Product Description

Everyone knows that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Now Kevin Phillips, whose bestselling books have prophesied the major watersheds of American party politics, tells us why. Washington - mired in bureaucracy, captured by the money power of Wall Street, and dominated by 90,000 lobbyists, 60,000 lawyers, and the largest concentration of special interests the world has ever seen - has become the albatross that Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers feared: a swollen capital city feeding off the country it should be governing. Throughout most of our history, the genius of American politics was that ballot revolutions every generation swept out failed establishments and created new ones. Now that can no longer happen. Feared and even hated by a majority of the citizenry, "Permanent Washington" has dug in. Using history as a chilling warning, Kevin Phillips parallels the present atrophy to that of formerly mighty and arrogant capitals like Rome, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Unchecked, Washington will - like other great powers before it - lead the country to its inevitable decline and fall. To work again, Washington must be purged and revitalized. In his unique blueprint for a political upheaval, Kevin Phillips puts Washington on notice by sounding a cry for immediate action, offering us a wide variety of remedies - some quasi-revolutionary, others more moderate, but all sure to be controversial.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #459333 in Books
• Published on: 1995-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Decrying the influence of political and financial elites, veteran pundit Phillips ( The Emerging Republican Majority ) here attempts to channel the dissatisfactions of the general populace, as evinced on radio talk shows, into national reform. "Capitals rot first," he declares, drawing briefly on such historical analogues as Hapsburg Spain and 18th-century Holland to buttress his argument that the current centers of American power, Washington and Wall Street, have sunk into decadence. Echoing recent critiques like Jonathan Rauch's Demo sclerosis , he highlights a bipartisan support for the government status quo. While Phillips wisely focuses on governmental, not social reform, his generalization that conservatives blame cultural weakness while liberals underscore economic decline ignores the influence of more nuanced thinkers like Cornel West. Among Phillips's better suggestions: move away from the two-party system by allowing referenda and considering proportional representation; raise taxes on the "really rich." Some problems, like the mercenary culture of lobbyists, may be less amenable to remedy by policy than by moral suasion, but Phillips sets an agenda for debate. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Phillips's first book, The Emerging Republican Majority (LJ 1015/69), was praised as the political bible of the Nixon era. He became a Republican pariah after The Politics of Rich and Poor (LJ 5/15/90) was hailed by the Democrats in the 1992 presidential campaign. That work was the first in a trilogy on the plight of modern America. The second work, Boiling Point (LJ 3/15/93), documented the frustration of the middle class. Arrogant Capital offers solutions to "the beltway mentality" in Washington, D.C., and the greed of Wall Street. Abandoning hope of political reform through our two-party system, Phillips now favors direct democracy to prevent America's decline. Though some of his populist proposals are extreme, they deserve debate. His historical grasp of patterns among former world powers (e.g., Spain, Holland, Britain) add substance to his fears. Our modern Thomas Paine has written another readable volume that deserves widespread attention.
--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Have you had enough of D.C.'s vultures feeding off the corpse of the body politic? Then you're part of the crowd, variously polled at between two-thirds and four-fifths of the people, disgusted by permanent Washington and its venal lawyer-lobbyist-politician fixers. Veteran pol watcher Phillips examines the decaying beast and its parasites while he lards the anger theme with blood-boiling stats. Better, he goes deeper than talk-show outrage and essays his own version of the problems. For the most part he explicates issues in the air nowadays--the "spectronic" (electronic speculation) economy, uncontrollable federal spending, and a sclerotic constitutional framework. The last debility cuts reform at the knees, as Phillips' numberless anecdotes reveal; in the hope, vain or not, of reviving the tradition of electoral "revolutions," such as Jefferson's, Lincoln's, and FDR's, Phillips concludes with a ten-point reform agenda. To limber up the political system, he suggests redrawing state boundaries and moving some federal bureaucracies to Denver. Author's tour should capitalize on his popular Boiling Point. Gilbert Taylor

Customer Reviews

History is repeating itself, unfortunately !
This has to be one of the best books on contemporary politics. Kevin Phillips did extensive research into the historical pattern of rise and subsequent decline of great powers and found uncanny similarity to where America is today. However, he did suggest 10 solutions that hopefully would arrest the decline of this nation and hoped those would be carried out in the 90s (this book was written in 94). Guess what ? None of his 10 solutions was implemented even to the slightest degree. If anything the problems he mentioned in the book have become even more serious in the past decade.

The decline of this nation is now inevitable. There is no need to shed tears over it, though. It happened to Rome, Greece, Spain, and most recently Britain. To think we can somehow escape was probably wishful thinking to begin with but the failure to take positive action to even to try to slow the decline just makes the ultimate fate that much more certain !

One of the best political books on this topic I have read
I am a political science major at Oregon State University. I had to read this book for a class and was pleasantly suprised at how well written and interesting this book is. The author gives a loud and clear call to arms for the American people to change our government. The comparisons to other world empires hit very close to the present day US. His proposals for change are interesting and well thought out. I reccomend this book to anyone who is fed up with Washington and the power of interest groups, financial groups, and lobbyists.

Required reading for a democracy.
As usual, full of information, knowledge, and insight... This is my 3rd Phillips book and would rate 5 stars except for some huge ommissions. While pointing out the drain on our democracy of "entitlements", lawyers & litigation, duplication in govt... he completely omits the financial and social costs of our massive military expenditures. Also, while criticizing home ownership as "sopping up large amounts of capital thus made unavailable for industrial renewal" he misses the huge piles of capital in corporate coffers and private holdings looking for higher and higher rates of return, not in "industrial renewal" but more often in the "spectronics" he illustrates. Still, Phillips does fine work, one of the few conservatives that speaks with a straight tongue.