Rick Perlstein

It’s amazing the extent to which we are still living in the political world created by the paranoid, disaffected, self-righteous Nixon and his enthusiastic supporters. Perlstein does quite a job illuminating the levels of hypocrisy and moral licensing that fed the Nixon campaigns’ corruption and underhanded maneuvering. Not to mention the credulous simplicity that led the media to repeatedly ignore such blatant wrongdoing, and the superior indifference with which the Left fanned the show more flames.

More impressive still is how clearly this book shows the roots of Trumpism and modern Republican politics. The parallels can’t have been purposeful, as it was published in 2008. But even down to the fine details (e.g., the Nixon campaign drastically—and obviously—inflating their crowd sizes), it’s impressive to see how far back these things really go.

You have to know what you’re signing up for when you start a book like this, obviously. It‘s quite a long read, and certainly dry in parts, but I think it’s one of the best things I’ve read for an understanding of the longer historical trends in modern American conservatism. show less

American political history from the fall of Nixon to the rise of Reagan (ending with his unsuccessful bid for the nomination in 1976). The more history I read, the more I think that Americans have always been just as apocalyptic, which in one way is reason for hope. There is never any last act in American politics; we always stumble from crisis to crisis. In the 1960s, many Americans thought their country and their world—emphasis “theirs” –had gone mad. In the 1970s, mainstream media show more made comparisons between bankrupt New York City and the Weimar Republic. One theme that emerges, though its causal relationship to the wild judderings of American politics is unclear, is that America’s political pundits are essentially always completely wrong. Reagan and the New Right were pronounced dead zillions of times; Watergate was declared a closed chapter pretty much every week. The book ends with one confident editorial explanation that Reagan was now, in 1976, too old for another presidential run. Another noticeable thing is that right-wing domestic terrorism has been around for a long time, not just racist terrorism, and few people connect the dots between classroom bombings in West Virginia, protesting “progressive” textbooks, and abortion clinic bombings. show less

The Invisible Bridge is an apt title for the latest installment of Rick Perlstein’s historical series on the rise of modern conservatism in American politics. After the scandal of Watergate, the Establishment of the Republican Party was desperate to repudiate its former head and his politics while the right wing looked to give American “a choice, not an echo”. The showdown between President Gerald Ford and Governor Ronald Reagan was thought a cakewalk by the political and media show more establishment who had not learned the lessons from 1964 and beyond.

Like the previous two book in the series, Perlstein shows that politics and history do not occur in a vacuum as cultural, entertainment, and societal issues during the middle part of the 1970s are covered and how they related to political scene of the time as well. In the wake of Watergate and the resignation of Nixon, the Democratic Party was so certain of victory in 1976 that numerous candidates entered to win the nomination and a sure term as President, only for a complete unknown to the Establishment—Jimmy Carter—to come out with the nomination. Yet the main thrust of the entire book is the 1976 nomination fight between Ford and Reagan; how it came about, how it was contested, and how it ended at the Kansas City convention.

Although history and politics are central to this book, Perlstein doesn’t shy away from giving biographies of the three important individuals of the period: Carter, Ford, and Reagan. The portraits those biographies provide are for the most part not very pretty, especially for those who idolize Ronald Reagan as Perlstein doesn’t pull any punches about his life. But for those who think Perlstein out to get Reagan, the image Perlstein shows of Carter is anything but rosy or positive and gives a hint about how he’ll portray the 39th President in his next book which will not make Carter fans very happy as well. Of the three major figures in this book, Gerald Ford comes out the best though in a way Perlstein gives the impression that Ford was more an individual desirous of pity than praise.

I began this review by saying that The Invisible Bridge was an apt title for this book and the reason was that not until looking back from the perspective of 1980 and beyond did anyone see that in 1976 when Ford won the Republican nomination that it was pyrrhic victory by a moderate conservative of a party increasingly controlled by the far right conservatives. Only in hindsight could the pundits and historians see the once hidden bridge of how the crushed right wing of 1964 had taken over by 1976, that bridge was one man who it turned out won by losing. show less

I waited a long time for Rick Perlstein's second book in his series on conservatism in modern U.S. politics to become available through Libby. And let me tell you, this was a TOUGH book to read in November 2024, as it seems like everything that's happening today happened before and we learned nothing from it.

Whereas Richard Nixon was something of a punchline in Before the Storm, Perlstein's book about Barry Goldwater, here we see his comeback and rise to power after his humiliating show more back-to-back losses running for President in 1960 and Governor of California in 1962. Perlstein uses a framing device based on social clubs at Nixon's alma mater of Whittier College. The "Franklins" are the popular, good looking, and wealthy elite who have positions of influence handed to them (think of FDR and JFK), while Nixon identifies with the "Orthogonians," those who have to fight for power. While Orthogonians like Nixon have all the privileges of white, Christian men, they nevertheless have lots of grievances. Nixon's success come from mobilizing the grievances of what became known as "The Silent Majority."

This book is called Nixonland because it is not a straight biography of Nixon but a sprawling and detailed political history of the United States from the mid-60s to the early-70s. After Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater on a platform of civil rights and social welfare programs, the Democratic Party's consensus fell apart. On one side, urban uprisings and increasing militancy of Black activists terrified the white Orthogonians who used it as a pretext to declare the civil rights movement a failure. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party tore itself apart over Johnson's hawkish commitment to the war in Vietnam.

Perlstein's narrative traces the trends and crises that made it possible for a landslide victory for Nixon just 8 years after Johnson's. As an author, he has an engaging manner of bringing to life even familiar incidents in his writing. For example, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is described as how it might have been seen by an ordinary American watching it on TV, complete with the commercial breaks for Gulf Oil. While the book ends with Nixon at his greatest success, it also contains the seeds of his demise with the events of the Watergate burglary. show less