Madison's Sorrow

March 23, 2020
O’Leary (Saving Democracy), a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, delivers a sharp-elbowed yet shallow polemic accusing modern right-wingers of attempting to dismantle the liberal democratic traditions of America’s founding fathers. Donald Trump’s presidency, O’Leary contends, is the culmination of two trends in American conservatism that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century: a white identity politics that expanded beyond its traditional Southern base in response to the civil rights movement, and a winner-take-all conceptualization of capitalism that has fostered rising inequality. O’Leary sees these ideas as antithetical to the founding father’s vision for America, which drew from the meritocratic ideals of 17th-century philosopher John Locke, among other Enlightenment thinkers. O’Leary traces this moral vision from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to Barack Obama, whose 2008 election appeared to usher in a new era of liberal consensus, yet failed to effectively channel public anger about the 2008 financial crisis. Though O’Leary makes a strong case about the relationship between Trumpism and white identity politics, he fails to fully explain how the president’s protectionist trade policies and immigration restrictions fit with libertarian orthodoxies. Progressive readers will nod their heads in agreement that the “illiberal” wing of the Republican Party is bad for the country; those who need more convincing should look elsewhere.

April 1, 2020
Returning to the Enlightenment ideals of Founding Fathers like James Madison to understand the stakes in the current illiberal political climate. O'Leary--a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at University of California, Irvine, and former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and TIME--has been an observer of the political scene for three decades, and he cares deeply about the recent drift toward "reactionary" politics in the U.S. Noting that "for two centuries, [America] has been the modern Athens for those seeking a society that values democracy, equality, and freedom," he is appalled by the Trump administration's seeming determination to "reject that legacy, preferring instead the ancient authoritarian principles of privilege, hierarchy, inequality, and exclusion that divides societies into winners and losers based on ethnic identity, gender, social status, and economic power." As other historians have documented, O'Leary points out the moment when classic conservative principles turned reactionary: the ugly 1964 compromise between Barry Goldwater and the white supremacist South, represented by segregationist George Wallace. To tell the unsettling story of the nation's continued drift into Trumpism and its many attendant ills, O'Leary plunges back into the historical record, showing the strenuous adherence to individual autonomy that the Enlightenment authors espoused despite the illiberality of their own era. The author cogently breaks down the writings of Locke, Paine, and others, showing the terrible compromises the early founders had to make in securing constitutional ratification by the slave states. Moving into the recent past and present, O'Leary cleanly melds historical research with his own personal outrage. "Donald Trump stands as the embodiment of reactionary America," he writes. "He is both a hard-right capitalist and a man who believes that his whiteness and his maleness give him the right to hold others who are neither in contempt." A highly opinionated yet accessible work of history and current affairs. (16 pages of color photos)

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Starred review from April 15, 2020
The conventional wisdom is that the political spectrum runs a single, not-always-straight line from liberal to conservative. According to O'Leary (Saving Democracy, 2006), this is not a woefully inadequate assessment of American politics, it is outright wrong. He posits the existence of a third, off-spectrum kind of thinking called illiberalism, a state of mind that is fiercely anti-democratic, authoritarian, caste-driven, and economically oppressive?in other words, Trumpist. O'Leary explains how illiberalism has origins that pre-date the Revolution and took root in the Constitution in two ways: with the guiding principle that the landed and wealthy deserve to rule; and with the South's insistence on legitimizing slavery, and thus a de facto feudalism, by including it in the nascent governing document. O'Leary goes into considerable historical detail explaining the origins of Jefferson's and Madison's democratic ideal, and showing that illiberalism has fought democracy's progress every step of the way. He illustrates with dismaying accuracy and compelling intelligence how illiberalism's co-opting of the modern Republican Party has unbalanced the American system, allowing nationalists, white supremacists, and economic oligarchs to subvert the Founders' aspirational ideals of democratic enfranchisement and equality. Essential reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)