The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America

The Right Nation is not "for" liberals, and it's not "for" conservatives. It's for any of us who want to understand one of the most important forces shaping American life. How did America's government become so much more conservative in just a generation? Compared to Europe — or to America under Richard Nixon — even President Howard Dean would preside over a distinctly more conservative nation in many crucial respects: welfare is gone; the death penalty is deeply rooted; abortion is under siege; regulations are being rolled back; the pillars of New Deal liberalism are turning to sand.

Conservative positions have not prevailed everywhere, of course, but this book shows us why they've been so successfully advanced over such a broad front: because the battle has been waged by well-organized, shrewd, and committed troops who to some extent have been lucky in their enemies. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, like modern-day Tocquevilles, have the perspective to see this vast subject in the round, unbeholden to forces on either side. They steer The Economist's coverage of the United States and have unrivaled access to resources and — because of the magazine's renown for iconoclasm and analytical rigor — have had open-door access wherever the book's research has led them. And it has led them everywhere: To reckon with the American right, you have to get out there where its centers are and understand the power flow among the brain trusts, the mouthpieces, the organizers, and the foot soldiers.

The authors write with wit and skewer whole herds of sacred cows, but they also bring empathy to bear on a subject that sees all too little of it. You won't recognize this America from the far-left's or the far-right's caricatures. Divided into three parts — history, anatomy, and prophecy — The Right Nation comes neither to bury the American conservative movement nor to praise it blindly but to understand it, in all its dimensions, as the most powerful and effective political movement of our age.

"In the introduction to this engaging study of American conservatism, Micklethwait and Wooldridge of the Economist disclaim any allegiance to America's 'two great political tribes.' It is this Tocquevillian quality of informed impartiality that makes their book so effective at conveying how profoundly the right has reshaped the American political landscape over the past half century. The authors trace the history of the conservative movement from the McCarthy era, when 'conservatism was a fringe idea,' to the second Bush administration and the 'victory of the right.' They dissect the new 'conservative establishment,' which combines the intellectual force of think tanks, business interest groups and sympathetic media outlets with the 'brawn' of 'footsoldiers' from the populist social conservative wing of the GOP, and argue that continuing Republican hegemony is likely. Democratic optimists who point to favorable demographic trends are exaggerating the liberalism of Latino and professional voters, say the authors, while other factors, such as suburbanization and terrorism, will tend to promote Republican values. Still, the right should be worried about its own 'capacity for extremism and intolerance' and about holding together its unlikely alliance of religious moralists and small-government activists. Even so, say the authors, conservative ideas are now so pervasive in American society that even a Kerry administration could do little to divert the country's long-term rightward drift. This epochal political transformation is rarely analyzed with the degree of dispassionate clarity that Micklethwait and Wooldridge bring to their penetrating analysis." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Echoing de Tocqueville's comment on the French Revolution, the authors (both of the Economist) believe that the conservative revolution that has taken over the United States over the past 50 years was "So inevitable and yet so completely unforeseen." They offer a portrait of the American right and an argument as to why the U.S. is more conservative in nature than comparable rich industrial democracies (and why it's going to stay that way). Central to their argument is the organizing power of the conservative movement and the movement is the primary character of their narrative. They describe the activities of the think tanks, the organizers, the spokespeople, and the rank and file activists and root their success in American exceptionalism.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

For anyone who wants to understand one of the most important forces shaping American life comes a book that attempts to understand the conservative movement — the most powerful and effective political movement of our age.

Both John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge were educated at Oxford and went on to work for The Economist. John Micklethwait has overseen the magazine's Los Angeles and New York bureaus and is now its U.S. editor. Adrian Wooldridge has served as West Coast correspondent, social-policy correspondent, and management editor, and is currently Washington, D.C., correspondent. Together, they have coauthored three books, The Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation, and The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.