Dead Presidents

Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives
Robert Draper
Hardcover.  327 pp.
April 24, 2012.  Free Press.

John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan who represents the western suburbs of Detroit, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Monroe in the United States House of Representatives is the Dean of the House.  In a couple of months, Congressman Dingell will celebrate his 86th birthday.  If he wins his campaign in November, as he has done the last 28 times he’s been on the ballot, and serves past June 8, 2013, he will have spent more time in Congress than any American in history.  Right now, only two Americans in 223 years of American History have served longer in Congress.  Nobody has spent more time in the House of Representatives.  Dingell joined the House on December 13, 1955, succeeding his father, John Dingell, Sr., who had died a few months earlier.  Between the current Congressman Dingell and his father, somebody named John Dingell has represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives for almost 80 consecutive years.

If anybody is an expert on the lower chamber of Congress — the people’s chamber — it is John Dingell.  If anybody can give an educated opinion on the state of America’s legislative branch, it is this aging World War II veteran who has held office in Washington, D.C. through the Administrations of 11 Presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama).  John Dingell’s ties to the House of Representatives even include five years as page where he watched his father work alongside legislative titans and stood transfixed on the floor of the House during the joint session of Congress where President Franklin D. Roosevelt mourned the “day which will live in infamy” and declared war on Japan.

After nearly 57 years as a member of the House of Representatives and 75 years as a keen observer of Congress’s lower chamber, John Dingell has seemingly experienced it all, but the 112th Congress — the current session, which began on January 3, 2011 and saw Republicans take control of the House after the disastrous 2010 midterm elections for House Democrats — is difficult to deal with.  In Robert Draper’s new book, Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (Free Press, 2012), Dingell admits that “I’m more frustrated than I’ve ever been in my career.”  The Dean of the House tries to flip through the pages of political history that he has personally experienced, yet he can’t find another example of an organization or individual who had approval ratings as low as the 9% approval rating that Americans have for the 112th Congress.  In fact, Dingell finally says, “I think pedophiles would do better.”

Robert Draper is a top-notch journalist for publications such as the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and National Geographic, and his previous book, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (BOOK•KINDLE), was a fascinating insider account of the Executive branch as President Bush’s two terms were coming to a close.  Do Not Ask What Good We Do is just as intriguing, perhaps more so because instead of a White House with one leader and nearly everyone else working toward the same goals, the House of Representatives is full of 435 very different Americans from very different parts of the country.  And while the House is controlled by a Republican Party that currently holds on to a 52-vote majority over the Democrats, the two parties themselves have major ideological differences within them.

Do Not Ask What Good We Do focuses on a handful of House members.  Some of Draper’s subjects are very well-known and very influential like current Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Dingell (D-MI), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), disgraced former New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, and the courageous Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords who was nearly killed in an assassination attempt in her Congressional district at the beginning of the 112th Congress.  But Draper also looks at some of the 87 freshmen who helped the Republicans take back the House in November 2010 thanks to their Tea Party credentials and relentless opposition to anything and everything that President Barack Obama has attempted to do, particularly Florida’s Allen West, Missouri’s Billy Long, Blake Farenthold of Texas, Renee Elmers of North Carolina, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and South Carolina’s “Four Horsemen” freshmen: Jeff Duncan, Tim Scott, Trey Gowdy, and Mick Mulvaney.

By introducing us to some of the personalities who are responsible for crafting and passing legislation, Draper helps us understand why John Dingell is so frustrated, why nothing is getting done, and why the approval rating of Congress is in single digits.  We see Tea Party Republican freshmen whose intransigence not only provide headaches for the Democratic President, the Democratic Senate, or the Democratic House minority, but also for moderate Republicans or Congressional veterans who are never conservative enough for the newcomers who hold up bills and refuse to compromise.  While there are admirable, hard-working, pragmatic legislators on both sides of the aisle, there are also Members of Congress — people that were somehow elected by a majority of Americans to represent their district in the House of Representatives — like Idaho’s Republican freshman Raul Labrador who is quoted in a Republican conference telling Speaker Boehner, “I didn’t come to Washington to be part of a team.”  Or, Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, whose obsession with tacking on amendments, need to make a floor speech about something every morning, and stubborn attitude is one of the most blatant examples I’ve ever seen of government waste.

Do Not Ask What Good We Do is a fascinating book, but tremendously frustrating.  The frustration doesn’t come from Robert Draper’s first-class reporting or his ability to put personalities to the faces and names we see on C-SPAN; it comes from the frightening fact that if, as many Americans believe, our system is broken and needs to be fixed, the repairs should start with the House of Representatives.  The Senate is the more deliberative body of Congress — designed to represent the states equally.  The House is supposed to be the people’s chamber — designed to represent us, the average American voter or taxpayer, as directly as possible.  I’m scared for my country if these are the best 435 people we have to represent us.  Not all of the members of the House are equally horrible, but enough of them are bad that I worry for my country.  I am saddened for my country if we can’t do better than many of these men and women that we send to Congress to represent the districts that we live in.  We have to be able to do better.  We must do better.

Draper’s title — Do Not Ask What Good We Do — comes from one of this country’s original members of Congress, Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, who wrote of Congress in 1796, “If we should finish and leave the world right side up, it will be happy.  Do not ask what good we do: that is not a fair question, in these days of faction.”  Thanks to Draper’s revealing account of the current House of Representatives, we can look at the 112th Congress and know not to ask what good they do, for there hasn’t been anything of note in the past two years that has made our lives better.  We know that we don’t need to ask how bad they’ve been; the 9% approval rating answers that question clearly.  Instead, we should ask ourselves: “Can we do better?” and “Is it January 3, 2013 yet?”.      

Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper is available now from Free Press.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Robert Draper is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and GQ.  His previous book was the New York Times best-seller, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (BOOK•KINDLE).  Robert Draper is also on Twitter @draperrobert.

Anonymous asked:  What do you think about Republicans who want Obama to fail at his job?

To be fair to Republicans, there were plenty of Democrats who wanted George W. Bush to fail at his job, too.  It’s borderline treasonous thinking.  We only have one President, and our President — whether Democrat or Republican — are not the Presidents of their party, but the Presidents of all of us.

I want all of our Presidents to succeed.  Sometimes, I want a different President, or I want the President we have to lose an election, but I never want our President to fail.  If our President fails, we all lose out on something.  It’s not good for anybody; even his political opponents.

While Republicans like Dick Cheney or Mitch McConnell take shots at President Obama at every turn, I’ll hope that the majority of Republicans throughout the country feel the same way as George W. Bush, who has said, “I love my country a lot more than I love politics.  I think it is essential that Obama be helped in the office.”

Since the Presidents of the United States reach the pinnacle of political power, we sometimes forget that the path to the summit is difficult and often full of disappointing political defeats.  Here are some of the elections that our Presidents have lost during their political careers:

•George Washington:  No election losses
•John Adams:  Lost the 1800 Presidential election
•Thomas Jefferson:  Runner-up in the 1796 Presidential election
•James Madison:  Lost a 1777 campaign for reelection to the Virginia House of Delegates
•James Monroe:  Lost a 1789 election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia
•John Quincy Adams:  Lost 1802 election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts; Defeated for reelection to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1808; Lost 1828 campaign for reelection as President; Lost 1834 campaign for Governor of Massachusetts
•Andrew Jackson:  Lost the 1824 Presidential election
•Martin Van Buren:  Lost 1840 campaign for reelection as President; Lost the 1844 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination; Lost the 1848 Presidential election
•William Henry Harrison:  Lost the 1820 election for Governor of Ohio; Lost an 1822 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio; Lost the 1836 Presidential election
•John Tyler:  Lost 1836 election for Vice President of the United States
•James K. Polk:  Lost 1841 campaign for reelection as Governor of Tennessee; Lost 1843 election for Governor of Tennessee
•Zachary Taylor:  No election losses
•Millard Fillmore:  Lost 1844 Whig nomination for Vice President; Lost 1844 election for Governor of New York; Lost 1852 campaign for the Whig Presidential nomination; Lost the 1856 Presidential election
•Franklin Pierce:  Lost 1856 campaign for renomination as Democratic Presidential candidate
•James Buchanan:  Lost 1816 election for the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania; Lost campaign for the 1844 Democratic Presidential nomination; Lost campaign for the 1848 Democratic Presidential nomination; Lost campaign for the 1852 Democratic Presidential nomination
•Abraham Lincoln:  Lost 1832 election for Illinois House of Representatives; Lost 1843 election for the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois; Lost 1855 election to the U.S. Senate from Illinois; Lost campaign for the 1856 Republican Vice Presidential nomination; Lost 1858 election to the U.S. Senate from Illinois
•Andrew Johnson:  Lost 1837 campaign for reelection to the Tennessee House of Representatives; Lost 1868 campaign for renomination as Democratic Presidential candidate; Lost 1871 election for U.S. Senate from Tennessee; Lost 1872 election for U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee
•Ulysses S. Grant:  Lost 1880 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination
•Rutherford B. Hayes:  Lost 1861 campaign for reelection as City Solicitor of Cincinnati, Ohio; Lost 1872 election for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio
•James Garfield:  No election losses
•Chester Arthur:  Lost campaign for 1884 Republican Presidential nomination
•Grover Cleveland:  Lost 1865 election for District Attorney of Erie County, New York; Lost 1888 campaign for reelection as President
•Benjamin Harrison:  Lost 1872 campaign for the Republican nomination as Governor of Indiana; Lost 1876 election for Governor of Indiana; Lost 1887 campaign for reelection to the U.S. Senate from Indiana; Lost 1892 campaign for reelection as President
•William McKinley:  Lost 1871 campaign for reelection as Stark County, Ohio prosecutor; Lost 1882 campaign for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio; Lost 1890 campaign for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio; Lost 1892 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination
•Theodore Roosevelt:  Lost 1886 election for Mayor of New York City, New York; Lost 1912 campaign for Republican Presidential nomination; Lost 1912 Presidential election as third party candidate
•William Howard Taft:  Lost 1912 campaign for reelection as President
•Woodrow Wilson:  No election losses
•Warren G. Harding:  Lost 1892 election for Marion County, Ohio auditor; Lost 1903 campaign for Republican nomination as Governor of Ohio; Lost 1906 campaign for Republican nomination as Governor of Ohio; Lost 1910 election for Governor of Ohio
•Calvin Coolidge:  Lost 1905 election for the the School Board of Northampton, Massachusetts
•Herbert Hoover:  Lost 1932 campaign for reelection as President
•Franklin D. Roosevelt:  Lost 1914 campaign for Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from New York; Lost 1920 election for Vice President of the United States
•Harry Truman:  Lost 1924 reelection campaign for Judge of Jackson County, Missouri
•Dwight D. Eisenhower:  No election losses
•John F. Kennedy:  Lost 1956 campaign for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination
•Lyndon B. Johnson:  Lost 1941 election for U.S. Senate from Texas; Lost 1960 campaign for Democratic Presidential nomination
•Richard Nixon:  Lost the 1960 Presidential election; Lost the 1962 election for Governor of California
•Gerald Ford:  Lost the 1976 Presidential election
•Jimmy Carter:  Lost the 1966 campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Georgia; Lost the 1980 Presidential election
•Ronald Reagan:  Lost 1968 campaign for Republican Presidential nomination; Lost 1976 campaign for Republican Presidential nomination
•George H.W. Bush:  Lost 1964 election to the U.S. Senate from Texas; Lost 1970 election to the U.S. Senate from Texas; Lost 1980 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination; Lost 1992 Presidential election
•Bill Clinton:  Lost 1974 election for the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas; Lost 1980 reelection campaign a Governor of Arkansas
•George W. Bush:  Lost 1978 election for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas
•Barack Obama:  Lost 2000 primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois

Anonymous asked: Do you think Bush dumbed himself down to try to relate to the middle class?

Yes.  So did Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, and Carter — and those are just the modern Presidents; anti-intellectualism has been a campaign strategy for two centuries. 

Carter is one of the most obvious cases of a candidate who dumbed himself down — he campaigned as this simple peanut farmer from southern Georgia who taught Sunday school and carried his own bags.  Do you know what Jimmy Carter was before he took over his family’s peanut farmer after his dad died?  He was a nuclear physicist and handpicked by Admiral Rickover to be the top engineer on one of the U.S. Navy’s first atomic submarines. 

This has always been one of the things that most disappoints me about Americans and American political candidates who think simplicity is a strength when it comes to holding the most important, powerful job in the world.  I’ve written about it before, so let me just share those previous thoughts about anti-intellectualism while we’re on the subject:

On Anti-Intellectualism, July 22, 2010:

Anti-intellectualism has ALWAYS been a favorite of American political campaigns.  For some frustrating reason, Americans don’t like somebody who is *too* smart.  I don’t know about you, but I want my President to be the smartest guy in the country.  Most of the time, campaigns just dumb things down because they know it appeals to the people.  It’s one of the biggest things that bothers me about this country — dumbing things down works.

This is not a new tactic.  It’s also not a dead tactic.  In 2008, we had Sarah Palin and Joe The Plumber speaking for the “regular Americans”.  The thing is, I don’t actually know any “regular Americans” who pride themselves on being simple people.  Why this works in political campaigns is beyond my ability to understand.  It is Walmart advertising and it is infuriating.

When did this start in Presidential campaigns?  Definitely during the 1824 campaign that John Quincy Adams won against Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William H. Crawford.  It didn’t work in that campaign because the election was decided by the House of Representatives, but Jackson campaigned as the down-to-earth, man of the people.  In 1828, he did the same thing and won.  Other Presidents who used the same tactic successfully:  William Henry Harrison in 1840; James K. Polk in 1844; Zachary Taylor in 1848; Franklin Pierce in 1852; Abraham Lincoln in 1860; James Garfield in 1880; Benjamin Harrison in 1888; Warren G. Harding in 1920; and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Besides the Bush 43 campaigns, Carter is the most recent clear example of a President who completely dumbed down his abilities and personality for his Presidential campaign.  In 1976, Carter campaigned against Gerald Ford as the smiling peanut farmer from Georgia who was ready to bring the Presidency back to the people.  In reality, Carter was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy who studied nuclear physics, was a disciple of Admiral Hyman Rickover, and handpicked by Rickover to serve as the engineering officer on one of the first atomic submarines.

I don’t understand why this appeals to the American electorate.  I don’t understand why it works.  All I know is that it is not a good reflection on the American electorate as a whole.  If anybody says, “Oh, I voted for him because he was dumber than the other guy”, they should have their right to vote revoked.

and, “The Intelligence of George W. Bush”, November 8, 2010:

I’ve made this argument for years.  George W. Bush was not dumb.  He may have done some dumb things and he may have sounded dumb when he talked once in a while, but Bush was one of the most ambitious and politically clever Presidents in recent history.

People tend to forget that George W. Bush wasn’t this guy that he portrayed himself as during his campaigns — the rough-hewn rancher from West Texas who was running to rid Washington of politics-as-usual and unite the country.  Bush was born in Connecticut, attended East Coast prep schools, earned degrees from Harvard and Yale, and his political experience included being Governor of Texas but also being one of his father’s most ideologically devout campaign warriors.

Depending on your political beliefs, what Bush did as President may have been bad for this country and world.  I tend to believe that he was terrible for the world.  What he did, however, was prove that he had the ability to do what he wanted to do and he had very specific, solid beliefs that he followed through on.  It doesn’t make him a good President, but he was an effective President when it comes to doing what he wanted to do.  You can’t do that while being dumb.

Bush was a bad speaker, especially when reading from a script — so was his dad.  Off-the-cuff, though, he was very good.  His campaign appearances were smooth and impressive.  He connected with Americans far better than Al Gore and John Kerry did in 2000 and 2004.  And in the debates of 2000 and 2004, EVERYONE believed that Gore and Kerry would destroy Bush.  But they didn’t.  In fact, Bush won the majority of those debates.  He lowered expectations and then exceeded them.  Dumb guys wouldn’t have done that.

George W. Bush wasn’t dumb.  He was underestimated and that’s what made him so dangerous.  When people underestimate someone, they tend to lower their guards and think that the person is harmless.  If politicians or political parties want to defeat an opponent, they should never label that opponent as dumb.  It’s never a good strategy because for some ridiculous, inexplicable reason, Americans either like or sympathize with dumb people.  Actually, maybe that’s not so inexplicable.  It’s just ridiculous.

Anonymous asked: how can you not think george w. bush is racist? you just lost credibility.

Don’t you see how dangerous labels can be?  If you’re going to label someone as a “racist”, you better damn well understand the gravity and impact of such a word.  You should fully understand the definition of that word and recognize what it means to tag someone with it.  If you’re going to call someone a “racist”, you better be accurate.

Why don’t I think George W. Bush is racist?  There are mountains of reasons, but let’s just keep it really simple: Would a racist appoint not one, but TWO, black Secretaries of State?  Condoleezza Rice was arguably President Bush’s closest aide throughout his Administration, first as National Security Adviser and then as Secretary of State.  If George W. Bush was a racist, he wouldn’t have relied on Rice, he wouldn’t have respected Rice, he wouldn’t have been close to Rice, and he certainly wouldn’t have appointed her to one of the most powerful positions in the world.

Again, words are dangerous and powerful.  Understand the consequences of what you are saying before you say it.  If this was a bigger stage or you had a louder voice and better platform, you would have just wrongly accused someone of something that could be seriously damaging to their life, career, and legacy.  That’s one of the major problems in the media today — people make inaccurate statements or damaging accusations and, even if they aren’t true, that person can’t “un-say” them.  The audience can’t “un-listen” to the baseless claim, and that’s how bullshit stains people.

Disagreeing with somebody’s politics doesn’t require you to destroy that person.  I vehemently disagreed with almost everything that President Bush attempted, but I didn’t see any reason to hate the man.  I don’t know him personally, but I didn’t want to see him destroyed.  I never think, “Oh, if only we could get rid of all the Republicans in this country.”  That’s not how our system is supposed to work.  People from different backgrounds and belief systems are supposed to work together and find a way to do things that help as many Americans as possible.  The American political system was not designed to be a winner-takes-all competition; it’s supposed to be a cooperative project meant to benefit everyone.  We do not have to destroy each other.

Plus, what does it say about us if we rail against our President and label him as a racist or a criminal or say that he is unintelligent?  If that’s the message we send, we’re also saying that the American people aren’t capable of electing someone honest or smart.  No matter what you think or how confusing the Electoral College might be, the truth is that we truly do possess the power to elect our leaders.  So, if we elect Presidents who are labeled with all of these nasty accusations, who is the problem?  If people keep whining or protesting that we can’t elect good Presidents, who is the common denominator?  The candidates?  No, it’s the electorate.

(Rebloggable format by request)

No, I can’t. 

That’s the thing: I literally cannot explain why someone who believes the things that Rick Santorum believes and says the things that Rick Santorum says can be a leading contender for a major party’s Presidential nomination this late in a campaign in the 21st Century.  I can’t explain it because I genuinely can’t understand it.  

I know that I keep saying the same thing, but I truly am embarrassed for my country.  It hurts my heart to recognize that there is a large part of the population that agrees with Santorum and finds him appealing.  He is a disgraceful, hate-filled, ignorant man.  A religious extremist like Santorum should not be able to get as deep into the Presidential election process in a country like the United States.  And I don’t use “religious extremist” lightly.  The man as much of an extremist for Christianity as the proponents of Sharia law are extremists for Islam. 

Everything begins and ends with religion for Rick Santorum, and his faith is a narrow-minded faith of exclusion that is completely absent of reason.  As I have previously noted, Santorum is a man who said, “Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science class.”

An even more frightening quote from Santorum is his argument last February that our “national religion” or “national faith” is rooted in Christianity:

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.  And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.  They hate Western civilization at the core.  That’s the problem.

What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers.  What we’re talking about are core American values.  ‘All men are created equal’ — that’s a Christian value, but it’s an American value.  It’s become part of our national religion, if you will.  The point I was trying to make was that the national faith, the national ideal, is rooted in the Christian ideal — in the Judeo-Christian concept of the person.”

These are the words of a serious contender for the Presidency, and these are words that scare the shit out of me.  I’m all for freedom of religion and I respect everyone’s faith or spiritual belief or choice to not believe.  But when I start hearing things like “national religion”, my palms start sweating, the hair stands up on the back of my neck, and I wonder when the extremists are going to start acting like the Taliban and destroying cultural icons that don’t jive with their particular faith, or commanding that we start living our lives in the manner that their Bible says we should. 

As Presidential campaigns continue and grow, the normal, sane candidate usually takes time to clarify remarks which may seem controversial or extreme, and that’s where we really are seeing proof of who Rick Santorum actually is.  It was just Sunday morning when Santorum told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to ministers in Houston makes him want to throw up.  That speech was inspirational.  It crossed religious, racial, and political party lines.  It was a testament to the grand experiment in liberty which this nation was created from as JFK noted that his religion had nothing to do with his ability to protect and preserve the Constitution.  Yet, that sentiment from Kennedy makes Santorum want to vomit.

That’s one of our leading contenders for the Presidency, my friends.  That’s a man who made sure to add “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”  I guess we’re from different Americas.  Rick Santorum’s extreme religious ideology isn’t what the Founders intended for the President of a democratic republic; it’s more in line with being the Supreme Ayatollah of a theocracy.  I am adamantly opposed to Rick Santorum not just because of his extremism or his ignorance or his boorish beliefs or his complete lack of understanding of people who are different than those who he sees at Church.  My opposition is focused on the fact that people like him are dangerous and I am frightened for my country.

— Connor Friedersdorf, “Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life To Be ‘Special’”, The Atlantic, Feb. 15, 2012

THANK YOU, Mr. Friedersdorf!  This is almost certainly my favorite sentence that has been written so far about the 2012 Presidential campaign, and the entire article in The Atlantic plainly illustrates the ridiculousness behind the obsession that Rick Santorum — or any Presidential hopeful or American politician — seems to harbor about our sex lives.

With that said, I must admit that the past few weeks of the campaign have seemed to leave me wishing something about Rick Santorum’s sex life:  I have a powerful hope that he will do us all a favor and just go fuck himself.

Look at me — raising the bar for political discourse, as always! 

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan
Jeff Greenfield
Trade Paperback.  434 pp.
February 2012.  Berkley Books.

Alternative history is not really my thing.  Don’t get me wrong: I think that imagining “what if” can be done really well, and I think that it can be an important and helpful exercise in understanding the role of our leaders, the consequences of their actions, and the impact of events.  Picturing what could have happened is often an effective vehicle for teaching people the significance of what really did happen.

But alternative history is not really my thing.  Perhaps it is because I read so much true history and biography that it’s difficult for me to fit alternate histories into my reading schedule, and it’s often difficult for me to suspend my disbelief and allow my brain to think of “what if”.  I have the same problem with reading historical fiction.  In order for me to enjoy it — or even read it from cover-to-cover — it has to be really good, and the author has to know their subject.

Fortunately for Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (Trade paperback released February 7, 2012, Berkley Books), it comes from the mind of one of the most astute political analysts of our time, Jeff Greenfield.  Most observers of politics or viewers of television know Jeff Greenfield from his work as a political commentator for CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, and NBC, work for which he has won three Emmy Awards.  Greenfield has written for Time, the New York Times, and Slate.com, among others,  and authored or co-authored a dozen books — important because a good alternative history book requires solid writing skills as well as in-depth knowledge of the subject(s) at hand.  And that knowledge — in this case, in-depth knowledge of the inner-workings of some of the most game-changing political campaigns of the 20th Century — is definitely one of Greenfield’s attributes.  Besides analyzing nearly ever major campaign of the past three decades, Greenfield was on the front lines of New York Democratic politics — as a speechwriter and aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he was working for RFK’s 1968 Presidential campaign in Los Angeles on the night Kennedy was assassinated.  Greenfield was also an aide and speechwriter to New York City Mayor John Lindsay.

In Then Everything Changed, Greenfield focuses on three moments in American political history of the past half-century and speculates on the possibilities where a subtle, split-second difference could have wrought massive changes to the historical narrative.  I really liked the way that Greenfield sets up the moment and then expands on how and what would likely have changed if things had gone differently.  Because of Greenfield’s deep knowledge and the politics and players in each instance, these situations play out in great detail.  If there is any stone left unturned, it’s a stone that nobody else would have stumbled upon either.  Some of Greenfield’s alternate histories can be easily imagined, some require a more faithful suspension of disbelief, but the best aspect is that all of Greenfield’s reworkings remain entirely plausible.  I didn’t find myself being taken out of the alternate history by wild variations on what I know actually occurred. 

The first situation that Greenfield examines in Then Everything Changed was the most interesting, and focuses on an incident that remains remarkably unreported to this day.  On December 11, 1960, a 73-year-old man named Richard Pavlick waited in his car outside the vacation home of President-elect John F. Kennedy, and was seconds away from a suicide bombing that would have killed JFK before he was even inaugurated and likely brought about a Constitutional crisis.  Pavlick’s car was packed with dynamite and he held the ignition switch in his hand as JFK walked out of his home.  Had he detonated the bomb, it would have killed Kennedy and dozens of nearby press and onlookers.  The only reason that Pavlick didn’t detonate the bomb is because Jacqueline and Caroline Kennedy came to the door to say goodbye to the President-elect, and Pavlick didn’t want to kill Kennedy in front of his family.  Greenfield takes a look at the ramifications if Kennedy hadn’t even made it to Inauguration Day.  Most likely, the Electoral College (which hadn’t made their official votes yet) would have switched their votes for President to Kennedy’s running mate, Lyndon Johnson.  And while LBJ did eventually succeed JFK after an assassination, Greenfield looks at the differences if Kennedy had never made it to the White House and it was LBJ instead who faced issues like that disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Greenfield’s second alternate history looks at how things might have changed if New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy had not been shot on June 4, 1968 after he won the California Primary and picked up some momentum in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  This chapter of Then Everything Changed is where Greenfield’s truly shines, as he was an aide for RFK and at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of Kennedy’s assassination.  Because of his knowledge of Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for the Democratic nomination, there is fascinating speculation about how RFK would have proceeded from California as he attempted to close the gap between him and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.  Potential strategies for winning enough delegates to force a battle at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago raise interesting possibilities, and Greenfield not only plays out what might have happened in a race that pitted RFK vs. Richard Nixon, but the role that outgoing President Lyndon B. Johnson may have taken.  Would LBJ have supported his hated rival, RFK, or would he not-so-secretly have worked to elect Nixon as his successor?  Going even further, Greenfield envisions what an RFK Administration would have looked like in the troubled period of protests, civil unrest, and the Vietnam War.

The final reimagining in Then Everything Changed begins with the least dramatic of the three seminal moments in the book as Greenfield visualizes the 1976 Presidential campaign without President Gerald Ford’s verbal stumble at the October 6, 1976 debate with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter.  At that debate in San Francisco, President Ford famously said “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”, a miscue that gave voters a perception that Ford was either, at best, stubbornly ignoring the facts or, far worse, woefully out-of-touch.  At the time of that debate, Ford had closed a seemingly insurmountable lead by Carter and was riding a wave of momentum.  Ford’s debate disaster likely cost him the support of ethnic, blue-collar voters in the Midwest, cut off any momentum he had previously enjoyed, and was possibly the difference in Carter’s narrow victory.  Greenfield contemplates a Ford victory and the effects that may have had on the history of Iran and Iraq, the American economy, the 1980 and 1984 campaigns, and the political careers of Ford, Carter, Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Sandra Day O’Connor and Gary Hart, among others.  Of the three scenarios, I found the Ford/Carter/Reagan alternative history to be the weakest — not so much because of its believability, but because it’s almost too expansive and ambitious.  While Greenfield’s knowledge of the players and politics is, as always, spot-on, I felt as if he attempted to shoehorn far too many people and events into the post-1976 era as he possibly could.  If Greenfield overreaches at all, it is in this chapter.

To me, however, everything is redeemed by Greenfield’s concluding chapter, which he titles “How Reality Shapes Speculation” and which acts as part bibliography, part reset to the real history that we are familiar with.  In that afterword, Greenfield gives examples of why his mind took him down certain alternative paths to the history that we know, and it shows you just how closely connected to reality many of his imagined situations are.  Greenfield never tries to sneak anything past the reader except a few bad, forced jokes that could be seen coming from miles away.  With that said, there’s also some good humor, mostly based in irony, that longtime observers of Greenfield will appreciate.  Then Everything Changed is the best of alternative history — well-written, entirely plausible, deeply-researched, and entertaining.  When this genre is done well, it helps readers perceive what was and what could have been, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who is able to help others understand history from a variety of viewpoints.  Greenfield does just that, and this book is appealing to hardcore history nerds or political junkies, casual fans of some of the giants of recent American politics, and people who just love a good story.

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield is available now from Berkley Books.  It can be ordered from Amazon, or downloaded instantly for your Kindle.  Jeff Greenfield is on Twitter and his website is jeffgreenfield.net.

I jotted down some thoughts while watching the President give the State of the Union speech (BUILT TO LAST!), sponsored by Masterlock and Siemens and apparently Ford (BUILT TO LAST! FORD TOUGH!).  Let’s see if I can read my handwriting.

•I’ll admit it: the Gabby Giffords/Obama hug was a tear-jerker even for a tough (FORD TOUGH?) manly man like me.
•There was a little bit of Obama’s 2008 stump speech mixed in with the same SOTU speech we’ve been hearing from Presidents for 30 years
•I sure hope the President says “Built To Last” 600 times tonight.  Can’t wait to see that on campaign banners…ugh.
•Every President in every SOTU says that “the State of our Union is strong” or “getting stronger” and then throws in a bunch of stats about how awesome his Administration has been.  I know it will never happen, but I’d love for a President to get up there and say, “the State of our Union is bleh” or “as you can tell, the State of our Union continues to suck a bunch of dicks”
•The President turned that smirk on for a while when he took some shots at Congress.  I liked that.  I always like when the President pulls the “You haven’t acted, so I will” card.
•It’s an ancient tradition, but the dueling cheers between the two parties during the speech is hilarious.  There’s nothing better than watching Speaker Boehner look to the GOP side to see if someone is clapping when they shouldn’t be.
•The President needs to watch some Clinton (and even George W. Bush) tapes and learn how to play to the camera every once in a while.  There are a hundred million people watching, so maybe he shouldn’t keep those eyes glued to the TelePrompter.  You know, Clinton once ad-libbed a chunk of the SOTU when the TelePrompter crapped out?  Obama would shut down like the Tin Man without oil.
•”Take the money we’re no longer spending on the war…and do some nation-building here at home” — Awesome line
•Sorry, Geithner, are we keeping you awake?
•John Dingell looks like the fucking Crypt Keeper
•BUILT TO LAST!
•Sorry, Mr. Vice President, are we keeping YOU awake?  Biden is either sleeping, or checking his iPhone.
•Speaker Boehner wanted a cigarette three minutes into the speech; he’s jonesin’ now
•Oh dear God…the “crying over spilled milk” joke was HORRENDOUS.  I’m so glad that Congress groaned at that and didn’t let the President get away with that joke.  They keep one member of the Cabinet away from the Capitol as a designated survivor in case of a bomb like that.
•When Obama said, “So, if you are a big bank or financial institution…”, it absolutely felt like he was going to follow it with, “…go fuck yourself.”  I bet both sides would have cheered for that.
•Did Richard Cordray get booed by a Joint Session of Congress?  That’s a fun one to add to the resume.
•Hey, look, Attorney General Warren Moon!
•Eric Cantor is one smarmy-looking motherfucker.
•I love that Obama mentioned the fact that a simply majority isn’t enough to get ANYTHING done in Congress and that we have to stop perpetual campaigning!  I truly believe those are two of the biggest problems in American politics today.
•It’s so funny how the GOP started cheering as Obama was saying “The Executive Branch also needs to change…”.  Ouch…burn.
•I want to slap Mitch McConnell’s neck fat.
•Hey John Kerry, nice face, you fucking ghoul.
•Bashar al-Assad:  Watch yo’ ass…Hillary’s gonna kill you, too!
•Iran:  Watch yo’ ass…Barack might bomb you, too!
•”Iran can rejoin the community of nations” if they behave.  You know, like Libya did for awhile…
•Good to know that “Christians, Muslims, and Jews” will all be treated equally.  No mention for us godless sodomites who don’t believe.  Are we just kinda fucked, Mr. President?
•BUILT TO LAST!
•Oh God, we get it…just end this shit already. 
•As Obama was blasting the problems with Congress, I would have donated $2,500 to the campaign if he just turned his back to the audience and looked directly at Boehner while saying, “WHO IS TO BLAME?”
•Congress “should learn a thing or two from the service of our troops” — when you put on the uniform, it doesn’t matter what your background is or what you believe, we all work together to urinate on dead enemies and degrade foreign cultures.
•If I was Obama, I would have just shown the picture of Osama bin Laden’s dead body for 20 minutes and said, “Okay, America, let’s point and laugh”.  Hell, that’s what I’d do all the way until November.  (Way to be hypocritical about degrading our enemies, Anthony.)
•Alright, that’s all for now.  There’s no way in hell that I’m watching Indiana Governor Oompa Loompa’s response.
•BUILT TO LAST!