If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How it Might Be Saved

by Michael Tomasky

Overview

A game-changing account of the deep roots of political polarization in America, including an audacious fourteen-point agenda for how to fix it.

Why has American politics fallen into such a state of horrible dysfunction? Can it ever be fixed? These are the questions that motivate Michael Tomasky’s deeply original examination into the origins of our hopelessly polarized nation. “One of America’s finest political commentators” (Michael J. Sandel), Tomasky ranges across centuries and disciplines to show how America has almost always had two dominant parties that are existentially, and often violently, opposed. When he turns to our current era, he does so with striking insight that will challenge readers to reexamine what they thought they knew. Finally, not content merely to diagnose these problems, Tomasky offers a provocative agenda for how we can help fix our broken political system—from ranked-choice voting and at-large congressional elections to expanding high school civics education nationwide.

Combining revelatory data with trenchant analysis, Tomasky tells us how the nation broke apart and points us toward a more hopeful political future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631494086
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Michael Tomasky is a columnist for the Daily Beast, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, and the editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He lives in Maryland.

Table of Contents

A Chronology of Polarization xi

A Fourteen-Point Agenda to Reduce Polarization xvii

Introduction: Dr. Franklin's Challenge xix

1 The True History of Our Not-Very-Representative Democracy 1

2 We Were Always Polarized 25

3 America in the Age of Consensus 61

4 Coming Apart 93

5 More Consumers Than Citizens 123

6 From Gingrich to Trump-the System Explodes 153

7 If We Can Keep It: A Fourteen-Point Agenda to Reduce Polarization 189

Afterword to the Paperback Edition 239

Acknowledgments 245

Notes 247

Bibliography 261

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

…[a] sweeping, rollicking, sometimes breezy political and cultural back story to our current moment, one that demands we become informed, among other things, about the Connecticut Compromise, the career of Martin Van Buren and the Supreme Court decision in the Marquette National Bank case…Tomasky proposes a raft of reforms to get us out of the polarized mess we find ourselves in. Some, like ending partisan gerrymandering and getting rid of the Senate filibuster, are familiar…but some of his proposals—including starting "foreign" exchange programs within the United States so students from rural areas spend a semester at a high school in a city, and vice versa—are both realistic and novel. Indeed, the most helpful—if sobering—point Tomasky makes is that while our current troubles created the conditions that brought us a President Trump, those troubles would exist no matter who was in the White House. And it will take much more than a new occupant to fix them.

The New York Times Book Review - Jason Zengerle

12/10/2018

With a title taken from Benjamin Franklin’s cautionary dictum about the fledgling U.S., Tomasky, a Daily Beast columnist, argues that, while polarization has ramped up in recent decades, it has always shaped the American experience. After the unifying presidency of George Washington, the new nation soon fractured into two factions, the strong-government–big-city coastal elites and the individualistic adventurers and frontiersmen of the rural hinterlands. The period before, during, and after the Civil War, when conflicts over slavery were both long and deep, stands out as the most divisive in the country’s history. Tomasky argues that the “Age of Consensus” brought about by Americans’ shared sacrifices during the Great Depression and WWII was a quaint aberration. That consensus frayed beginning in the 1960s, leading to the sharp social and economic dislocations the country contends with today. To right the ship of state, Tomasky proposes reforms to dial back differences to a level of “manageable polarization.” Some are feasible, such as replacing a year of college with a service year and working to end partisan gerrymandering, while others, like abolishing or reforming the Electoral College and increasing the size of the House of Representatives would be more likely to provoke new political conflicts. Tomasky’s insightful look at polarization in American life will remind readers it’s nothing new. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Michael Tomasky, one of America’s finest political commentators, gives us a synoptic account of our broken politics, and a far-reaching program to fix it. The polarization that afflicts politics today is not a fact of nature, he reminds us, but the result of cultural changes and political choices over the past several decades. Tomasky’s bold proposals for reform offer a fresh take on how to repair our fractured republic."

Michael J. Sandel

"Sweeping, rollicking, sometimes breezy political and cultural back story to our current moment, one that demands we become informed… Indeed, the most helpful — if sobering — point Tomasky makes is that while our current troubles created the conditions that brought us a President Trump, those troubles would exist no matter who was in the White House. And it will take much more than a new occupant to fix them."

Jason Zengerle

"If We Can Keep It is an important, instructive, and vibrant history, well told and accessible to anyone who cares about American politics. Michael Tomasky walks you through this country’s often raucous journey from division to division to occasional unity and back to division again. He also offers some common-sense ways that we can yet recover our collective sanity.”"

Joy Reid

"If We Can Keep It is a brilliant and timely answer to the most important questions in contemporary politics: how did we get here—and how do we get out? Tomasky’s account of our polarized society is informed by a broad knowledge of history and a rich understanding of the country that Donald Trump, amazingly enough, serves as President."

Jeffrey Toobin

★ 2018-10-28

Daily Beast columnist Tomasky (Bill Clinton, 2017, etc.) confirms what we already knew—America is polarized—and masterfully charts how it always has been that way, especially at the beginning. What we are now experiencing is pure tribalism.

In decades past, political quarrels often ran within party lines as much as between opposites, and historical conditions and social and institutional forces caused them to compromise. That is no longer the case. The Democratic Party is a diverse group coalition of interest groups, while the Republican Party is more of a single movement, believing mostly in smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and strong defense. The current administration has largely tossed much of what used to be known as "traditional values." The author expertly sifts through American history, citing compromises, which mostly made everyone unhappy. However, there was an era of genuine bipartisanship, roughly 1945 to 1980, when we had a national consensus and people worked together; this is what Tomasky calls an aberration of civility. Even though it was not necessarily true, people believed in the "American Way of Life." Many causal events contributed to our current political atmosphere: the religious right's sudden activism (against desegregation, among other issues); the Ronald Reagan administration's dedication to deregulation, especially of banks; Newt Gingrich's toxic attack against basic standards and norms; and the savings and loan crisis. Regarding Gingrich, Tomasky writes, "forty years later, I think it's clear that in terms of the influence he's had on conservatism and on both the discourse and practice of politics, he has been, for better or worse, the most influential Republican of his age." The worst of our polarization has likely flowed from the Bill Clinton impeachment and the 2000 election. Refreshingly, Tomasky also offers "A Fourteen-Point Agenda to Reduce Polarization," which includes a host of reasonable ideas—e.g., end gerrymandering and the Senate filibuster, eliminate the Electoral College, and, intriguingly, "reduce college to three years and make year four a service year."

Read this excellent book; it's your civic duty.

Kirkus Reviews