Why The Right Went Wrong
From one of our most engaging and influential political journalists, the story behind today’s headlines. In an absorbing narrative, E. J. Dionne illuminates the recent history of Republican politics from the Barry Goldwater era through the Reagan Revolution and up to the present crisis. Joining his shrewd and eye-opening look at past with contemporary reporting, he explains the unrest and discontent on the Right and the Republican Party’s bitter civil war while illustrating why a radicalized conservatism has made governing our country so difficult.
“The history of contemporary American conservatism is a story of disappointment and betrayal,” Dionne writes. Since the 1960s, when Barry Goldwater’s movement rejected the conservatism Dwight D. Eisenhower represented, Republican Presidents -- from Richard Nixon to Reagan and both Presidents Bush—have had to make promises they could not keep and set loose a cycle of disillusionment that pushed the GOP steadily rightward. The result is chaos in Congress and the strange contours of the GOP’s 2016 presidential race.
Many Americans have asked: How did we get to this point? Dionne’s answer is clear and compelling, and he argues that for the sake of their party and their nation, conservatives need to find the courage to modernize their movement.
EJ Dionne
E.J. Dionne Jr. grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. He attended Catholic Schools, graduated from Harvard University and received a D. Phil in sociology from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1975, he went to work for The New York Times covering state, local and national politics and also serving as a foreign correspondent. He reported from more than two dozen countries, including extended periods in Paris, Rome and Beirut. His coverage of the Vatican was described by the Los Angeles Times as the best in two decades. He joined The Washington Post in 1990 as a political reporter and has been writing a column for The Post since 1993. It is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group and appears in more than 240 newspapers. He is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University where he teaches in the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Government Department. Dionne analyzes politics weekly on NPR’s All Things Considered and is regular analyst for MSNBC. In 2014-2015, he was vice president of the American Political Science Association and is chair of the editorial committee of Democracy journal. He is the author of six books, and edited or co-edited six other volumes. His Why Americans Hate Politics won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Boyle. They have three children, James, Julia and Margot.