Mike Lofgren

If I could write the review THE PARTY IS OVER : How the Republican Went CRAZY, Democrats Became USELESS, and the Middle Class Got SHAFTED deserves, it would take an article the size of a magazine article.
Mike Lofgren worked for US Representative John Kasich, first on the House Armed Services Committee and then the House Budget Committee. In 2012, he finished his 28-years on the Hill working for Senator Judd Gregg, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Both of his bosses were Republican. show more He retired when “my own party, politicians became more and more intransigently dogmatic.” He didn’t think they believed what they said but were playing to “an increasingly deranged political base that does believe it.”
He examines how the GOP decided its main objective was to make Obama a one-term president. Their method was to not support any of his programs (even those they had originally suggested) on the theory that the voters would be so upset they would blame Obama for not solving the country’s problems.
He says the GOP decided it could ignore its traditional base (the educated, affluent suburban voter) and get new support by focusing on issues such as Gay Marriage and Abortion.
With statistics comparing longevity, infant mortality, income distribution, labor protection on a global scale, he sees the US getting closer to the Third World than the advanced state it has been for decades.
Lofgren details how the Republican party has changed (not for the better) since the days of Lincoln and how the Democratic party became impotent. He begins by discussing the tactics used by the Republicans. He refers to the Republican Party as “an oligarchy with a well-developed public relations strategy designed to sooth and anesthetize its followers with appeals to tradition, security, and family even as it pursues a radical agenda that would transform the country into a Dickensian corporatocraphy at home and a belligerent military empire abroad.”
After 9/11, under the administration of George W. Bush, many of our constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech, protection against government surveillance, undermining due process, sanctioning torture were abandoned in the guise of protecting “the Homeland.” Barack Obama continued these abominations.
The chapter “A Devil’s Dictionary” shows how words were used to confuse and sway citizens. “Elites” became pejorative and possibly un-American even though Bush and Romney went to Harvard and/or Yale. Free-market is an “economic system by which Halliburton gets sole-source, cost-plus government contracts.” “Global Warming” is called a hoax even as we are experiencing major weather changes and almost all reputable scientists acknowledge it. “Sharia law” is a fundamentalist religious doctrine forced on people. It does not include laws restricting access to legal abortions.
In his official duties, Lofgren saw how the change in tax laws (while waging two wars) created an unprecedented deficit (following a surplus in 2001) and widened the gap between the richest 1% of Americans and the remaining 99% to a never before seen division.
While acknowledging the reduced role of the traditional media (newspapers, network television news), the criticizes the media’s failure to investigate and their eagerness to give equal balance to unequal sides.
His chapter on religion details how the Fundamentalist Christian Right is trying (sometimes successfully) to turn the US into a theocracy based on their ideas. Another chapter talks about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that has developed. People vote for the person they would like to have a beer with rather than the person best able to lead.
Americans today have more access to information about the rest of the world, thanks to the internet, but are abysmally ignorant of what is going on,
President Barack Obama is severely criticized for continuing many of the programs that he complained about when Bush was president and the Democrats are so disorganized that they have been unable to change things and, in many cases, have cooperated.
He does offer some suggestions to get out of this mess including non-politically determined redistricting, public financing of elections.
The fact that Mike Lofgren was a Republican working for Republican lawmakers and seeing what was happening behind the scenes makes this book a must-read for anyone trying to figure out what has happened with our country. show less

This book verified all the feelings that I've had about American Politics over the past 15 years or so. Ordinarily, when your opinions are verified, you feel good. This book just made me depressed. Nevertheless, it's a book that every voter should read.

Mike Lofgren is a former GOP Congressional aide for twenty-eight years who has become disenchanted with several features of our current government. In “The Party is Over” he complains the sole purpose of Republicans elected to Congress is to shut down government or at least bring it to a standstill. They have often succeeded. He argues in this book that there are two governments in Washington: the visible one that is in the public eye with campaigns and elections, and the “deep” show more government that operates behind the scenes, often following its own agenda and never changes regardless of who might be elected. Ironically, I sensed much of this reading Robert Gates’ memoir “Duty.” It was clear that he, as Secretary of directions his president wanted to move.) Defense, often had trouble moving the Defense Department bureaucracy and military in directions he wanted (and I felt he sometimes thwarted or at least resisted.) The process has been a gradual one and not unexpected.

Much of the problem he attributes to the “beltline” mentality and the aggregation of agencies, foundations (there are now more than sixteen-hundred of these tax-exempt “ hordes of gun slinging grants man who tried to maintain a facade of scholarly disinterest are functionally as much a part of the ecosystem of the town is the lobbyists on K Street,) and agencies like Homeland Security, which, truth-be-told, would make much more sense after 9/11 to be dispersed throughout the country, but which instead is firmly entrenched in a former insane asylum retrofit, now ten years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, but thankfully protecting us from shampoo-bottle bombers. Its first chief, Michael Chertoff, I suppose could be congratulated by the bureaucracy for his display of efficiency in turning DHS (doesn’t the word Homeland remind you of “fatherland” and cause a reflexive need to bring the right arm to sharp Hitlerian attention?) “into a contractor-infested replica of the DOD’s in only a few years. His post-government career has been single-minded attempt to cash in personally on his bureaucratic creation and his own notoriety.”

9/11 had an effect on all of this, of course, as military contractors rushed to merge and join the hoards of others with headquarters in Washington (thanks to generous tax benefits passed at taxpayer’s expense) sucking at the government teat.

For all the bellyaching that goes on throughout the country about out-of-touch bureaucrats, corrupt and unresponsive government, and how much everyone hates Washington, these visible signs of our increasingly intrusive and overbearing government did not fall out of the sky upon an unsuspecting public. The Deep State, along with its headquarters in Washington, is not a negation of the American people's character. It is an intensification of tendencies inherent in any aggregation of human beings. If the American people did not voluntarily give informed consent to the web of unaccountable influence that radiates from Washington and permeates the country, then their passive acquiescence, aided by false appeals to patriotism and occasional doses of fear, surely played a role. A majority of Americans have been anesthetized by the slow, incremental rise of the Deep State, a process that has taken decades. (p. 29)

Much of this “deep state” results from Washington group think. In the military it’s clearly more obvious, you have to get on board with the mission or go nowhere career-wise. In the bureaucracy the pressures are equally strong if not as apparent. And they know they’ll be around long after the flavor-of-the-day politicians move on. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

The last chapter consists of Lofgren’s prescriptions for resolving some of the issues he has highlighted in the book. I would disagree with several of them. His first solution, “eliminate private money from public elections” has been batted around so many times. When has money never been a problem in campaigns? It always has and will always be. Public financing is hardly the solution. Do I really want my tax money to be used to fund the campaigns of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann? And is this only for presidential campaigns? It’s local city and state elections that often have more of an influence. I would argue for complete transparency but let people spend their money on campaigns as they wish, just make sure everyone knows where it’s coming from. PACS should be eliminated; all the money should go directly to the candidate but with full accounting and accountability.

I fully concur with his recommendations that we reduce military spending and stay of of the Middle East. Nothing we have done in the past sixty years seems to have worked the way we intended it to beginning with the CIA-Seven Sisters overthrow of the government in Iran. To quote him: “ISIS is undeniably a toxic gang of murderers, but our own disastrous intervention in Iraq formed the petri dish in which its diseased ideology could evolve.” I love that metaphor. Constant military interventions have provided the rationale for ruinous military spending which, in turn, empowers the shadow government even more not to mention increased the debt by six trillion and counting. His suggestion that much of that military spending be channeled to domestic infrastructure repair and building is admirable but would, ironically, continue to empower the shadow government in the form of additional bureaucratic structures.

He admits that many of his proposals sound utopian (not to mention Progressive) but insists that the United States has reformed itself several times in the past on equally grand a scale. I’m not so optimistic.

Lots of amusing, if cynical, lines in the book. For example, referring to the invasion of Iraq and its justification, “ the tongue tied George W Bush sorely needed the mellifluous double talk of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the theory that nothing sells hideously awful policy as well as an Oxford accent (the American political class swoons on cue at gibberish delivered with Received Pronunciation.) I could go on with many other examples. But read the book and weep.

I enjoy Mike Lofgren’s work and was offered an “Advanced Reader Copy” of this book in hopes I would read and review it. I was happy to do so since I intended to buy it when it appeared anyway, although I would have much preferred an ebook copy for my Kindle (much easier to take notes and highlight passages.) The book is excellent but probably futile (I must be really pessimistic this morning.) show less

Mike Lofgren, a Republican who worked on Capitol Hill for years, explores the mess that our political system has become. As a Republican, he focuses more on his own party - which has devolved into a corrupt cesspool of greed financed by big corporations (really, anyone who keeps up with the news already knows that...unfortunately, many Americans DON'T keep up with the news). To appease the public, many of whom are more interested in talking about reality television (can you tell I'm not a show more fan of television?), the Republicans wave flags that are guaranteed to ignite visceral reactions: abortion, gay marriage, sharia law, etc. The Democrats aren't much better, and Lofgren is quick to point that out as well (once again, if you've been keeping up with the news...).

As a former Democrat (sadly, I'm too left-leaning for the party anymore, which is moving more towards the right with every election cycle), I agree wholeheartedly with Lofgren's assessment of the current morass. He offers some ideas at the end that might help us get out from corporate America's purchased government (public financing of elections, of which I'm a huge proponent; minding our own dang business once in a while instead of invading every country that we don't like; etc), but he's much more of an optimist than I am. Ignorance is exalted in America (just look at the "celebrities") while intelligence is scorned (something that Lofgren devotes an entire chapter to in this book). Most Americans seem to feel fine about sitting in front of the television while the country goes to hell around them. show less