by Peter Wehner
8.They include the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis; the flawed roll-out of the Affordable Care Act/Healthcare.gov website and the poor design of the insurance exchanges; the botched invasion of Libya, which led to the removal from power of Muammar Gaddafi but turned Libya into a terrorist stronghold; the negligence in treatment for veterans by the VA; the Iran-Contra and Clinton-Lewinsky scandals; the Iranian hostage crisis, the energy crisis, and the “stagflation” of the Carter years; the Savings & Loan crisis in the 1980s, which led to what at the time was the most significant bank collapse since the Great Depression; and the AIDS, crack, and opioid epidemics.
9.“Public Trust in Government Remains Near Historic Lows as Partisan Attitudes Shift,” Pew Research Center, May 3, 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-remains-near-historic-lows-as-partisan-attitudes-shift/.
10.Peter H. Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014), 4.
11.Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often, 409.
12.Schuck, Why Government Fails So Often, 391.
13.Yuval Levin, “Book Review: ‘Why Government Fails So Often’ by Peter H. Schuck,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-why-government-fails-so-often-by-peter-h-schuck-1402355950.
14.Aaron Blake, “19 Things Donald Trump Knows Better Than Anyone Else, According to Donald Trump,” Washington Post, October 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/04/17-issues-that-donald-trump-knows-better-than-anyone-else-according-to-donald-trump/?utm_term=.4f72567e1029.
15.William A. Galston, “The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy,” Brookings, April 17, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-populist-challenge-to-liberal-democracy/.
16.Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, eds., Twenty-First Century Populism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 3.
17.Marshall Frady, Wallace: The Classic Portrait of Alabama Governor George Wallace (New York: Random House, 1996), ix, 253.
18.Debbie Elliott, “Is Donald Trump a Modern-Day George Wallace?,” NPR, April 22, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/04/22/475172438/donald-trump-and-george-wallace-riding-the-rage.
19.Quoted in Cathleen Decker, “Trump’s War Against Elites and Expertise,” Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-elites-20170725-story.html.
20.William J. Bennett and John J. DiIulio Jr., “What Good Is Government?,” Commentary (November 1997), https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/what-good-is-government/.
21.“The Earned Income Tax Credit,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/policybasics-eitc.pdf.
22.Hilary W. Hoynes, “Building on the Success of the Earned Income Tax Credit,” Brookings, June 19, 2014, https://www.brookings.edu/research/building-on-the-success-of-the-earned-income-tax-credit/.
23.Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1990), 402.
24.Dana Hughes, “Bill Clinton Regrets Rwanda Now (Not So Much in 1994),” ABC News, February 28, 2014, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bill-clinton-regrets-rwanda-now-not-so-much-in-1994/blogEntry?id=22725317.
25.Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, “Report to the President of the United States,” March 31, 2005, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/wmd/report/wmd_report.pdf.
26.“Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq,” White House, December 14, 2011, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/14/remarks-president-and-first-lady-end-war-iraq.
27.Yuval Levin, The Great Debate (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 130.
28.Quoted in Daniel P. Moynihan, “Policy vs. Program in the ’70’s,” National Affairs (Summer 1970), https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/policy-vs-program-in-the-70s.
29.William Greider, “The Education of David Stockman,” The Atlantic, December 1981, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/.
30.David Stockman, The Triumph of Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 81.
31.Greider, “The Education of David Stockman.”
32.Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored, sentry ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 329.
33.Tim Weiner, “Charles W. Colson, Watergate Felon Who Became Evangelical Leader, Dies at 80,” New York Times, April 21, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/politics/charles-w-colson-watergate-felon-who-became-evangelical-leader-dies-at-80.html.
34.“Sleazy Backroom Deals on Obamacare,” Washington Examiner, March 16, 2010, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sleazy-backroom-deals-on-obamacare; Brett Norman and Sarah Karlin-Smith, “The One That Got Away: Obamacare and the Drug Industry,” Politico, July 13, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obamacare-prescription-drugs-pharma-225444.
35.Moynihan, “Policy vs. Program.”
36.George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Random House, 2010), 333.
37.Bush, Decision Points, 334.
38.Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Frank M. Turner, ed. (Binghamton, NY: Yale Univ. Press, 2003), 144.
39.Maryl Gensheimer, Decorations and Display in Rome’s Imperial Thermae (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2018), 242.
40.Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation” Speech, June 6, 1966, Cape Town, South Africa, http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/unicape.php.
41.Juby Mayet, Golden City Post (Johannesburg), June 9, 1966; “Background,” RFK in the Land of Apartheid, http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/back.php.
42.Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter (New York: Random House, 2015), 3.
About the Author
PETER WEHNER is a contributor to the New York Times opinion section and to The Atlantic, covering American politics and conservative thought, and a popular media commentator on politics. He is also a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and was a senior advisor in the George W. Bush White House.
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Advance Praise for The Death of Politics
“At a moment when our parties are broken and Washington divided and angry, Wehner offers ways Americans can have a more civil, productive political conversation. Agree with his prescriptions or not, the reader will finish this book having met a man of faith, integrity, and patriotism.”
—Karl Rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush
“In an era of craven capitulation by so-called Christian leaders, Peter Wehner is one of the few public evangelicals who has been a persistent critic of Trump. In this important book, Wehner not only reminds us of the virtues necessary to sustain the American experiment, he also offers a timely apologetic for politics as a profession and a calling. I hope this book finds its way into the hands of a younger generation who has yet to see what healthy political deliberation looks like.”
—James K. A. Smith, author of You Are What You Love
“Wehner makes a powerful case that politics is a noble calling that has been corrupted by Donald Trump. An important book.”
—John C. Danforth, former Republican US senator from Missouri
“Highly recommended for all who care about the restoration of civility to American politics.”
—Gary Hart, former Democratic US senator from Colorado
“A seasoned political realist and a humble Christian disciple, Wehner clarifies, reminds, rehearses, enjoins, and inspires us to take up our citizenship anew.”
—Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary
“With unflinching honesty and sincere hope, Wehner examines how the body politic of America has fallen so low and how it might regain its place as the hope of the world.”
—Bishop Claude
Alexander, The Park Church
“Thoughtful, incisive, and provocative, Peter Wehner’s meditation on where we are—and where we must go—is essential and timely reading. Conservatives need it, but so do all Americans, because whether we like it or not, we are all in this search for a more perfect union together.”
—Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America
“As the son of German immigrants, Wehner understands the cataclysmic impact of countries that get politics wrong. In these grim political times, this is a book of hope.”
—Joe Scarborough, host of Morning Joe
“A conservative’s reasoned indictment of President Trump, a moving appeal for public truth-telling, and practical strategies for combining civility with conviction.”
—Mark Noll, author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
“Like a literary Paul Revere, Wehner raises his lantern in this urgent work, shining a light on the causes of the withering polarization that has seized our democracy and reminds each of us what we must do to save it.”
—David Axelrod, director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN senior political commentator
“Learned, humane, and wise, Wehner’s worried, yet not despairing, guidance comes just when it is most needed.”
—Mona Charen, author of Sex Matters and Useful Idiots
Copyright
THE DEATH OF POLITICS. Copyright © 2019 by Peter Wehner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design: Pete Garceau
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Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-282081-5
Version 05282019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282079-2
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