Review by New York Times Review
IN THE FOUR years before his marriage to Mary Todd, Abraham Lincoln lived, and even shared a bed, with a friend named Joshua Speed. There exists no evidence of a sexual bond between the two men, but in deference to the identity politics raging in today's university, the Harvard English professor John Stauffer has suggested otherwise. Sean Wilentz, among the most distinguished of American historians, and the one who comes closest to helping Americans understand themselves in the spirit of Richard Hofstadter, will have none of it. "Stauffer's rehearsal of the old Speed story," he writes, "illustrates the difference between a historian and a professor with an agenda." That sounds right. Until one realizes that Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, puts forward an agenda on just about every page of "The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics." His thesis is easily stated: Politicians serve the country best when they learn the art of compromise through party-building and not when they stand, prophet-like, outside the fray delivering secular, and sometimes overtly religious, sermons. Be prepared, as you read this book, to hear this thesis propounded relentlessly. Even before his book appeared, Wilentz, in a sort of advance copy of his argument, spent the bulk of the 2008 presidential campaign delivering one slashing criticism of Barack Obama after another. Obama, we were told, appealed to the Mugwumpish post-partisanship that makes elites feel good about themselves but is rarely helpful to ordinary people. Looking back, I cannot recall any left-wing intellectual more hostile to Obama than Wilentz. Turning racial politics on its head, Wilentz even managed to argue in The New Republic that Obama practiced "the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988 and the most insidious since Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., praising states' rights." "The Politicians and the Egalitarians" can be read as Wilentz's explanation for his credulity-straining position: Hillary Clinton was the politician and Obama the egalitarian. Egalitarians speak the language of an America struggling to live up to its ideals; so powerfully does egalitarian language resonate in this country, Wilentz points out, that even defenders of slavery relied upon it. (Slavery, they claimed, made white people of all economic classes equal in their freedom.) Down to the Reagan presidency, and even extending to the gross inequalities of today, Republicans do best when they couch their programs for the rich as benefits to the poor. Obama's efforts at post-partisanship, in Wilentz's view, furthered this idealistic rhetoric of equality: Americans from all walks of life would reason together to find what is common among us. However important egalitarianism may be, Wilentz continues, only those adept in the skills of politics can do something about actually advancing it. Lincoln was a brilliant writer and profound thinker, yet it was his patience and respect for the Constitution, and not his idealism or prose, that enabled him to prevail. Along similar lines, senators such as Robert Wagner of New York were the true heroes of the New Deal, not left-wing radicals flirting with the Communist Party. There is nothing especially romantic about Lyndon Johnson, Wilentz goes on, but his head-banging political skills helped shape contemporary America for the better. Wilentz finished his book before the battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had played out, but he anticipates not only the themes of Sanders's campaign but the damage his zealotry could do to his more politically savvy Democratic opponent, who, after all, is running with the support of party insiders. I was no fan of the Wilentz position in 2008; Obama knew a thing or two about running shrewd political campaigns. But for 2016, I think his analysis makes perfect sense: With Donald Trump looming over the Republicans, Democrats cannot afford an amateur. For all my agreement with him, however, I wish Wilentz had made his point with greater modesty. The subtitle of his book includes the word "hidden" and the first sentence the word "secrets," as if Wilentz alone sees clearly what is obscure to everyone else. Yet the "keys" to understanding American politics he uncovers are strikingly mundane: Political parties are important, and so is economic inequality. The truth is that these "secrets" have been examined by other historians at length; parties, for example, have been scrutinized by such scholars as Michael Holt (the Whigs) and Heather Cox Richardson (the Republicans). But even if they had not been, the importance of parties is hardly a secret to political scientists; in fact, it is their discipline's calling card. If Wilentz is not familiar with the discipline, may I recommend Nancy Rosenblum, former chairwoman of the Harvard government department, whose book "On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship" pretty much says it all? No book has been more widely debated in recent election campaigns, moreover, than "The Party Decides," written by multiple authors; its thesis that party insiders play an outsize role in choosing candidates for president is being challenged in 2016 by Sanders and Trump, but it is also being confirmed by Clinton. As for inequality, one has to wonder whether Wilentz followed the publicity surrounding the publication of Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," which became an international best seller. Piketty is not, to be sure, a historian, but unlike so many economists, he treats his subject with a historical perspective. The same can be said for the even more powerful argument developed by Robert J. Gordon in "The Rise and Fall of American Growth." THE ODDITY HERE is that if Wilentz really believes that "the issue of economic equality has been the great perennial question in American political history," and if he also wishes to develop in his audience an appreciation for our political parties, why would he tackle those themes with a string of loosely stitched, previously published essays, many of them book reviews? Fashioning a book out of previously published material, for one thing, creates for him a severe problem of selection. John Quincy Adams, neither an egalitarian nor much of a politician, is included in the book because Wilentz had already reviewed a biography of him by Paul Nagel. Edward Bellamy, surely a first-class egalitarian, and an interesting one at that, is not here, one suspects, because Wilentz had not already reviewed books by or about him. A well-thought-out book should reflect an author's ideas, not his résumé. Wilentz did not choose to assemble already published material because he was lazy; if anything, he tends to write comprehensive tomes whenever a subject, from democracy to Dylan, piques his interest. Nor is it because he is disengaged; he holds nothing back in his criticisms, not only of John Stauffer, but also of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Garry Wills, Conor Cruise O'Brien and other authors he encounters. (Annette Gordon-Reed, who has written so insightfully about Jefferson's relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, comes out best.) One can only hope that "The Politicians and the Egalitarians" is, as they say in real-world politics, a trial balloon, anticipating a forthcoming major volume on the historical importance of professional politicians and their ability to advance a more egalitarian society. Wilentz is too talented and the subject too central for our country's future for it to be otherwise. Or so I hope. Johnson's head-banging political skills, Wilentz says, shaped America for the better. ALAN WOLFE is the author of "The Future of Liberalism" and, most recently, "At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 16, 2016]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wilentz, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Rise of American Democracy and professor of history at Princeton University, once again proves himself to be among America's most skilled (and pugilistic) historians with this brisk, hard-hitting book. He tries, with some success, to rescue liberalism from its detractors on the left and right by arguing that, at its best, liberalism has succeeded through pragmatic, principled politics as well as ideals. Wilentz also convincingly argues that efforts to reduce economic and other inequalities have been a constant in the nation's history. (It should be noted that he doesn't stress that counterefforts have also been a constant.) He makes his case principally by taking up other historians' work about major historical figures: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, W.E.B. Dubois, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson chief among them. Sometimes Wilentz praises their work, but he's at his energetic best when on the attack against detractors of his foregrounded great men, and he doesn't hesitate to describe some histories as "nonsense" and "junk." In other hands, this would seem silly and lacking force; in Wilentz's, it's authoritative and telling. The result is wonderfully readable and the best kind of serious, sharp argumentation from one of the leading historians of the United States. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Wilentz (George Henry Davis 1886 -Professor of American History, Princeton Univ.), author of the Bancroft Prize--winning The Rise of American Democracy, a definitive sweeping political history of the antebellum period, here argues that economic and social equality are goals that have defined American political discourse since the country's founding. More so than ideological homogeneity, political partisanship and its trials have been and are still essential components for achieving those aims. All the personages covered in this book were embedded in an age in which partisanship was the temper of the times, and -simultaneously iconic symbols of egalitarianism: for instance, Thomas Paine's entreaties to American independence, John Quincy Adams and antislavery in the antebellum period, and the Homestead Strike and organized labor. Each chapter is essentially a book review or two in context, including an evaluation of -Michael Kazin's American Dreamers, of which the author is especially critical, and which could be read in conjunction with this volume. -VERDICT Wilentz's examples support well the thesis of an egalitarian tradition rooted in the dynamic of partisan politics from Thomas Jefferson to Lyndon B. Johnson and up to the present. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/15.]-Jeffrey J. Dickens, Southern Connecticut State Univ. Libs., New Haven © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A stern, thoroughly satisfying harangue on the realities of politics in the United States by the veteran, prizewinning historian. Wilentz (American History/Princeton Univ.; Bob Dylan in America, 2010, etc.) emphasizes that two key factors of politics, ignored by lesser historians, are essential. The firstsure to jolt even educated readersis that partisanship and party politics are essential to effective government. The Founding Fathers deplored it, and today's presidential candidates assure us that they detest career politicians. Reformers denounce them, and Americans "want government conducted in a lofty manner, without adversarial confrontation and chaos. But more than two hundred years of antipartisanship has produced nothing," writes the author. "This is because, despite their intentions, the framers built a political system which inspired partisan politics." The second factorless controversial but no less surprisingis that Americans hate economic privilege. Everyone agrees that vast material inequality threatens democracy. The author argues that the fight for racial and sexual equality during the 1960s and '70s made that period an anomaly, and the conservative swing begun by President Ronald Reagan obscured it, but it returned with a vengeance after the economic crash of 2008. Conservatives today place less emphasis on moral arguments for a free market in favor of claiming that cutting taxes and government will provide jobs and eliminate poverty. Never shy about scolding colleagues, Wilentz maintains that the vogue of denigrating Thomas Jefferson has gone overboard, but he joins in the revival of the reputations of Thomas Paine and Lyndon Johnson. The author deplores the current fashion for giving idealistic outsiders credit for forcing crass politicians to do the right thing. Abolitionists did not compel Abraham Lincoln to promote emancipation, and Johnson supported civil rights long before he took office. A master scholar delivers a delightfully stimulating historical polemic. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
