The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter: An Appreciation & Reflection for July 4, 2022

 

From a piece first published in Harper's in 1964

I like to celebrate July 4, Independence Day, by reading ( or most often re-reading) a great work in American history. This year, I re-read Richard Hofstader's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Now whatever might have led me to choose this particular essay for this time, you might ask--if you've been living in a cave far from any inkling about contemporary American politics. And note the original publication date: 1964. This date might not mean much to you, but for me, it marked the start of a political coming of age story. In that year, my father, a life-long Republican party loyalist got in the midst of the battle for the soul of the Republican Party. He was a "moderate" Republican in the year when Barry Goldwater and his more radical (so-called "conservative") supporters sought to gain the Republican presidential nomination and take over the party. My dad took a leave from his regular job (in a public opinion research firm) to work for the campaign of Gov. William Scranton (R-PA), who became the leading moderate candidate after the collapse of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's campaign for the nomination. As a result of his position with the Scanton campaign, my dad went to San Francisco to the Republican National Convention, and he took my mom and I with him. My mom had lived and worked in San Francisco during and after the war before returning to her small hometown in Iowa to marry and raise four kids, thus, this was a great treat for a wife and mother. And me? As the oldest of their four kids, it was really a part of an ongoing apprenticeship in politics. And, in the course of the education, I learned a bit about Goldwater, Phyllis Shafley (Not a Choice But an Echo), and John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason. Not that I read these books (I was neither that nerdy nor that bright), but I had a sense of how whacky these folks were. Yet, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must inform you that my dad, as a loyal Republican, worked on behalf of the Republican ticket that year in which LBJ crushed Goldwater. (Goldwater only carried his home state of Arizona and the Deep South.) I, as the young apprentice, debated on behalf of the right-wing Goldwater against a classmate for a mock election in my 6th-grade class. LBJ crushed Goldwater in our mock election even worse than in the national popular vote--in a town and county that Goldwater carried! An inauspicious start to my career in advocacy, to say the least. In sum, it's all very personal. 

But to return to the point, Hofstader's essay is not just informative, but it takes me back and allows me to appreciate the fact that the "paranoid style in American politics" is nothing new, although now it has now developed into an acute, life-threatening variant. Can we learn something from the foray into American history? Indeed we can. 

(N.B. I will quote liberally from Hofstadter's essay: he makes his case better than I can explain it, and given that most readers won't go read the entire original, you can at least get the Cliff Notes version here (with more quotes that Cliff Notes can print). 

Hofstader opens his essay with these terms and observations: 

Behind such movements [referring to the "far right wing" in 1964] there is a style of mind, not always right-wing in its affiliations, that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. . . It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. . . .In the paranoid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of conspiracy.

I trust that from these three opening quotes you can appreciate the reason that I find this topic and this essay so pertinent to today. In short, what we're experiencing currently isn't so unique, though I have to say that the threat from the paranoid right is much greater then it was even then. 

[T]here is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. (Location 58)

Indeed, clinical paranoia is an individual phenomenon; political paranoia is a political phenomenon. The greatest question, in either instance, is the source of this disorder. Is it deeply rooted in all humans and only waiting to emerge, or is it an emergent phenomenon that is dependent upon circumstances and perceptions? I'd venture (and I don't believe that Hofstader would disagree) that it's a combination of both human "nature" and the human situation.

Style has to do with the way in which ideas are believed and advocated rather than with the truth or falsity of their content. (Location 68) [Emphasis added.]

In other words, and as Hofstader states specifically, the paranoid style can be found on both the extreme right and the extreme left. It's a style, not a substance; or at least not a substance that's an articulated political stance anchored in a coherent rational argument.

[T]he paranoid style has had a consummatory triumph [that] occurred not in the United States but in Germany. It is a common ingredient of fascism, and of frustrated nationalisms, though it appeals to many who are hardly fascists and it can frequently be seen in the left-wing press. The famous Stalin purge trials incorporated, in a supposedly juridical form, a wildly imaginative and devastating exercise in the paranoid style.

(Location 94)

Thus, regardless of its place on the political spectrum from left to right (if we choose to use this popular but limited metaphor), the paranoid style can emerge. Again, it's not a set of beliefs so much as a style.

A distorted style is, then, a possible signal that may alert us to a distorted judgment, just as in art an ugly style is a cue to fundamental defects of taste. What interests me here is the possibility of using political rhetoric to get at political pathology. One of the most impressive facts about the paranoid style, in this connection, is that it represents an old and recurrent mode of expression in our public life which has frequently been linked with movements of suspicious discontent and whose content remains much the same even when it is adopted by men of distinctly different purposes. (Location 83) [Emphasis added.]

As I emphasized in the quote, Hofstadter finds the "political pathology" revealed in the "political rhetoric." In the course of the essay, Hofstader will range widely over the history of the Republic to identify and explore instances of this pathology. Without directly saying so, Hofstadter demonstrates the old adage that history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. Or in the words of the Bible, there's nothing new under the sun. ("The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." Eclessiastes 1:9-10 (KJV).) This is why we read history: not out of mere curiosity, but out of a need to understand ourselves; for self-knowledge, collectively and individually.

The following quote, drawing upon the insights of his American contemporary, the sociologist Daniel Bell, captures the essence of what we're seeing today from the radical right:

But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialist and communist schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners but major statesmen seated at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors discovered foreign conspiracies; the modern radical right finds that conspiracy also embraces betrayal at home. (Location 320) 

Hofstadter goes on:

For the vaguely delineated villains of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, Secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, justices of the Supreme Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still famous and vivid conspirators headed by Alger Hiss. (Location 329)

Of course, the choice item in this list is Alger Hiss, whom we now know, upon the opening of the Soviet archives, was in a fact an active Soviet agent. In short, Whittaker Chambers and Richard Nixon were actually on to something, which goes to show you (forgive me), but even paranoids have enemies. But as the list above indicates, Joe McCarthy, Robert H. Welch, Jr. and his John Birch Society and their ilk were off their rockers.

After completing a tour of American history with examples of the paranoid style, Hofstadter provides us with a summing-up:

LET US NOW ABSTRACT the basic elements in the paranoid style. The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true. All political behavior requires strategy, many strategic acts depend for their effect upon a period of secrecy, and anything that is secret may be described, often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial. The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point: it is now or never in organizing resistance to conspiracy. Time is forever just running out. Like religious millenarians, he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. . . . .

The apocalypticism of the paranoid style runs dangerously near to hopeless pessimism, but usually stops short of it. Apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy, and strike at susceptibility to similar themes in Christianity. Properly expressed, such warnings serve somewhat the same function as a description of the horrible consequences of sin in a revivalist sermon: they portray that which impends but which may still be avoided. They are a secular and demonic version of adventism. . . . Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories leads to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

This enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman: sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He is a free, active, demonic agent. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history himself, or deflects the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is in this sense distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will.

Hofstader goes on the identify the importance of converts who have defected from the side of the enemy--the Free Masons, the Catholics, the Communists, and have converted to the side of righteousness. Hofstadter comments

Another recurring aspect of the paranoid style is the special significance that attaches to the figure of the renegade from the enemy cause. The anti-Masonic movement seemed at times to be the creation of ex-Masons; it certainly attached the highest significance and gave the most unqualified credulity to their revelations. Similarly anti-Catholicism used the runaway nun and the apostate priest, anti-Mormonism the ex-wife from the harem of polygamy; the avant-garde anti-Communist movements of our time use the ex-Communist. In some part the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristic of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the secret world of the enemy, and brings forth with him or her the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance attached to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between good and evil which is the paranoid’s archetypal model of the world struggle, the renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory. In contemporary right-wing movements a particularly important part has been played by ex-Communists who have moved rapidly, though not without anguish, from the paranoid left to the paranoid right, clinging all the while to the fundamentally Manichean psychology that underlies both.

Thus, for instance, the infatuation of the anti-Communists with someone like Whittaker Chambers and the loathing of his evil doppleganger, Alger Hiss (who really was of the devil's party).

Hofstader next turns to the elaborate "proofs" undertaken by those working in the paranoid style:

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that are so characteristic of this political style into imagining that it is not, so to speak, argued out along factual lines. The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic strivings for “evidence” to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency, and paranoid movements from the Middle Ages onward have had a magnetic attraction for demi-intellectuals [e.g., Steve Bannon]. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can be justified to many non-paranoids but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” . . . .

The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming “proof” of the particular conspiracy that is to be established. It is nothing if not coherent—in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes that it is up against an enemy who is as infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreaching, consistent theory. It is nothing if not “scholarly” in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet McCarthyism contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s fantastic assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, is weighed down by a hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies.

          . . . .  

What distinguishes the paranoid style is not, then, the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events.

            . . . . 

What is missing is not veracious information about the organization, but sensible judgment about what can cause a revolution.

            . . . . 

The singular thing about all this laborious work is that the passion for factual evidence does not, as in most intellectual exchanges, have the effect of putting the paranoid spokesman into effective two-way communication with the world outside his group—least of all with those who doubt his views. He has little real hope that his evidence will convince a hostile world. His effort to amass it has rather the quality of a defensive act which shuts off his receptive apparatus and protects him from having to attend to disturbing considerations that do not fortify his ideas. He has all the evidence he needs; he is not a receiver, he is a transmitter.

What triggers the paranoid style. Hofstadter weighs this question and ventures an answer after having noted Norman Cohen's The Pursuit of the Millenium, which documents extreme religious and political movements in medieval times: 

The recurrence of the paranoid style over a long span of time and in different places suggests that a mentality disposed to see the world in the paranoid’s way may always be present in some considerable minority of the population. But the fact that movements employing the paranoid style are not constant but come in successive episodic waves suggests that the paranoid disposition is mobilized into action chiefly by social conflicts that involve ultimate schemes of values and that bring fundamental fears and hatreds, rather than negotiable interests, into political action. Catastrophe or the fear of catastrophe is most likely to elicit the syndrome of paranoid rhetoric. (Location 522) 

Are we now in fear of catastrophe? For different reasons and with varying degrees of probability, we are (and in some instances should hold such fears).

As much as I've quoted from Hofstadter's essay, there's a good deal more to it (although it's not very lengthy). Reading and reflecting on this essay reinforces my intuition that it would prove relevant (if I may use that 60s term) to our own times.

. . . .

. . . .

 

Mavericks, Mystics, and Misfits: Americans Against the Grain by Arthur Hoyle

At first glance, this book may strike a potential reader as simply an "American lives" collection, which, in a sense, it is. But it is more than just a collection of lives of Americans, some famous, some not. (I recognized the names of only five of the 10 subjects of the book, and I suspect that my rate of acquaintance with the subjects won't prove unusual.) The subjects run the course of American history from the Puritans Roger Williams and Anne Bradstreet to contemporary Californians Judith Baca and the husband-and-wife team of Warren Brush and Sylvia Harvan-Brush. Each of the individuals or (two) couples are the subjects of chapters that address their lives, their works, and their aspirations. Hoyle treats both his historical subjects and his contemporary subjects with equal care and adroitness. Each chapter captures the gist of the project (or projects) of each individual or couple and their place in the course of American history. Each chapter represents describes a snippet of the diversity of the American experience: Puritans Williams and Bradstreet; the agitator for revolution Thomas Paine; the western explorer Josiah Gregg; the escaped slaves-turned-abolitionists-turned educators of post-Civil War freed slaves, William and Ellen Craft; the unsettling academic Thorstein Veblen; the immigrant, worldly mystic Thomas Merton; the Pawnee soldier-artist Brummett Echohawk; the artist-activist Judith Baca; and the environmentalist couple Brush and Harvan-Brush. Quite an eclectic list! 

I should note that each chapter is a succinct and well-written mini-biography of the subject (or couple). And each chapter is framed by a brief introduction that frames the chapter within the context of surrounding events. 

But the source with the book's success with me comes from what is, at least for some, an unexpected place: the Introduction.  And a piece of advice: read the introduction to a book! 

In this book, Hoyle, in three pages, transforms what would otherwise prove simply a potpourri of interesting American lives into a study of the American experience and American values. Hoyle states the intention of his book neatly in the opening paragraph: 

This book profiles exemplary American men and women whose lives collectively span the history of our country from the period of the first Puritan settlements to the present time. These individuals have been chosen because of their life stories, thought often at variance with the directions of the mainstream society around them, exhibit certain enduring qualities of the American character that persist despite the changing circumstances of time and place. (1)

Note what Hoyle is positing here: "the American character." I believe that earlier in my life to posit something like "the American character" would have been utterly unremarkable. But in our current situation, such a contention might prove highly contentious. "We have so many differences! We are so diverse! E Pluribus Unum is a fraud!"  Or some would so argue. But Hoyles's introduction, and each chapter that recounts the lives and projects of individuals from disparate times, backgrounds, and interests, demonstrate that Hoyle posits a sound position when he identifies "the American character" based on sets of common experiences and values even as he notes and celebrates our distinctions and differences. 

Hoyle identifies the first American challenge as that of the first European immigrants to adopt European traditions and modes of living to the "realities of the New World." (N.B. Don't let this contention mislead you into thinking that Hoyle is not cognizant of the American Indian experience, he is. (See the chapter about Brummett Echohawk.) But "America" was not "America" until the Europeans arrived. Before European exploration and colonization, this was a land of many peoples who understood their land and their world very differently from how they experienced it after the arrival of the Europeans.) Hoyle recognizes that the earlier colonists came for a variety of reasons, some to escape religious prosecution and others for the prospect of economic opportunity. And both of these motives (and no doubt a host of other reasons between these two extremes) fostered the development 

of two seemingly contradictory traits that enabled survival in the New World--independence and cooperation--that have unfolded in a dynamic tension across American history. Independence required the development of individualism and self-sufficiency. The need for cooperation required the recognition of each man's equality; it also encouraged conformity. . . . From these two imperatives sprang the basic values that were codified in America's Delcartion of Idependence from England: liberty (personal freedom), and equality (personal freedom for all). These two values have become the bedrock of American character.

 Hoyle, however, adds a third trait that becomes the tie that binds his subjects together as a set of representatives that range throughout American history: dissent. Beginning with the Puritans and Quakers: 

These religious groups insisted on the right of individual conscience, a right that transcends the authority of public opinion and even the authority of law. The right of dissent is the supreme affirmation of individual right--the right to whistle your own tune and to dispute the majority when you believe that its attitudes and policies threaten liberty and equality.  . . . 

Dissent has continued to arise when people feel that one of the country's founding principles is being violated or kept unfulfilled. Some of the main historical causes of dissent have been slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and discrimination against ethnic minorities; unjust treatment of Native American peoples; the subordinate political and economic status of women; and economic inequities between capital and labor.

Dissent becomes an avenue of reform. And Hoyle identifies each of his subjects as a "dissenter' and an "exemplar" (borrowing the term from a previous subject of Hoyle's, Henry Miller). Thus, each of these subjects provides an example of the "tension we find inherent in the American character between the interests of the individual and interests of the group . . ." Hoyle concludes his introduction with this declaration: 

For dissenters, by acting on their individual vision even though it may be at variance with received wisdom or prevailing custom, even though it may threaten the established order, often serve the common good by opening new vistas and liberating others. We owe them our gratitude.

I must say that I agree with Hoyle's declaration about each of his subjects. 

However, Hoyles's contention raises an issue that bothered me as I read about these individuals who, with their individual faults and shortcomings, I admire. The ills they addressed and the hopes to which they aspired (or aspire) I find admirable. But dissent can run both ways: slaveholders were dissenters (rebels), as were the Klan, white supremacists, eugenicists, John Birchers and militiamen types, and so on. Dissent, per se, gives us no guidance about what course we should choose now. Today, amid our pandemic, some "dissenters" say we need not wear masks and that to compel anyone to do so is a violation of personal freedom; that the whole idea of a lethal pandemic is a hoax; and so on--just to name one topic! In short, dissent as an admirable trait often only after it reaches a degree of certainty after the fact. Dissent is often used as a tool of persuasion (via both ethos and pathos) by both sides of a disputed contention to bolster the moral and emotional authority of their position--the mantle of "dissenter" is often coveted in American public discourse. Dissenters about topics such as those that concern the common good or the truths of science may later receive vindication, but sometimes not until after they're dead and buried and posterity has taken an opportunity to come to a different conclusion than their forebearers. We must remain mindful that our ability to separate the sheep from the goats is an imperfect process and that we all too easily confuse the two. This lesson from history should prompt us to strive with the utmost care to judge those among us whom we may be inclined to deem needless pests or even genuine threats. If we judge prudently perhaps we can identify those among us who can improve the lot our nation, such as those whose lives Hoyle has shared here. 

 

The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature & Culture by Lewis Mumford

Originally published in 1926 with a new forward by the author in 1957

For the Fourth of July each year I select a work in American history or culture to mark the occasion. This year in a bit of serendipity, I spied this work as I unpacked a box of books that I'd hastily assembled as a part of our move out West. When I pulled this book our of the box on about July 3, I knew that I had my reading for this year.

The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature and Culture was originally published in 1926 by a young Lewis Mumford. Many today won't recognize his name, but from the 1920s to the 1980s, he was one of America's leading public intellectuals. (He died at age 94 in 1990.) In fact, to describe Mumford is to encounter a quandary. How exactly to describe him? In The Golden Day, he's a literary critic and historian of American literature, but these fields are only two of the many fields that he wrote about. Wikipedia describes Mumford as "an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford made signal contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history and the history of technology."  This comes closer, but the breadth of Mumford's interests and knowledge is truly astonishing. And, I should note, he published all of his many books without having finished his college degree! (His education was interrupted by illness and then service in World War I.) 

In The Golden Day, Mumford focuses on American literature and philosophical thought as a way of apprehending the American experiment. Mumford's contemporary and compatriot, Van Wyck Brooks, was working much the same project at the time, as well.) In fact, as a part of his project, Mumford played a major role in delivering Herman Melville's literary works--such as Moby Dick--from the obscurity into which these works had fallen. Melville and his pre-Civil War contemporaries provide the foundation of this work. But while Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, and Hawthorne provide the foundation of the work--the Golden Day--this isn't where Mumford begins his assessment of American culture. Mumford begins his examination with the advent of modernity, which coincided with the European discovery and colonization of the Americas. Protestantism (especially the Puritan variety at the beginning and evangelical Christianity later), capitalism, and later industrialism, along with the existence of the frontier until late into the 19th-century,  all shape American culture. But until the Golden Day, the literature of a nascent nation was not especially noteworthy (with some exceptions, such as the last great Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards). But starting with James Fenimore Cooper's work exploring the early (eastern) frontier and its challenges and conflicts his works explored, we begin to see American literature form into more familiar themes. This momentum gains a full head of steam with Emerson, whom Mumford holds in the highest regard. Indeed, although I don't believe that he stated it specifically, I contend that Mumford considers Emerson the foundation stone of American literature and high culture. 

Of course, in the pre-Civil War era, Emerson was not alone. His younger contemporary and friend  Henry David Thoreau was an active and outspoken voice, as was the great bard of democracy and America, Walt Whitman. Rounding out this core is Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who's most famous for The Scarlett Letter.  (As I noted earlier, Melville's work had fallen into obscurity by Mumford's time, and Melville had never gained the esteem and notoriety of his great contemporaries described here.) Mumford carefully considers each writer's contributions and perspectives. And I should hasten to add that in addition to cataloging and noting the contribution of each of these figures, Mumford also provides insightful criticism. He not only provides a tour of the wine cellar and catalogues the various vintages, but he beautifully describes and critiques them as well.

The Civil War provides the key turning point in the life of the nation. The vanquishing of the slave-holding South and the triumph of the North with its industrialism, along with the settlement of the Mountain West, turn America in a different direction. Mumford perhaps under-appreciates or under-emphasizes the economics of both the plantation system of the South and its effects on the American scene even after the defeat of the Confederacy. But he does turn a keen eye on the post-war North and its cultural heritage. Here, at the center, is Mark Twain. But other figures, less recognized today, such as William Dean Howells, were also at work, and Emerson, Whitman, and Melville, all remained active for a time after the War. After Twain, the next great figure Mumford explores in some depth isn't a novelist or a poet, but the philosopher-psychologist William James. (Mumford give short shrift to William's famous novelist brother, Henry James.) William James, while not a poet, is nevertheless a gifted essayist and one of the fathers the uniquely American philosophy of pragmatism (along with the brilliant but eccentric Charles Saunders Pierce and the more prosaic John Dewey). Moving forward to the time of his writing, Mumford notes the importance (and limitations) of John Dewey, who was growing in stature and would attain an especially high status in the era between the wars as a public intellectual. (Mumford wryly notes that Dewey's prose is like taking the subway: it gets you where you need to go, but the trip isn't very scenic.) 

One should be sure to read the new Introduction to the work that Mumford wrote in 1957,  Mumford not only critiques the work of others, but he's also instructive in critiquing himself. For instance, he rues having mostly (or completely?) ignored Emily Dickinson, and he says he'd treat Melville and William James differently. And, perhaps most noteworthy, he would have treated Henry Adams differently. By 1957, Mumford appreciates Adams as the prophet of the disintegration of Western Civilization as well as prophet of the machine age (something that Mumford undertook as well). 

As a way to celebrate our nation in this fraught time, this book was a perfect fit. Mumford doesn't hide warts and deformities, but he nevertheless appreciates the American experience with a depth of perception that few can match. As we who live in a new Gilded Age and in an era of disintegration, the experiences and models of the past take on a new importance, and Lewis Mumford provides us with excellent guidance as we seek to mine the past to gain our bearings and help us set our course. 

This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore

I don't know if American historian Jill Lepore had her book in mind as a perfect read to help us celebrate Independence Day (aka The 4th). I consider the 4th  a lovely (or more likely, hot and muggy) day to sit and read a thoughtful reflection about our nation, an appropriate way to celebrate the holiday--at least until later in the day, when it's time for some barbeque and fireworks.

This short work allowed me to finish my American history reading project early. At 138 pages of text, it's a brief read. But don't let its brevity fool you: it packs an essential and well-considered argument into a small space. In fact, as I write this on July 4th, I realize that it provides a perfect reflection and celebration and accounting of America's virtues and vices. I'll quote liberally from her text because it provides a pithy consideration of our nation's history. (And quite a significant word this is--nation.) 

Lepore defines her undertaking as “ three outsize tasks, things I haven't done much lately, things that seemed to me in need of doing. It explains the origins of nations. It offers a brief history of American nationalism. And it makes the case for the nation, and the enduring importance of the United States and of American civic ideals, but arguing against nationalism, and for liberalism." (Preface). We realize with her opening that Lepore isn't reluctant to jump into to the fray, especially given the willingness of some now in power to celebrate nationalism. She goes on to describe her project as "at once an argument and a plea, a reckoning with American history, the nation at its worst, and a call for a new Americanism, as tough-minded and openhearted as the nation at its best." [Preface].

Lepore opens her argument by considering the history of nationalism, which doesn't come into use at all until the late 18th-century and that doesn't really come into common use until well into the 19th-century, and then mostly in Europe. This is the era in which the nation-state--the idea of a political entity defined by a particular people--came into fruition. Before this, religions and dynastic families established larger political entities (i.e., holdings of great families like Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and (until the French Revolution), the Bourbons, for instance). Lapore is quick to note that this enthusiasm for the nation-state and its attendant nationalism became entangled with the idea of patriotism. But Lapore acts quickly to separate these two. She writes: 

[S]ometimes people confuse nationalism with patriotism. There is nothing wrong and all kinds of things right with loving the place where you live and the people you live with and wanting that place and those people to thrive so it's easy to confuse nationalism and patriotism, especially because they once meant more or less the same thing. But in the early decades of the 20th century, with the rise of fascism in Europe, nationalism has come to mean something different from patriotism something fierce something violent: less a love of your own country than a hatred of other countries and their people and hatred of people within your own country who don't belong to an ethnic, racial, or religious majority. 22- 23. 

This assessment is if anything too weak. I prefer the more focused contrast drawn by John Lukacs: 

Patriotism is defensive; nationalism is aggressive. Patriotism is the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions; nationalism is the love of something less tangible, of the myth of a “people”, justifying many things, a political and ideological substitute for religion. Patriotism is old-fashioned (and, at time and in some places, aristocratic); nationalism is modern and populist. In one sense patriotic and national consciousness may be similar; but in anther sense, more and more apparent after 1870, national consciousness began to affect more and more people who, generally, had been immune to that before—as, for example, many people within the multinational empire of Austria-Hungary. It went deeper than class consciousness. Here and there it superseded religious affiliations, too. John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, 36. 

 But however carefully one parses the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, there's no doubt that nationalism became the dominant trend. Lepore describes the creation of the nation-state as the attempt to create a common people (by ties of language and history) and to graft a state upon such a people. The problem, however, is that there are no "pure" peoples. Languages, cultures, religions, and were diverse throughout Europe and in the Americas as well (and everywhere else as the idea of the nation-state spread throughout the world). As Lepore aptly describes the process, "Histories of nation-states are stories that hide the seems that stitched the nation to the state." 26-27.

The history of the United States of America provides an exemplary case in point. As Lepore notes, 

"The American Revolution was an extraordinary turning point in the history of the world, a new beginning. But had but it had little to do with the idea of an American nation. . . . 'We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; That among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness .' for all its soaring, hallowed pros, the Declaration of Independence never described the United States as a nation and it invoked not national but universal ideas.” 29.

Much of early American history, up through the time of the Civil War, can be seen as the effort (of some) to transform These United States of America into The United States of America. The struggles were political and cultural--the cultural side was undertaken by historians, lexicographers (Webster), writers, and artists. The effort was to create a consciousness among the people that they were a part of a single nation. Lepore, however, also notes that some were not eager to join the national bandwagon, including some provincials (here and in Europe), and many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, some of whom, such as the Iroquois, had their own sense of nationhood. 

Lepore shifts her focus to introduce "liberalism" into the equation. Such a fraught word demands an definition and justification, and she provides both: 

Liberalism is the belief that people are good and should be free, and the people erect governments in order to guarantee that freedom. Nineteenth-century nationalism and modern liberalism were formed out of the same clay. Nations are collectives and liberalism concerns individuals; liberal nations are collections of individuals whose rights as citizens are guaranteed by the nation. Liberal governments require a popular mandate to rule: Liberal nations are self-governed. Their rise marked the end of monarchical rule. 40 

But if formed out of the same client, nationalism and liberalism were molded into different shapes. Liberalism embraced a set of aspirations about liberty and democracy believed to be universal. . .  But nationalism promotes attachment to a particular place, by insisting on national distinctions. How can a set of ideas believed to be universal undergird a national identity? Only if the people who subscribe to that setup ideas believe that, sooner or later, they will be everywhere adopted. 41 

Thus, with the introduction of the inherent tension between liberalism and nationalism, between the universal and the particular, we have the conflict that will drive much of the narrative of American history and Lepore's work here. High ideals and realities of human finitude do not readily mix, and the nation has both. Idealists and strivers ready to exploit the vast resources that the land provides--later translated into immense technical achievements--mark one side of the American story, sometimes with nefarious ends. Lepore sums the problem up neatly: 

A nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights and offering asylum to anyone suffering from persecution is a beacon to the world. This is America at its best: a nation that welcomes dissent, protects free speech, nurtures invention, and makes possible an almost unbelievable growth and prosperity. But a nation founded on ideals, universal truths, also opens itself to charges of hypocrisy at every turn . These charges did not lie outside the plot of the story of America, or underneath it. They are its plot, the history on which any twenty-first-century case for the American nation has to rest, a history of struggle and agony and courage and promise. 45-46.

This conflict between universal ideas and realities of particular groups and places found its bloodiest and most dramatic clash in the Civil War. Lepore has a somewhat different take on the secession by the Southern states, often described as "sectionalism." Lepore describes the situation as "The outbreak of the civil war led to charges of sectionalism against the rebellious South, but Lepore has a different take: "Southerners were nationalist, too. It's just that their nationalism, at the time, was what would now be termed illiberal, or ethnic, as against another liberal, or civic, nationalism. ” 57. And as Lepore goes on to document, this illiberal strain continues with Jim Crow laws and other forms of racism, the eugenics movement, and anti-immigration laws and movements. 

Lepore briefly considers the historians of the early Cold War period (roughly from 1945 to about 1970),  where men [sic] such as Arthur Schlesinger, Lionel Trilling (literary critic)  Louis Hartz, and Richard Hofstadter set much of the tone of national debate. Lepore quotes from the Hofstadter review of Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America, “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” 102.  But as Lepore notes, these leading figures--all liberal in the sense that she defines--became overly optimistic about the decline of nationalism and illiberalism and the end of ideology (Daniel Bell) that they foresaw. Some today argue that liberalism and nationalism can thrive together. Israeli political philosopher and former cabinet member Yael Tamir, writing in his book, Liberal Nationalism, that “the liberal tradition, with its respect for personal autonomy, reflection, and choice, and the national tradition, with its emphasis  on belonging, loyalty, and solidarity, although generally seen as mutually exclusive, can indeed accommodate one another.” 130. But the likes of Judith Shklar, Martha Nussbaum, and Tony Judt hold positions to the contrary. Lepore notes Judt’s conclusion that liberal nationalism is “nothing more than a thought experiment,” but still, she argues, the nation-state (or state-nation in the case of the U.S.), isn’t likely to disappear. The two ideals may find an uneasy truce. Lepore argues the in American history, “liberals have failed., time and again, to defeat illiberalism accept by making appeals to national aims and ends.” [131] In short, Lepore seems to accept that this troubles marriage must continue. 

I'll end my review with an extended quote of Lepore from her peroration in the section she entitles "The New Americanism." Once you read it, consider its value and implications. 

The United States is a nation founded on a revolutionary, generous, and deeply moral commitment to human equality and dignity. In the very struggles that constitute this nation’s history, in the very struggles that lie ahead, the United States holds to these truths: all of us are equal, we are equal as citizens, and we’re equal under the law.  For all the agony of the nation’s past, these truths remain.  Anyone who affirms these truths and believes that we should govern our common life together belongs in this country.  This is America’s best idea. 135.

Frederick Douglass once offered his understanding of this nation: “A Government founded on justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason, and the regularly  ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and biggoted people among themselves.” [136]

In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight the forces of prejudice, intolerance, and injustice then by a dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.  A new Americanism would mean a devotion to equality and liberty, tolerance and inquiry, justice and fairness, along with a commitment to national prosperity inseparable from an unwavering dedication to a sustainable environment the world over.  It would require a clear line reckoning with American history, it’s sorrows no less than its glories.  A lie stands on one foot as Ben Franklin like to say, but truth stands upon two.  A new Americanism would rest on a history that tells the truth, as best it can, about what W. E. B.  DuBois called the hideous mistakes, the frightful wrongs, and the great and beautiful things that nations do.  It would foster a spirit of citizenship and environmental stewardship and a set of civic ideals, and a love for one another, marked by benevalence and hope and a dedication to community and honesty.  Working both backward and forward, it would know that right wrongs no man. [137] 

Can you think of a better manifesto with which to mark Independence Day this July 4, 2019? I can't. Professor Lepore has provided us with a powerful beacon, and I hope we follow it.  

Garry Wills on History and Liberalism

Upon re-reading this classic work about American politics and political thought, I came across these quotes about history and liberalism. Do not, in this context, confuse "liberalism" with "progressive" thought or the Left; in fact, Wills argues in his work that liberalism in its many guises is the guiding ideology of  American politics and culture. To what extent this is still true is an interesting point to ponder, but the main point I find in these quotes addresses our relationship to our history as a nation. Ponder this in light of today's events. What Wills wrote in the early 1970s in the context of Nixon and the turbulence of that era certainly applies today; we must find not only a way to rid ourselves of the plague of demagoguery and potential for tyranny, but we must find a way forward.  

History has made us, we cannot remake ourselves. To say this is to say that we are not the heirs, merely, but prisoners of our past thoughts, that we cannot break through them and be free, even when we recognize their delusive aspects. If this is so, then we must perish, feeding on recognized falsehood, our fate the fate of our exposed, exploded theories. But it is not so. Even in the past a great deal of our national life was left out of the accepted theories, and this becomes increasingly true as liberalism fails to enlist the energy and hopes of the young. At any rate, history never rests, never leaves alone the thing it makes; and there are signs that history, having made ours a great nation, may now be in the process of unmaking us—unless we can tap some energies for our own renewal. 

The historical achievement of liberalism is a great one, and even its severest critics would not systematically raze all its monuments. That these great deeds were accomplished by men acting, often, out of self-delusion means only that we are looking at the history of men—the same could be said of any school of thought that led to large actions in the world. One cannot even indulge in “hypothetical history” by saying a different course would have been a better one. 

This is our history, its good and bad intermixed; we cannot choose another. But one thing we can do—we can make history by refusing to rest in liberalism’s self-deceptions, once exposed. 

Wills, Garry. Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Kindle Locations 9261-9266). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. 

What Wills writes about liberalism in the context of his book can be said of many things: once we've found the rot, we continue to use any tool or thought at our continuing peril. We have to recognize the rot and repair and even improve the tool. 

Compare these thoughts about history offered by Wills with the perspective of R.G. Collingwood. 

Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

Yes, he looks a bit like my dad, and he said this:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” “Is there no other way the world may live?”

I must admit it upfront: I like Ike. I’ve always liked Ike.

It might be in part because he was the first president I knew was in office. But more likely because my parents were “Eisenhower Republicans” (later referred to as “moderate Republicans,” an extinct species today). In fact, in the year before my birth, my prematurely bald father (only about 30 at the time) was outfitted with an Army uniform and played the role of Ike in a local Republican victory parade to celebrate Ike’s election in 1952. And, yes, my dad and Ike do bear a resemblance. Even over the intervening years when my political views have changed (for the better, of course), my admiration for Ike has held firm. After reading Smith’s fine biography, that opinion has been deepened, not dampened.

As historian Garry Wills put it, Ike was a political genius. “It is no mere accident that he remained, year after year, the most respected man in America.”

Before this I’d read the second volume of Stephen Ambrose’s two-volume biography, the second volume dealt with Ike’s presidency and post-presidency, and so this was a first extended exposure to Ike’s early life and military career. From this period, I learned from fascinating aspects of Ike’s life. For one, Ike had a reputation for luck, and luck certainly played a contributing role in his success. Also, he had mentors—General Fox Conner, General Pershing, and General George Marshall—who boosted his career at crucial times. But while luck and patronage certainly helped Ike along his path, he worked hard and grew in his assignments. He was never a combat commander in war time (at the fighting level), but he honed a variety of skills that made him indispensable. For instance, while working for General Fox Conner at a Panama Canal posting during the 1920s, he took advantage of the General’s extensive library to extend his knowledge of history and military affairs. While serving General Pershing in Paris, he learned a great deal about the French countryside. (Ike missed combat during WWI.) He also served under Douglas MacArthur in Washington, D.C. (during the sad conduct of MacArthur and the political leadership in its treatment of the Bonus Army), and Ike served again under MacArthur in the Philippines in the 1930s. (Reading about MacArthur in this book, I better understand why William Manchester’s biography of MacArthur was entitled American Caesar; he was a pompous, ambitious man. George Patton, Ike’s slightly older peer, was as gung-ho and sanguinary as the George C. Scott bio-pic portrayed him to be.) The most surprising thing about Ike was that in WWII, when he took direct control of field operations as the Allies prepared for the final push into Germany, proved wasn’t much of a military strategist. The British general Montgomery did a much better job of that, although, he, like MacArthur and Patton, was a prima donna. But when it came to the incredibly challenging task of keeping an international coalition functioning with the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Charles DeGaulle to please, Ike was a miracle-worker.

While certainly ambitious, Ike remained an uncertain office-seeker. Former general Lucius Clay, along with New York lawyer Herbert Bromwell (later Ike’s Attorney General) and Thomas Dewey, were all needed to propel Ike into the presidency. Ike was uncertain, and he was probably wary of the dirt that might be slung at him. (He mistreated his predecessor Harry Truman, although Truman admired him, and unbeknownst to Ike on inauguration day—when Ike snubbed Truman—Truman has removed a very damaging letter from Ike’s army file that concerned Ike's relationship during WWII with Kay Summersby, his driver, aid, and lover.) But none of this came out, and the nation loved him, giving him a sound victory over the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson.

“Someday there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in [the Pentagon’s] estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen to this country.”

After his election, Ike mostly left the choice of his cabinet to his chief advisors (listed above). It wasn’t that Ike was indifferent, but he delegated to subordinates and trusted them to take charge of what they could while leaving the final, big decision to him. Thus, they recommended Nixon as vice-president (as a sop to the Republican right that Ike—in the person of “Mr. Republican” Robert Taft—had defeated for the nomination.) He also accepted John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State. Like Nixon, Dulles proved very un-Eisenhower-like. Dulles had a Manichean, Cold War mentality, while Nixon was a shifty—even then—political animal. But Ike managed both, along with a gung-ho military. I was shocked about how on various occasions Ike refused the advice of the military to use nuclear weapons. In fact, Eisenhower wanted peace and to limit the arms race. If there is one fact to take away about his Administration, it’s that after the Korean armistice in July 1953, no American troops were killed in combat during the remainder of his presidency. And he deployed troops overseas only once, in Lebanon, without loss of life and only for a limited duration (to counter Arab nationalist sentiment). He declined to try to deliver the French from their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, to attack the Chinese over islands around Formosa, to aid the British-French-Israeli coalition to take the Suez Canal from Egypt, or to actively intervene in the Hungarian uprising in 1956. 

On May 1 [1953], Robert Cutler, the president’s national security assistant, presented Eisenhower with the Joint Chiefs’ plan for Operation VULTURE [in Vietnam]. Ike dismissed it out of hand. “I certainly do not think that the atomic bomb can be used by the United States unilaterally,” he told Cutler. “You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God.”

“I believe hostilities are not so imminent as is indicated by the forebodings of a number of my associates. I have so often been through these periods of strain that I have become accustomed to the fact that most of the calamities that we anticipate really never occur.”

This is not to say Ike’s judgment was flawless. Ike approved of covert activities in Guatemala and in Iran that deposed legitimate governments that were pursuing policies that didn’t endanger U.S. security, but that endangered U.S. and U.K. multinational corporations with financial interests. In the case of Iran, a line can be drawn from the U.S. role in deposing the Mossadegh government and imposing the Shah and the 1979 Iranian Revolution that brought to power the current regime.

The GOP majority in the Eighty-third Congress seemed less interested in grappling with the problems of the day than in repudiating the work of Truman and Roosevelt. [Sound familiar?]

But in two other areas where some of criticized him, Eisenhower, Smith argues, called the right plays. Before becoming president and after his service in WWII, Eisenhower served as Columbia University’s president (a fine place, I’m told). And while Ike wasn’t very attuned to the academic world, he resisted those who wanted to limit free speech or engage in witch hunts. 

 “Don’t join the book burners,” he said. “Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend your own sense of decency. That should be the only censorship.… How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is?"

This attitude continued into his presidency. He declined to take McCarthy head-on, not wanting to give McCarthy a stage and not wanting to get into a brawl with a skunk. Although McCarthy and his fellow-traveling anti-Communist radicals (and cynics) did a lot of damage, McCarthy and his movement crashed as Ike had predicted. One could argue that a frontal attack was called for, but I think that Smith’s assessment makes sense. 

Ike always believed that if he had attacked McCarthy directly, the Senate would never have taken action. Later he wrote, “McCarthyism took its toll on many individuals and on the nation. No one was safe from charges recklessly made from inside the walls of congressional immunity.… Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.”

Ditto with civil rights. Ike was not a crusader for civil rights (it was not an issue that he faced directly before becoming president), but Brown was decided on his watch after his appointment of Chief Justice (Earl Warren), and Ike would have none of the insubordination to the law that so many in the South were willing to pursue. His showdown with Arkansas governor Orville Faubus was a masterpiece of Eisenhower maneuvering and political skill, augmented by the 101^st Airborne. In the end, Little Rock High was integrated.

Adam Clayton Powell—scarcely anyone’s Uncle Tom—put it best in a speech to his constituents on February 28, 1954. “The Honorable Dwight D. Eisenhower has done more to eliminate discrimination and to restore the Negro to the status of first-class citizenship than any President since Abraham Lincoln,” he said.

A few days before he left office, Ike addressed the nation in a farewell address, just as Washington had done after his two terms in office. The concerns of Eisenhower for peace and against militarism had not changed much. His words are worth noting at some length, as Smith does. Smith describes and quotes the address: 

“Our military organization bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime.” Until World War II, “the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could … make swords as well.” But now, because of the Cold War, “we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend more on military security than the net income of all United States corporations.” Eisenhower’s voice continued with somber intonation. “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new to the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.” Then, in the most widely quoted passage, Ike said: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” 

Then, in a timeless warning for the future, Eisenhower said America “must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” [Emphasis added.]

After learning a great deal more about this man—warts and all—I do so we wish we will soon have again a person serve as president who can provide the level of leadership, dignity, skill, and wisdom as did this man from Abilene, Kansas 

The Three Roosevelts by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn

Three who affected each other & American political life

The French have a saying, "Plus les choses changent plus elles retent les memes", which translates as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." That little ditty kept running through my mind as I read The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America (2000) by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn. It's a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Of course, each of these individuals has commanded numerous and extensive biographies, including a two-volume biography of FDR by Burns first published in 1956. However, the conceit of this volume that emphasizes the relationships of the three and how they affected one another is worthwhile because these three handed a political tradition down from one to the other. 

Of course, Theodore is the root of the Roosevelt political dynasty in the 20th century. TR fought hard for progressive reforms and continued his efforts even as he rejected and, in turn, was rejected by the Old Guard of the Republican Party that fought to protect established business interests. TR ended up going down in flames in 1912 when he ran as the Bull Moose candidate against the incumbent Taft (his hand-picked successor when TR chose not to run again in 1908) and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

But as Theodore was dominating the national stage, Franklin was launching his political career as a Democrat (despite his admiration for his cousin Theodore). Franklin's story is at the heart of the book because he was involved in the national stage from 1920 to his death in 1945. With his election near the beginning of the Great Depression, he came to dominate American politics. But when I write “dominate,” perhaps that’s the wrong word. It would be more accurate to say that he became the focus of American politics. Even at the height of his popularity and power, FDR was always aware that the winds of political fortune can shift abruptly. FDR worked with Democrat majorities in Congress, but because the Democratic Party was an amalgam of various interests, a significant portion of which included racist southern Democrats, FDR always tread very carefully. And this is where I see how “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I was repeatedly struck when reading about FDR's successes and travails how President Obama has faced many of the same problems. FDR, like Obama, was attacked vehemently from the right, and FDR turned to a pugilistic frame of mind worthy of TR in taking on the" plutocrats". Obama, of course, has always tended towards reconciliation rather than confrontation, but there is no question that Obama would always be checked by Wall Street and its influence in Congress. But the wealthy business class was not the only group who opposed FDR. From a different political direction came radicals like Father Coughlin, the populist and anti-Semite, and Huey Long, the populist senator from Louisiana. Shades of Donald Trump, anyone? And, of course, both presidents suffered criticism from the Left for not doing enough.

The story of FDR is complex. It deals with the Great Depression, Congress, and changes in the domestic American political scene, and then it switches direction with the advent of World War II and FDR's goal of seeking to frame a new world order out of the ashes. Of course, FDR failed in this with his untimely death in April 1945, but Eleanor continued to carry the torch.

Of the three, I learned the most about Eleanor, who grew from a shy, withdrawn girl into a forceful presence of her own. Even after the death of FDR, Eleanor continued to advocate for causes in which she believed. She remained an activist until her death in 1962. In fact, after FDR's death, she seemed to grow in stature, rising to the occasion. Her marriage to FDR was a complex and baffling relationship, especially given FDR's infidelity and the distinct change in their intimate relationship that occurred around 1920 (which is also about the time that Franklin was struck with his life-altering polio). Yet for all their heartache, the two had a bond of respect that overcame their deep alienation to allow Eleanor to have a mind and voice of her own that grew in political significance throughout her lifetime. Any other power couples come to mind?

For anyone new to the Roosevelt saga that arranges for almost a century between the birth of TR and the death of Eleanor, this is an excellent book to start exploring. By combining the three lives, the authors not only provide a snapshot of each of the individuals, but they emphasize how all three affected one another and therefore the whole of American political life. Done with an easy and flowing narrative, it's a great place to get a sense of how American politics has changed and how it hasn't. I suspect if Barack Obama would read this book after the end of his presidency, he’d have many occasions to smile in recognition.