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Title: Responsible Partisanship?: The Evolution of American Political Parties Since 1950 by John Clifford Green, Paul S. Herrnson, John C. Green ISBN: 0-7006-1217-3 Publisher: University Press of Kansas Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Too little outrage
Comment: More when I have time. Professional polemicists justify partisanship as competition of ideas in a free market. Anyone who follows the most influential political publications realizes that ideas, let alone consideration of alternatives, are disappearing from the ad hominem, apoligetics, and general self-congratulatory spin of even the most triumphant partisans. Political victors do no soul-searching. Even within factions, like the current administration, we find contempt for the intelligence of nominal colleagues.
Ultimately the famous paradox, the tragedy of the commons (selfishness in sharing finite common resources sufficient for all in moderation leave too little for most), must haunt students of our take-no-prisoners form of total partisanship. The dynamic tensions within American democracy, like individualism versus egalitarianism, have been mediated historically by institutional processes, like mobility and group cohesion, which are under assault. The hard cases of extreme ideological conflicts are demanding bad law-making by politicians more concerned with how they look to key constituencies than how they get along with colleagues with whom they share common duties to the common good.
We are trapped in a self-reinforcing spiral of new technologies and cynical professionals, vast financial resources and stakes, a dumbed-down, statistically triangulated electorate and monopolized media, a shrinking fraction of Americans who vote, loss of newspaper readership and journalistic timidity , gerrymandering moderates out of electoral competition, selling think tanks to wealthy interests, shamelessly dishonest opinion-shapers, greed, fanticism and systematic manipulation of the resultant politics by narrow coalitions of incredibly wealthy special interests with armies of lobbyists and increasingly secretive public policy decision-making (under the blind eyes of an increasingly ideological judiciary and regulators who ignore statutory requirements of fairness). The commercialization of political principles has repeatedly defied majority will and successfully convinced the few voters who are in play that symbolism is substance. This interesting study is far too polite in evaluating the forces which have damaged democratic institutions and political processes. Since its publication we have seen the wholesale transfer of power, already captured from populists of left and right, from the giddy traditionalists of the Republican coalition to ruthless elites of the corporatist right. The book underestimates the atomizing and anomic forces that have stripped voters of political memories and left them bulnerable to influence of television, advertising-based mass consumption, breakdown of politically sophisticated social groupings and rise of constituencies defined by dogma and authority rather than shared historical experience and working coalitions for common good. A good start but far too detached for the current crisis.
Sorry for the rushed rant, but I must return to a public office.
PUBLIUS
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Title: Diverging Parties by Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Mark D. Brewer, Mack D. Mariani, Jeffrey M. Stonechash ISBN: 0813398436 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Party's Just Begun: Shaping Political Parties for America's Future (2nd Edition) by Larry J. Sabato, Bruce A. Larson ISBN: 032108912X Publisher: Longman Publishing Group Pub. Date: 16 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.00 |
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Title: Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America by Micah L. Sifry ISBN: 0415931436 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Party Politics in America (Longman Classics Series), 10th Edition by Marjorie Randon Hershey, Paul Allen Beck ISBN: 032109543X Publisher: Longman Publishing Group Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $57.00 |
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Title: The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It by Stanley B. Greenberg ISBN: 0312318383 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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