The Red and the Blue
The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism
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From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the birth of political tribalism in the 1990s—one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape from Clinton to Trump In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him Speaker. The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns—their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the ’90s were not just about them. Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo’s stubborn presence around Clinton’s 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton’s star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot’s wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others. With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.
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This was a fascinating read for me because I lived through this period - it was the time at which I first started paying attention to politics - but so much of the underlying context was unknown to me then. If you're looking for a well-written summary of domestic US politics in the 1990s, this does that well.
Equally fascinating, though, was how much the culture has changed since then - not only with regards to how differently Clinton's impeachment would be treated in the social media age, but with how commonplace the idea of the US political parties working together was in the early 1990s? Newt Gingrich's remaking of the Republicans, and the ways the Democrats responded to it, seems so ingrained in everything now that it's hard to see a way out. Kornacki doesn't provide any thoughts on how to do that (and it wouldn't quite fit with the story that he's telling to do so).
Even more depressing, though, is thinking about how those ideological changes have become so apparent here in Canadian politics as well.
