Review by Doug Gibson
Tim Alberta's "American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump" (Harper, 20109), is for at least half of the 680-plus tome, a pretty great, detailed read. Alberta takes the reader into the internal battles within the Republican Party political leaders toward a more conservative populism, as opposed to more moderate earlier leaders such as John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Alberta seems to think the shift that allowed Republicans to win both the Congress and House, until the House was lost in 2018, and finally electing a Republican administration in 2016, was something horrible, events that destroyed the Party of Lincoln and will hasten the party's collapse. For that reason "American Carnage" is a much-loved book among establishment liberal dailies, such as The New York Times (... Trump tapped into and exploited a bigotry that had already been seething, bubbling up to the surface during the Obama administration ...) and The Guardian. (... Trump emerges as the vehicle and voice of white, evangelicals and white Americans without a four-year degree, the operative word being “white”. ...) ... To be fair, the New York Times review notes that many conservatives, such as Karl Rove, helped create what they describe as political "bomb-throwers" by launching too many real bombs in ill-advised wars.
There's nothing more loved by wordsmiths at the above -- and similar pubs -- than criticism of Trump and the GOP from someone who might just be a conservative. Alberta is the chief political correspondent for Politico. But he used to cover the political world for National Review, and that's a conservative pub, albeit with some Never-Trumpers. The magazine made a spirited effort to sway Republicans against Trump prior to his nomination.
Former Speaker of the House John Boehner was a major source of Alberta's. A lot of the first half of the book details his efforts to keep under control more conservative, activist-minded House members motivated by the Tea Party and opposition to Obamacare, for example. Another former speaker, Paul Ryan, is a major source. He gets sort of regretfully trashed in Alberta's book as once-great pol who trashed his legacy by pushing through the Trump tax cuts. (tax cuts that actually helps our two-earners middle-class family).
Political inside baseball is also discussed, such as how the move toward populism affected movement policy groups, such as The Heritage Foundation, and how congressional caucuses were roiled, members forming more conservative groups.
The GOP's move toward the Tea Party, Alberta accurately notes, is at its foundation partially a movement of swaths of society discomfited by cultural changes. But this is not bigotry. It's a result of millions of individuals offended that their beliefs, be it religion or civics -- effectively tagged now as bigotry by pols and political proles, the media and the entertainment industry -- are not being defended by the political class that governs them and claims to speak for them. The reviews I've mentioned focus as a theme a growing extremism of the Republican Party, since 2008. However, a more reality-based reason for a Trump presidency is the complete lack of faith from adherents to either party that national pols have their best interests at heart, or care about their values.
To use a very old expression, voters consider the pols in power to be "four flushers," all talk no action.
The Tea Party and other fledgling groups expected pols to take strong action -- not just stances -- on cultural and political issues that same pols in power are squeamish about taking on. In reality, this is no different from the left's more vocal base, which also bemoans rhetoric without action from its Democratic pols.
In "American Carnage," Alberta writes about the wishes of Boehner, Obama and others to craft bipartisan legislation, but in most cases something seems to get in the way, usually through one faction maligning another, and hopes are not realized. The result is a government that relies mainly on stopgap funding measures with the infrequent government shutdown.
One interesting account of the 2012 election in "American Carnage" is the utter certainty of Romney and his VP nominee, former Rep. Paul Ryan, that they were going to win. This optimism was not shared by pollsters and campaign veterans.. Ryan, a major source for Alberta, was devastated by the loss.
The shift toward conservative populism within the Republican Party survived the hiccup of Mitt Romney's failed presidential bid. In fact, Mitt's loss provided momentum for a bombastic, blunt candidate such as Trump, coarse, rude, hypocritical in his personal life, but candid, damn it. And, once elected, Trump has taken conservative actions on issues that other Republicans would have likely relegated to rhetoric, such as ditching the Paris climate change deal and ending the Iran nuclear deal.
Trump, although a source, is largely portrayed as a buffoon who eats up praise from sycophants. While that no doubt pleases a lot of readers, it prevents the author from explaining why he hoodwinked all the political experts and won the presidency. One account that I take with a grain of salt is from Karl Rove, who says that Trump had to be dissuaded from trying to win far-left states California, Oregon and New York, and told to focus on the southern United States. I'm not buying that. Trump understood how to break through a long-held Democratic working-class base in the Rust Belt. He certainly knew California and New York were out of reach. In fact, while clueless Democrats were focusing on running up popular voice pluralities in 2016, the Trump campaign had a better focus on individual states, and were rewarded with more than 300 electoral votes.
There's one indictment against Trump that is legit. He is running up the national debt to frightening levels. Republicans need to call him on that eventually if he wins re-election. Increasing debt, though, is a bipartisan sin. It hasn't been addressed seriously since the Clinton administration.
The idea that Trump is an insecure, uninformed idiot is reinforced in "American Carnage." That assumption about the president actually helps him succeed. Alberta acknowledges that the 2018 congressional races strategy of going moderate helped Democrats, in a year the opposition party is supposed to score gains in the House. There's no evidence, however, that the opposition party is planning the same strategy for 2020.
After Trump wins, Alberta's book slides more into an overall condemnation of the Trump presidency, notes Democratic gains in the House, and takes the popular idea that the GOP faces bleak future electoral prospects. We'll see if that occurs. When I see two of the three major Democratic Party candidates embracing a single-payer health-care system that will cost scores of trillions of dollars, enrage the middle class, including unionists, with good health care benefits, and take away a couple of million jobs, I can see a Trump re-election looking very possible.
Alberta interviewed about 300 insiders, including President Trump. There's no shortage of conservatives trashing Trump and his allies. Besides Boehner, Ryan and Rove, others prominent are Michael Steele and Peter Wehner. As mentioned, the strength of the book is its account of a party moving away from a Bush presidents' philosophy to its new populist, nationalist bent. The rise of social media and cable news exacerbated this change, with websites and Fox News supplanting C-Span and newspaper editorial pages as tension and debate forums.
Alberta is a supremely talented reporter and writer. I caught him on C-Span 2 tub-thumping his book and was impressed by his knowledge and sincerity. He strikes me as a self-described moderate, perhaps conservative on social and economic issues. I spent a long time overseeing editorial pages and editorial boards. Generally, it was my experience that self-described moderates I encountered tended to admire most prominent Democrats and loathe prominent self-described conservative Republicans. Take that for what you will..
I wonder, though, if Alberta is as confident today as he was several months ago that the Republicans are in future peril. Democratic Party leaders, since winning the House, have capitulated to the demands of back-benchers and their base that the president be impeached. Hence, impeachment has drowned out any policy plans for Democrats, other than the poison pill of socialized medicine pushed by Senators Warren and Sanders. Impeachment will last well into the next year, intruding on campaign-message efforts.
I recently read a Politico article where Alberta watched a debate with no-hope Democratic Party candidate Sen. Michael Bennet, in which the pair, particularly Bennet, tut-tutted about the extremism of the candidates Bennet was a denied a chance to debate with. The piece was titled, "Can Any of These People Beat Trump?"
Perhaps, if the Republicans do not suffer the election calamity that "American Carnage ..." hints is on the horizon, Tim Alberta can do a follow-up book on the Democratic Party's gradual shift toward identity politics and socialism -- shifts that increased with enthusiasm after 2016 -- mixed with impeachment frenzy, and how it resulted in a disappointing 2020 election season.
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