certainly within the USSR as well) that pushed for military confrontation as a part of a profit and power seeking engine driven by defense contractors and the military. Roughly contemporary with Kennedy’s time in office was the papacy of Pope John XXIII, whose encyclical Pacem In Terris (Peace on Earth) provided another eloquent voice speaking out in favor of peace and justice. Kennedy was thus not alone on his perceptions and hopes, and he carried forward a line of predecessors and contemporaries from whom he could gain wisdom and assistance.

Sachs doesn't dodge the fact that Kennedy made the Cold War worse by the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion that occurred shortly after he took office. In another one of history's "what if's", historians of wondered if Ike would've had the good sense to have pulled the plug on the Bay of Pigs invasion, or whether he would have gone whole hog with the invasion. Kennedy chose halfway measures that embarrassed the US, made Castro more belligerent, and that suggested to the USSR that some further intervention on behalf of their Cuban comrades was necessary. Sachs details how Khrushchev developed his harebrained scheme to put offensive missiles in Cuba with the thought of revealing the fateful come play at a party Congress scheduled in late 1962 (shades of Dr. Strangelove here). This scheme led to the Cuban missile crisis, where humankind came within an eyelash of worldwide catastrophe. Credit goes to both Kennedy and Khrushchev for avoiding a nuclear Armageddon by backing away from the demands of hardliners. Kennedy had to deal with Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay (the model for Stanley Kubrick's general Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove). Khrushchev obviously had his own people to deal with as well.

After this harrowing experience, Kennedy chartered a new course to try to ease the tensions of the Cold War. His renewed concerns with this subject  eventually led to his June 1963 speech at American University that has since been dubbed "The Peace Speech". Kennedy laid out the need for renewed efforts to avoid war, efforts that were neither naïve nor impossible to achieve. This included a voluntary suspension of nuclear testing so long as no other nation engaged in tests of their own. Kennedy followed up the next day with a major speech on civil rights where, I believe for the first time, he described the civil rights movement in terms of a moral imperative. These two speeches, perhaps more than his better-known inaugural address, highlight of Kennedys’ rhetorical gifts and moral vision.

Sachs does a good job of carefully examining Kennedy's rhetoric. For instance, Sachs shows how effectively Kennedy used the rhetorical device of antimetabole, the Greek term referring to the repetition of words in transposed order (e.g., “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”) A great deal of credit for Kennedy’s rhetorical success goes to his aid Ted Sorensen, who wrote the first drafts and worked revisions in tandem with Kennedy. As a team, it will come up with signature ways of speaking and arguing that proved eloquent and effective. Kennedy was able to get the Soviet Union to the bargaining table, the parties agreed to a partial nuclear test ban treaty (underground testing was still allowed), and, most notably by the standards of today, he was able to get overwhelming Senate approval for the treaty. This was one of the highlights of Kennedy's congressional efforts. As we know, no civil rights legislation and no economic stimulus bill were enacted until after Lyndon Johnson became president and oversaw those efforts. While Kennedy's rhetorical gifts are undoubted, I still have the sense that without Johnson, the major civil rights legislation and perhaps even the economic stimulus Kennedy sought would have been sidetracked by Congress. As we know from our experience with President Obama, formal rhetoric that artfully and clearly sets forth a vision for possibilities is important, but not sufficient to effect real change. The trench warfare of congressional approval is also necessary to translate positive visions into law. Nevertheless, one can't leave this book without appreciating the skilled vision that Kennedy and Sorensen set forth.

Sachs spends a little bit more time on the post-Kennedy Cold War, and especially noteworthy is the period in the early and mid-1980s when Ronald Reagan and the hard core Republican right wing adapted an extremely confrontational attitude toward the Soviet Union. This attitude was perceived by the Soviet leadership and reciprocated. In hindsight, the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger efforts for détente are much more rational and reasonable. Reagan supporters argue that Reagan's rhetorical and military build-up in confrontation with the Soviet Union led to the downfall of the Eastern block and eventually the Soviet Union. But this argument should be subject to a lot of skepticism and should be rejected without a more persuasive argument made through a careful historical analysis than I’ve yet seen. The fact is, the doomsday clock that measured the threat to human well-being crated by nuclear war (now I think subject to other factors, such as ecological catastrophe) moved up very close to midnight again during a period in the 1980’s. However, once Reagan perceived a change in Soviet attitudes in the person of Gorbachev, Reagan's very effective rhetoric changed into one of conciliation and the need for rational consideration of the parties’ mutual need to avoid nuclear war and threatening confrontations. Neither Kennedy nor later Reagan dropped his strong stance of anti-Communism, but both came around to a much more sensible position. (Kennedy was more constrained by the extreme political right wing than was Reagan, who, like Nixon going to China, had a degree of credibility for a changed attitude toward the USSR that no Democrat could gain in order to achieve the changes the Reagan fostered.)

In my continued reading reflecting back on the presidency of John F. Kennedy, this book was a worthwhile addition. I thought it might be an exercise in hagiography, but instead, I found it a measured consideration of Kennedy and the importance of his and his predecessor’s rhetoric in defining the conflicts of the Cold War and thereby limiting the potential for a nuclear war. Perhaps because of my primal Republican background, I've never been an unabashed Kennedy admirer. His record was mixed, but I have gained a sense that the man grew during the course of his presidency and that the tragedy of his assassination did rob the world of his potential. Would he have avoided the deep entanglement of the Vietnam War? Would he have been able to forward the program of civil rights as effectively as did Lyndon Johnson? Would changes brought about by the initial efforts in diffusing the largest tensions of the Cold War have continued? All these “what if?” questions remain as tantalizing possibilities that will never receive a definitive answer. The only sure thing is the actual past; the future—or alternative futures—are marked by uncertainty. So with Kennedy. We should examine carefully his accomplishments, his failures, and the gifts he left behind, which though all too few, are nonetheless significant. I think Sachs performs an important service in this book in acknowledging that heritage and challenging us today to find similar instances where we can understand and improve our world through our rhetoric and politics.

"Stars" in Politics

Cleaning out to start the New Year, I found this essay that I wrote. I don't recall having posted it before, and when I read through it quickly, it still seems basically sound to me. Anyway, I post it for what it's worth.


The U.S. has grown into a polity marked by equality and universal sufferage. Freedom of expression, growing out of the First Amendment to the Constitution, also serves as a benchmark of U.S. politics. Any limitation on the participation of any group—whether of those with whom we agree with or those with whom we disagree—should not be our policy or goal.
The effect of entertainers on contemporary electoral politics is not new. While MTV’s “Rock the Vote” draws the attention of young people in recent elections, it’s basic tenant, that participation in the electoral process is not only socially acceptable, but a genuine good, is not unique. The use of “stars”, names from Hollywood and the entertainment world, has been ongoing at least since the Second World War, when well known actors participated in films supporting enlistment in the armed forces. Ronald Reagan, who served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and who later served as host of GE Theatre, moved into politics. Reagan joined George Murphy, an actor later elected senator from California, as an example of entertainers who made the transition from fame as entertainers into elected officials. This trend has continued not only in California—witness Arnold Swartzenegger—but also in other parts of the country and involving politicians of a completely different political persuasion. For example, consider comedian-turned-actor Al Franken, recently elected senator from Minnesota. Given that breadth of the political spectrum represented by these few samples, one cannot argue that any particular political party or political perspective gains more from the use of entertainers as candidates or surrogates for candidates. The development of candidates and points of view seems to have little bearing in the eyes of the voting public. A candidate may gave gained name recognition from a career in sports (e.g., Bill Bradley, Jack Kemp, Tom Osborne) or entertainment, but this only provides an initial gateway past the barrier of name recognition.
The issue of concern in this topic must go the role and responsibility of the media. The media, once exclusively the realm of print, but now led by television and internet sources, must play the key role in discerning whether the fame of a entertainer merits the thoughtful consideration of a voter. Some voters, no doubt, would follow the lead of a famous person just because of the person’s perception of the entertainer’s stage persona, but this kind of limited critical thinking is as old as democracy, and it won’t go away by attempting to ban or downplay the roles of the famous in our electoral system. Instead, we need opinion leaders in all forms of media to foster critical assessments of all those who stand for public office. Much of the media have always enjoyed a strange, symbiotic relationship with the famous, including politicians, at once glorifying them and vilifying them; using them and being used by them. To the extent that members of all facets of the media resist the trap of this strange duet, the more useful the media’s role in democratic societies.
As politics in a democratic society should involve a widespread and varied consideration of all manner of perspective in our complex society, to consider limiting or pre-judging any group is a mistake. Instead, society, led by leaders in the media willing to take up the cause of the public good, should weigh and consider perspectives from all manner of sources. The famous will always flourish in democratic societies, whether military leaders, reformers, entertainers, or sports figures. The question, the challenge, for all becomes our collective ability to discern the merely famous from those who hold the ability to provide leadership and judgment in political office.

Beinart on Obama's Narrative

"It's all about the narrative" might be a bit of an overstatement, but not much of one. As in trials, the contestant with the best narrative wins. Obama, for all his rhetorical gifts, isn't a trial lawyer, and he has not defined the narrative as he should--and must--if he is to win reelection. Reagan did it as a master. Clinton, who was so effective on the stump, could do it. Bot explicitly and by his delivery, these men defined their campaigns. This is Obama's great challenge.

Drew Weston on Obama

Drew Weston's lead article in the NYT today really hits on some important points in general and about Obama in particular:

1. The importance of narrative (the fancy word for story). As a trial lawyer, this important mode--the most important mode of conveying information--has been drilled into my head by communications experts and fellow trial lawyers. Weston makes the point:

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

Obama was elected--in very large measure--on his story: the story of a bi-racial kid raised by a single mother in exotic locales, but he maintains close contact with his Midwestern grandparents,and those he learns to bridge multiple worlds and makes good, moving away from divides of race, etc. A great story. But what is his story now?

2. Weston contrasts Obama with the two Roosevelts, and Obama lacks in comparison. Both were fighters, both willing to take on "the bad guys". Now really, there are bad guys (not many, but some), and there are always those (virtually all of us) who will not give up the advantages and privileges that we have (a/k/a greed). If you want to take something away from say, Wall Street, or the rich, or seniors, or whomever, you're going to get a fight. You must fight. Fight and then negotiate. I do it every day. Obama only seems to want to negotiate. Weston contrasts Obama's lack of a fighting story with the attitude exhibited by the "Happy Warrior":

In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he [FDR] thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

3. Weston notes that Obama took many of his bearings from the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., surely a strong and relevant choice, but as Weston notes, King, too, fought--in the streets as well as with his moving oratory--for the cause that he championed. Obama seems to lack a cause and the will to champion it. Weston writes:

Those [Roosevelts'] were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

4. Weston goes on to argue that mere "centrist" positions are not enough, and that Obama may be bewitched by this siren song that seems to pull many Democrats, and then he goes on the raise potentially more fundamental flaws that Obama may suffer:

A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

This is a troubling perspective. For all his gifts, he was (and largely is) a young man. He has not led a fight like this before. As a fellow lawyer, I have to note that he was a law professor (obviously very capable), but never (I think) a practicing lawyer, never an advocate. Lawyers who represent clients in court have to deal with real issues, take stands, make arguments--fight (compete) within the rules of the game. Often no one is happier to settle a case than me, as I know the risks of failure, but as I never tire of telling clients, the best settlement comes from the best trial preparation. You need to let the other side know that you'll fight and risk loss than settle cheap. (Sometimes you settle cheap if you have no case, but that's a different story.)

5. Having said all this, and expressed my reservations, I will of course support Obama's reelection. At his worst he's better than anyone that the Republicans will nominate. The Republican party is reverting to it's no-nothing roots of the 1840's. It is not the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, or even Reagan. But to make his reelection count, Obama must stand up and push back.

Garry Wills Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Outsider

Anyone who knows me knows that I've been a big fan of Garry Wills since 1976, when in one summer I read Bare Ruined Choirs (aloud with C) and Nixon Agonistes. Since then I have continued to enjoy a steady stream of books from Wills on a wide variety of topics: St. Augustine, Shakespeare's MacBeth, Jefferson, Henry Adams, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Lincoln, Venice, and so on. However, in this book, Wills, similar to a part of his earlier Confessions of a Conservative, brings himself directly into view. But not as the sole figure in a frame, but always with someone else. In some cases, we meet rather scheming and deluded preachers, in others, the opera star Beverly Sills and her family, and in others contemporary politicians like Hillary Clinton (whom Wills speaks fondly of). Wills has met this quite varied and interesting collection of persons by starting out as a "book worm". His father paid him not to read for a week and Wills took his winnings out and bought a new book. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Wills is that while he received a Jesuit education topped off by a Yale doctorate in classics, he got his real start writing for magazines, first National Review (he was "discovered" by William F. Buckley), and then Esquire. Mixing these two callings, academic and journalistic, made Wills a compelling writer and not just a brainy writer.

Wills's portraits of his friends Beverly Sills, Studs Terkel, and others can be quite touching. He is quite fair to Richard Nixon, whom he credits as the politician who provided the most interesting answer to his question about favorite books. But the two most interesting subjects are Bill Buckley and Wills’s wife Natalie. Buckley and Wills had a long falling out over the Viet Nam war, but they eventually reconciled through the good offices of one of Buckley’s sisters. Wills provides a respectful and fascinating portrait of Buckley. As for his wife Natalie, Wills struck up a conversation over a nerdy book he was reading (Bergson) on a flight to NYC to meet Buckley and on which she worked a stewardess. They have been together since then, with her serving as his first draft reader—lucky her. No, really, lucky her!

For me this was fun glance into the behind-the-scenes world of one of my favorite writers. For me, it was like hearing a special guest tell tales from an interesting life, and an interesting life it has been, and I hope will continue to be for some time, for this book worm Garry Wills.

Matlock on Superpower Illusions

I just finished Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—And How to Return to Reality by Jack Matlock (2010, 368 p.). Ambassador Matlock served a number of years in the U.S. Foreign Service, including a stint as ambassador the Soviet Union at the time of Gorbachev, Reagan, and the end of the Cold War. Matlock has written almost two books here: one on the history of the Cold War, or rather, the end of the Cold War, which he emphasizes occurred before the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The second part of the book addresses the foolish hubris reflected in U.S. policy that followed the end of the Cold War and Soviet Union. Matlock makes clear that we did not "win" the Cold War; it stopped by mutual agreement. Matlock has almost unstinting praise for Ronald Reagan and the attitude he took toward Gorbachev and change in Soviet leadership that Gorbachev represented. Unfortunately, so Matlock thinks, we took our supposed victory too far in extending NATO into former Warsaw Pact nations and thereby threatening Russia. We also have gotten ourselves into some very difficult situations since then. Matlock has plenty to say that is critical of Clinton administration attitudes and actions, although his harshest criticisms go toward the George W. Bush administration.

After Matlock retired from the Foreign Service he has taught, including a stint at Princeton in the George Kennan chair, and I certainly get the impression from this book that Matlock merited such a prestigious honor (or at least I think that it should a very prestigious honor!). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the perspectives of a person who has represented the U.S. in the front lines of diplomatic engagement and who has learned a great deal from his experiences. An excellent book.