Book review of The Red and the Blue…
The Red and the Blue. Steve Kornacki, author (ECCO-Harper Collins, 2018). This book’s subtitle is a useful addition: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. For those not yet born during that time (millennials, for example), it’s a must read if only to see that the current craziness isn’t just some kind of spontaneously generated creature spawned in the rotting vegetation of DC’s political swamps. The thesis here is that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich created America’s bitter political divide.
There were no team colors for that divide until the 2000 election when NBC chose blue for Democrats and red for Republicans. and other networks followed their lead, in that Bush v. Gore debacle that ended with SCOTUS choosing to saddle the US with a nice fellow but incompetent dynasty member for president (our current political chaos seems tame and Dubya seems harmless in comparison to who we now have as POTUS, especially if you ignore Cheney and Rumsfeld who were really running the George Bush show). This book ends with that election. How the Clinton v. Gingrich confrontations led to that is clearly laid out in this history of an important decade in America.
While reading this book, one might be tempted to compare Bill Clinton and Donald Trump in the harsh spotlight of today’s nasty politics. Neither Clinton nor Gingrich were angels in any sense of the word. Yet, if their struggles gave rise to our current situation, Trump and Pelosi play similar roles. If we focus on the presidents in the first story and its sequel, though—perhaps the more important comparison—Clinton comes off better than Trump.
They both looked inward more than outward. For example, Clinton failed miserably in going after al Qaeda after the first attack on the World Trade Center (the book doesn’t even mention this); and Trump’s ineptitude in foreign policy knows no bounds. (What does Putin have on him that makes him say he believes that Russian monster more than his own intelligence community? Is it all just about business, i.e. the Trump Tower in Moscow?).
But I prefer to focus on morality. Here’s something the author quotes from Tom Delay: “…it is much more damaging that this president [Clinton] looked the American people in the eye and knowingly lied to us.” He was lying about Monica Lewinsky. Fast forward to the Trump administration. The Washington Post keeps a running list of all Trump’s lies—thousands of them and counting. And how do the porn star and Playboy bunny compare to Monica Lewinsky? The latter was an affair between two consenting adults; the former—well, maybe we should let Melania say what they represent? So far she’s followed Hillary’s lead in avoiding the issue, hopefully not as far as running for president one day (step-daughter Ivanka seems to have that aspiration). Isn’t politics wonderful?
But I digress. Newt Gingrich had been plotting against Washington liberals and the Democratic party for years. Here you have a skilled if misguided politician who bided his time and grabbed the chances he had. His rise is followed as well as Clinton’s in the book, the author alternating between the two, the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of the nineties. Who’s to blame more for the present divisions in our country? Moot point, maybe. Bitter partisanship accompanied the changeover in the South from Dems to GOP as Newt surged and created a home for all those liberal haters, voters who had had enough of FDR and LBJ’s policies, some of them still fighting the Civil War.
The Clinton vs. Gingrich battles began the polarization of America, but US citizens wanted this polarization—they voted for it. But back to that subtitle: What has really happened, spurred on by those battles and those that have followed, is the creation of an insidious cultural and political tribalism where one side embraces the new America and all its wonderful diversity, and the other rebels against it and wants to be isolated from it. While the author makes a good case in his book for where this all came from, understanding that history doesn’t seem to matter. In fact, it’s so bad now that sometimes one has to wonder if America’s red and blue states shouldn’t separate and form two separate nations. Let me put it bluntly, in fact: that’s the danger we face if we don’t change our ways.
That’s the great difference between Clinton and Trump. The former didn’t thrive on discord and left the country better off than it was before he became POTUS. The latter thrives on discord and is ruining the country. Are both morally despicable? Yes! But the voters put them there.
That’s also the difference between Clinton and Gingrich. The former was actually a very middle-of-the-road and moderate Dem (a pragmatic progressive in today’s political vernacular) who won national elections by appealing to voters across a wide spectrum. The latter represented a small, homogeneous district in Georgia that was a safe bet for the GOP until 2018. Gingrich had the backing of similar GOP members in the House, though, and they all hated Clinton.
At 428 pages of text and with numerous reference pages, this book is a heavy read but well worthwhile if you want to understand where we came from and the dangers associated with where are we going. Maybe I’m putting too much into it, but I don’t think so.
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Comments are always appreciated.
The Secret Lab and The Secret of the Urns. On a lighter note, consider these two young adult sci-fi mysteries from A. B. Carolan.
The first novel takes place in the future on the International Space Station where Shashibala Garcia and her friends try to discover the origins of a mutant cat that keeps disappearing on them. They uncover much more.
The second novel takes place much later and follows Asako Kobayashi’s dream for studying the natives of Hard Fist, a satellite of a Jupiter-like planet. She has to fight bigotry and hatred to follow her dream.
Both novels are available in ebook versions from Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc), as well as print on Amazon.
And another young adult sci-fi mystery from A. B. is coming soon! It’s called Mind Games.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
