The Right Nation Conservative Power in America

by Wooldridge, Adrian; Micklethwait, John

• ISBN13: 9781594200205
• ISBN10: 1594200203
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-24
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The

Summary

With a unique blend of insight, balance, and wit, two of our most renowned America watchers brilliantly anatomize the conservative movement and explain how it has stamped its program so deeply into American life. The Right Nationis 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 Nationcomes 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.

Author Biography

Both John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge were educated at Oxford and went on to work for The Economist. John Micklethwait has overseen the magazine's Los Angeles and New York bureaus and is now its U.S. editor. Adrian Wooldridge has served as West Coast correspondent, social-policy correspondent, and management editor, and is currently Washington, D.C., correspondent. Together, they have coauthored three books, The Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation, and The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. 1
Introduction	p. 5
History
From Kennebunkport to Crawford	p. 27
The Conservative Rout, 1952-1964	p. 40
The Agony of Liberalism, 1964-1988	p. 63
The Fifty-Fifty Nation, 1988-2000	p. 94
Anatomy
For Texas, Business and God	p. 131
The Rive Droite	p. 151
The Brawn	p. 172
With Us or Against Us: The Right and the War Against Terror	p. 198
Prophecy
The Road Ahead: The Path to Republican Hegemony?	p. 227
How It Could Go Wrong: Too Southern, Too Greedy and Too Contradictory	p. 249
Behind Enemy Lines	p. 270
Exception
America the Different	p. 291
Right from the Beginning: The Roots of American Exceptionalism	p. 314
Heresy and Reformation: America's Exceptional Conservatism	p. 334
The Melancholy Long Withdrawing Roar of Liberalism	p. 354
Conclusion: Living with the Right Nation	p. 374
Appendix	p. 399
Acknowledgments	p. 401
Notes	p. 405
Index	p. 425
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