Sunday, November 18, 2007

To the barricades! After a spate of authors lamenting America's political polarization and championing the healing powers of various 2008 presidential candidates, along comes a pack of books full of honest venom and outright partisanship. -- Alan Cooperman

WHITEWASH What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will

By L. Brent Bozell III With Tim Graham | Crown Forum. 272 pp. $25.95

This book is a two-fer, blasting away both at Hillary Clinton and at "liberal reporters -- and, truth be told, female liberal reporters especially" for their coverage of her. "It is truly shocking to see how blatantly the media have shilled for Hillary," write Bozell and Graham, who run the Media Research Center, a group dedicated to "documenting the news media's left-wing bias." Whitewash does not offer any new allegations, but it does challenge the reporting on all the old ones. The book groans, for example, that "the Big Three networks gave both Watergate and Iran-Contra more than three times the attention they gave Whitewater." And it says the allegation that Bill Clinton used Arkansas troopers to arrange sexual trysts attracted "only" 22 evening news stories in the first 12 days after the story broke. Readers can decide whether those figures are high, low or about right, though it's abundantly clear where Whitewash comes down.

MCCAIN The Myth of A Maverick

By Matt Welch | Palgrave. 226 pp. $27.95

Another two-fer, this book excoriates John McCain as a calculating flip-flopper and the media for mythologizing him as a straight shooter. Welch, assistant editor of the Los Angeles Times' editorial pages, compares McCain's "ritual self-criticism" to Alcoholics Anonymous's 12-step program: First, he admits his flaws, then he sublimates them to a greater cause, and finally he takes that cause to the people. The book contains entertaining tales of equivocation aboard the Straight Talk Express, as when McCain was asked this year whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV and he answered: "You've stumped me. . . . Let me find out. . . . I have to find out what my position was." But in the end, this unflattering portrait turns out to be surprisingly flattering. As the author writes in his acknowledgments, "Rare indeed is the politician who sustains his or her interestingness after lengthy study."

THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL

By Paul Krugman | Norton. 296 pp. $25.95

Though an economist by training, Krugman is now an op-ed columnist by vocation. This book shows his increasing tendency to see events through the lens of politics rather than economics. The root cause of rising inequality in the United States, he argues, is political: The GOP has been taken over by bitterly partisan "movement conservatives" who believe the welfare state is illegitimate and have undermined it at every turn, cutting taxes on the rich, attacking unions, loosening social restraints on executive pay. In a short, final section titled "On Being Partisan," Krugman justifies his personal politicization. Because ideologues control the Republican Party, "the notion, beloved of political pundits, that we can make progress through bipartisan consensus is simply foolish," he writes. "To be a progressive . . . means being a partisan -- at least for now."

THE BULLDOZER AND THE BIG TENT Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, And the Recovery of American Ideals

By Todd Gitlin | Wiley. 327 pp. $25.95

Like Krugman, Gitlin lays the blame for political polarization squarely on George W. Bush and the Republican Party. "The core of their rule," he writes, "is a bulldozer approach to reality -- belligerence as an all-purpose style, whether facing domestic critics or the rest of the world." The problem facing liberals, he says, is that although they are increasingly galvanized, they don't have the numbers to govern alone. They must form a big tent of "secularists and moderate evangelicals, budget-balancers and Keynesians, fair traders and free traders. . . . " Gitlin, a Columbia professor and longtime liberal activist, admits that this will not be easy. But he suggests the answer is probably more Democratic Party "discipline" and partisanship, not less: "The denizens of the tent will need to remind themselves that outside there dwell barbarians."