The American Political Tradition: and the Men Who Made It (1948)
Modern Library Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century (93)
There's an interesting definitional problem with these lists--the difference between Best and Greatest. You see, there are a bunch of books here that are just godawful pieces of left wing propaganda, real liberal diatribes that have completely failed to withstand the test of time (Silent Spring, General Theory, Affluent Society, etc.). There's no stretch of the imagination by which they should be considered the Century's "Best" books. But, they are undeniably "Great" books, in the sense that they were extraordinarily influential. Richard Hofstadter's book falls into this category too. A product of post-War/post-Depression left wing triumphalism, it influenced an entire generation of historians and thinkers, but today reads like a pet project of the CPUSA (Communist Party United States of America). It is really a quite loathsome piece of tripe.
The book's purpose is twofold: first, to delegitimize the historic American Left by portraying all of the nation's history as a mere argument on the margins of what was actually a broad conservative consensus; second, to pave the way for a new Left by painting that consensus as ideologically bankrupt. In order to achieve the first goal, Hofstadter uses a trick familiar to every gadfly and pickle barrel orator; he simply argues the opposite of the accepted wisdom. Thus, his chapter headings include: I. The Founding Fathers: an Age of Realism; II. Thomas Jefferson: the Aristocrat as Democrat; III. Andrew Jackson and the Rise of Liberal Capitalism; IX. Theodore Roosevelt: the Conservative as Progressive; and X. Woodrow Wilson: the Conservative as Liberal. Get it? The Founders weren't idealists but realists. The liberal icons of the Left--Jefferson, Jackson, TR and Wilson--were actually all conservatives. This continues right up to FDR, who despite a brief and half-hearted break from this past, refuses to go along with the most farsighted and sweeping aspects of the New Deal. As this version of American history unfolds, we're treated to a kind of grand conspiracy theory whereby the leaders of the Left turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing, secretly supporting the system and channeling discontent back into heterodoxy.
Then comes the hammer blow, because do you know what all of these schemers and dupes, either naively or maliciously, preached and believed in? As Hofstadter scornfully informs us, all of them believed in individualism, free markets, competition, equality of opportunity and all of those hoary old shibboleths that had been totally discredited by 1948 and would surely never again see the light of day:
The things Hoover believed in--efficiency, enterprise,
opportunity, individualism, substantial
laissez-faire, personal success, material welfare--were
all in the dominant American tradition. The
ideas he represented--ideas that to so many people
made him seem hateful or ridiculous after
1929--were precisely the same ideas that in the
remoter past of the nineteenth century and the more
immediate past of the New Era had an almost irresistible
lure for the majority of Americans. In the
language of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln these
ideas had been fresh and invigorating; in the
language of Herbert Hoover they seemed stale and
oppressive. It is a significant fact that in the
crisis of the thirties the man who represented these
conceptions found himself unable even to
communicate himself and what he stood for.
Almost overnight his essential beliefs had become
outlandish and unintelligible. The victim
of his faith in the power of capitalism to survive and
prosper without gigantic government props, Hoover
was the last presidential spokesman of the
hallowed doctrines of laissez-faire liberalism,
and his departure from Washington marked the decline
of a great tradition.
Hofstadter later asks of Hoover: "Could he have seriously believed that free enterprise might be restored to the postwar world?" This is what we mean when we speak of hubris in Greek tragedy. It would be amusing if Hofstadter and his ilk had not proceeded to do so much harm with their abandonment of American values and traditions and their eager embrace of a centralized planned economy. It's really too bad that he died so young. I'd have liked to have seen him explain away the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Opportunity Society.
This book is profoundly awful. It is wrong in its major theses,
informed by a really snide tone of self congratulation and, in celebrating
the worst moment in the history of American governance (the rise of the
Social Welfare State), fails to reckon with the fundamental tension in
American history (indeed in all of human history), the ongoing struggle
between the forces of freedom and the advocates of security. I don't
doubt that this book was influential, and in that sense great, but to call
it one of the best nonfiction books of the century is to abuse truth, defile
common sense and elevate partisan political loyalties over clear eyed analysis.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (F)
