Save the Last Laugh for Me

I'm sure the book will be very engaging, but it seems that our dear Chris Matthews is once again dabbling in revisionist history in his portrayal of the working relationship between Tip and The Gipper. Matthews did have a front row seat in that he served the venerable house speaker at the time. But, the Democratic House leader blocked Reagan's spending bills on more than one occasion, with the eventual compromise solutions resulting in the highest percentage increase in national debt (187%) of any presidential administration.

As the old saying goes, it takes "two to tango" and these two managed to find a way to increase military spending while keeping domestic spending in check along with a new wave of tax cuts. I suppose many would consider that a good thing, but given that the Cold War was winding down and the US was funneling money to dubious insurgency movements around the world, you have to wonder what the big threat was to our national security.

Of course, we are told over and over again that the CIA never saw the fall of the Berlin wall coming, much less the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, that's a bit hard to swallow given the Solidarity movement in Poland at the time and the number of concurrent independence drives throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, not to mention a war in Afghanistan that was bleeding the USSR dry. It seemed Reagan choose to prop up the "Evil Empire" rather than see the prime motivation for his massive increases in military spending crumble along with the Berlin wall.

Personally, I don't look back on the era of Tip and The Gipper as a time when politics worked, except in the most cynical and empty handed of ways. In fact, virtually all the groundwork was laid during this time for the kind of ideologically-driven politics we see today. The budget deals may have kept hope afloat, but in the end the Democrats suffered badly for it, eventually losing control of the House in 1994.

Sorry, Chris, I didn't see politics as working very well then or now. As far as I'm concerned the last laugh is at our expense.

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Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified. After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution. Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through. But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 . The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others. Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified. A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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