On the coffee table – ‘The Age of Reagan’

Sean Wilentz’s new book is a good “connect the dots” book. Wilentz breaks no new investigative ground, but does a good job of showing how the “Age of Reagan” carried far beyond the Gipper's end of service. More from my Amazon review:

Actually, this book could be subtitled “The Age of Cheney.”

Whether consciously on his part or not, Wilentz has Cheney “popping up” on a regular basis, usually connected in some way to his defining, formulating and trying to advance his “unitary executive” ideas.

With his “connect the dots” work, Wilentz stimulates some counterfactual history thoughts:
1. What if Reagan had been less amateurish in his 1968 attempt to wrestle the GOP nomination from Nixon? (My prediction: Even the war-saddled HHH would have beaten him and Reagan would have been on the ash-heap of history.)
2. What if George H.W. and not Rocky had been Nixon’s VP appointment?
3. What if Gorbachev hadn’t, in essence, bailed out Reagan’s second term? Would we even be talking about the “Age of Reagan”?
4. How would the Clinton years have been different if he had tried welfare reform before national healthcare?
5. How would they have been different if Jeff Gerth hadn't been ax-grinding at least, mendacious at worst, about his pre-1992 election “coverage” of Whitewater?
6. Would Gore had been better served with another VP candidate than Lieberman, one who didn't care about Clinton’s Lewinsky issue one way or the other, like a governor?

Go to Amazon for more.

Sean Wilentz mildly takes Orlando Patterson to the woodshed

Patterson, who does a better job each time he writes a column of showing his sociology education is about as deep as Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s is on New Testament studies, is like a fish in a barrel that doesn’t yet realize it’s been shot.

Wilentz fires again. Unfortunately, Sean, after pointing out how the Obama campaign has played the race card through various surrogates, is guilty of either excessive politeness or naivete with Patterson:

But it is surprising that a distinguished scholar such as Orlando Patterson should so badly misread what I wrote. In any event, his account completely misrepresents what I have said — and thereby mocks the really important issues.

Surprising, Sean? Didn’t you give consideration to the alternate idea that Patterson dealt h imself an inside straight on race-playing cards?