The Right Nation is not "for" liberals, and it's not "for"
conservatives. It's for any of us who want to understand one of the
most important forces shaping American life. How did America's
government become so much more conservative in just a generation?
Compared to Europe-or to America under Richard Nixon-even President
Howard Dean would preside over a distinctly more conservative
nation in many crucial respects: welfare is gone; the death penalty
is deeply rooted; abortion is under siege; regulations are being
rolled back; the pillars of New Deal liberalism are turning to
sand. Conservative positions have not prevailed everywhere, of
course, but this book shows us why they've been so successfully
advanced over such a broad front: because the battle has been waged
by well-organized, shrewd, and committed troops who to some extent
have been lucky in their enemies.John Micklethwait and Adrian
Wooldridge, like modern-day Tocquevilles, have the perspective to
see this vast subject in the round, unbeholden to forces on either
side. They steer The Economist's coverage of the United States and
have unrivaled access to resources and-because of the magazine's
renown for iconoclasm and analytical rigor-have had open-door
access wherever the book's research has led them. And it has led
them everywhere: To reckon with the American right, you have to get
out there where its centers are and understand the power flow among
the brain trusts, the mouthpieces, the organizers, and the foot
soldiers. The authors write with wit and skewer whole herds of
sacred cows, but they also bring empathy to bear on a subject that
sees all too little of it. You won't recognize this America from
the far-left's or the far-right's caricatures. Divided into three
parts-history, anatomy, and prophecy-The Right Nation comes neither
to bury the American conservative movement nor to praise it blindly
but to understand it, in all its dimensions, as the most powerful
and effective political movement of our age. Chapter One FROM
KENNEBUNKPORT TO CRAWFORD Sir Lewis Namier, the great historian of
English politics in the age of George III, once remarked that
"English history, and especially English parliamentary history, is
made by families rather than individuals." The same could be said
of American political history, especially in the age of George I
and George II. There is no better introduction to the radical
transformation of Republicanism in the past generation-from
patrician to populist, from Northeastern to Southwestern, from
pragmatic to ideological-than the radical transformation of
Republicanism's current leading family, the Bushes. Grandfather
Prescott The Bushes began political life as classic establishment
Republicans: WASPs who summered in Kennebunkport, educated their
children at boarding schools and the Ivy League and claimed family
ties to the British royal family (Queen Elizabeth II is the
thirteenth cousin of the first President Bush). George W.'s
paternal great-grandfather, Samuel P. Bush, was a steel and
railroad executive who became the first president of the National
Association of Manufacturers and a founding member of the United
States Chamber of Commerce. His maternal great-grandfather, George
Herbert Walker, was even grander. The cofounder of W. A. Harriman,
Wall Street's oldest private investment bank, Walker's stature was
summed up by his twin Manhattan addresses: his office at One Wall
Street and his home at One Sutton Place. There was certainly muck
beneath this brass: both Walker and Bush had their share of Wall
Street shenanigans and cozy government deals, but in the age...
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