It is no secret that the American people are dissatisfied with government. But while the frustration and anger are real, the way we tend to view the problem is all wrong. In this powerful diagnosis, Jonathan Rauch reveals that the problem with government is not "gridlock" or "special interests"; it's that despite ever-increasing levels of activity, government has lost its ability to make things work and solve problems effectively. That's "demosclerosis.". Rauch looks beyond the politics and personalities of the moment, taking the reader on a fascinating tour of how American government has been crippled by its own success. He shows how, year after year, the American public forms more interest groups making more demands on government - until gradually government itself has calcified. No program can be cut, no tax break eliminated, without incurring the wrath of one group or another, and they care more about saving a program than the general public cares about killing it. The truly insidious thing, Rauch shows, is that these groups and associations are not the wicked "special interests" of politicians' rhetoric; seven out of ten Americans belong to at least one association and one in four belongs to four or more. We have met the special interests, and they are us. . Escaping from the trap Rauch describes will not be easy. His keen assessment of Bill Clinton's first year in office shows that just changing the faces in Washington is no cure, nor is it sufficient just to pass new laws or cut taxes, for these actions generate their own interest groups, calcifying government even further. Rauch offers his own bracing tonic for unclogging the public arteries, turning our conventional ideas of liberalism and conservatism on their heads and making Demosclerosis an indispensable guide to how Washington really works - or doesn't.
"Barack Obama is arguably the most dynamic political figure to grace the American stage since John F. Kennedy. His meteoric rise from promise to power has stunned even the cynics and inspired a legion of devout followers. For anyone who wants to know more about the man, David Mendell's Obama is essential reading. Mendell, who covered Obama for the Chicago Tribune, had far-reaching access to the Chicago politician as Obama climbed the ladder to the White House, the details of which he shares in this compelling biography. Positioning Obama as the savior of a fumbling Democratic party, Mendell reveals how Obama conquered Illinois politics and paved the way brick by brick for a galvanizing, historic presidential run." -- Provided by the publisher.
Provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years--and how citizens might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.
"Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was one of the most brilliant, charismatic, and controversial politicians of this century - and one of the most productive legislators in American history. This vivid and penetrating biography by Wil Haygood, whom Ward Just has praised as "perhaps America's best young reporter," evokes the physical, political, and racial reality of both Powell's life and the civil rights struggle of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET. "The grandson of a slave, Powell utilized his father's pulpit in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church to raise up the poor and disadvantaged during the Great Depression. After marrying a showgirl, starting his own newspaper, and successfully running for city council, he was elected as the first black congressman from Harlem, a seat he held without serious opposition for thirty-odd years.^ He took his second wife, the jazz pianist Hazel Scott, with him to Washington, where he was a tireless crusader for racial equality, a thorn in the side of his timid colleagues, and an embarrassment to four presidents on the issue of fair employment. Though Powell jumped the Democratic fence in 1956 because of Adlai Stevenson's racial indecisiveness and appointed himself unofficial ambassador to the Bandung conference, he finally assumed real power under Lyndon Johnson. As the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee of the House, the black representative helped the white president push through that mass of laws which Johnson called the War on Poverty."--BOOK JACKET. "At the same time, Powell's influence was being eroded by his flamboyant private life and by his reckless disregard for congressional proprieties. His pleasurable rambles around the world, compounded by headline-making lawsuits, cost him his seat in Congress.^ Though his faithful Harlemites reelected him, he was not reseated until the Supreme Court backed him, in Earl Warren's last decision. Stripped of seniority, Powell toured the country to advocate black power and lolled on his yacht in the Bahamas until he was finally defeated in the 1970 primary election."--BOOK JACKET. "This energetic narrative paints Powell as a hero to his people and a standard-bearer for social equality. While others may have done more to change our attitudes toward race, Powell did more than any other black leader to change the way we live. Having succored hundreds of thousands, he died in utter loneliness in 1972."--BOOK JACKET.
This book collects a number of Martin Shefter's most important articles on political parties. They address three questions: Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties - in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bureaucracies. The book's opening chapters analyze the circumstances conducive to the emergence of strong political parties and the changing balance between parties and bureaucracies in Europe and America. The middle chapters discuss the organization and exclusion of the American working classes by machine and reform regimes. The book concludes by examining party organizations as instruments of political control in the largest American city, New York.
Demosclerosis by Jonathan Rauch | Literally Just Books
