7/4/2023 0 Comments Nixonland review![]() Across its 800-plus pages, it provides a ponderous chronicle of the eight years supposedly responsible for today’s Red–Blue polarization, with Nixon appearing as both emblem of the transformation and chief culprit. The purpose of Rick Perlstein’s insufferably long book is laid out on its first page: to explain how ‘the battle lines that define our culture and politics’ were set between Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory of 1964 and Richard Nixon’s mirror victory in 1972. ![]() But superficial as such campaign boiler-plate may be, it rests on a deeper-lying myth of a lost golden age in us politics, when the twin horsemen of divisiveness and faction were tightly corralled. The reality is, of course, that a vast majority of Americans are united in despising George Bush, and in feeling that their country has been hijacked by neo-cons and billionaires. The endless mantras of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ rely on the assumption that America is bitterly divided, as never before. ![]() Both candidates in the 2008 presidential campaign have trumpeted their zeal to reach across the partisan divide and forge consensus-Obama giving diffuse sermons about national unity, McCain claiming to be a maverick in order to sell himself to ‘independents’. ![]()
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