Andrew J. Taylor, “Congress: A Performance Appraisal” (Westview Press 2013)

James Curry has written Legislating in the Dark: Information and Power in the House of Representatives (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Curry is assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah. With Congress in the news, a new book about the House arrives in timely fashion. Not only is Curry’s book timely, it also helps explain part of what’s been going on in Washington. Curry argues that House leaders use special procedural tactics to restrict information about bills from rank-and-file members. By limiting information, leaders can efficiently push ahead an agenda with much less opposition. This is an effect strategy, but can lead to resentment and distrust, two of the factors that may have created the environment for the search for a new speaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Okt 201519min

David Sehat is an associate professor of history at Georgia State University. His book The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and the Our Politics Inflexible (Simon and Schuster, 2015) is part narrative history, part political analysis. Beginning with George Washington’s administration to the 2012 Congressional budgetary crisis, Sehat provides a long sweep of the continual conflicts over the meaning of the U.S. constitution and the intent of the founders. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton represented two different interpretations and set the course for subsequent debates over first principles that by Lincoln’s time escalated into civil war. The differences revolved largely on the role of the federal government, states rights and the limits of economic freedom. After the Civil War and as America faced becoming a modern nation the founders as a standard of ideals went into eclipse. The oppositional rhetoric of the American Liberty League to Roosevelt’s New Deal, and constitutional reinterpretation, once again turned to the founders. Modern political rivals have continued to call on the legacy of the founders to support their arguments and making them a test of political orthodoxy. Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign, the Reagan Revolution, and the Tea Party movement drew from the founders with radically different understandings of the past and the future. Liberals pointed to changing nature of constitutional governance arguing for context and adaptation. Conservatives held to a static and binding view of the constitution asserting original intent. Arguments that found their way to the Supreme Court. Sehat argues that conflict over the intent of the founders, and the meaning of the constitution, has kept the nation paralyzed in dealing with the present. By asking what the founder’s would do, we foreclose productive debate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Sep 20151h 1min

George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Aftermath (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, lost his bid for re-election in 1932 reaching the lowest point of a long productive life. Rather than retreat to a quiet private life, he spent the next three decades writing and speaking, promoting humanitarian projects, addressing the problem of government efficiency, and as a vocal critic of American intervention abroad. He left a voluminous and detailed memoir, which remained unpublished until recently. The Hoover Institution published the first volume Freedom Betrayed, also edited by Nash, in 2011. Nash has provided a thorough introduction of Hoover’s life. The second volume of the memoir, The Crusade Years, covers some of Hoover’s private life and lays out his views on the threat of collectivism. Hoover was a relentless crusader against Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and a champion of a classic liberal philosophy of “properly regulated individualism”. He resisted the erosion of American liberty by an encroaching state. His political philosophy was not rooted in an unfettered laissez-faire but in his firm belief in American exceptionalism, ordered liberty, and the possibility of social progress. In contemporary American politics, as noted by Nash, Hoover is both too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals bringing out the American tension in striking a balance between free markets and government regulation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 Sep 20151h 1min

“America is a nation of immigrants.” Either this common refrain, or its cousin the “melting pot” metaphor is repeated daily in conversations at various levels of U.S. society. Be it in the private or public realm, these notions promote a compelling image of national inclusivity that appears not to be limited to particular notions of race, religious affiliation, gender, or national origin. Indeed, generations of American writers–like J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Israel Zangwill, Emma Lazarus, and Oscar Handlin–have embedded America’s immigrant past into the collective psyche of its people and the epic telling of its history. Yet, as scholars of U.S. immigration history have asserted over the past few decades, the “nation of immigrants” narrative is blinded by both its singular focus on trans-Atlantic European migration and the presumption of immigrant assimilation and incorporation to Anglo American institutions and cultural norms. In her fascinating new study How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (University of California Press, 2014) Professor of History and Urban Studies at UC San Diego Natalia Molina advances the study of U.S. immigration history and race relations by connecting the themes of race and citizenship in the construction of American racial categories. Using archival records held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the U.S. Congress, local governments, and immigrant rights groups, Dr. Molina examines the period of Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1924-1965. Employing a relational lens to her study, Professor Molina advances the theory of racial scripts to describe how ideas about Mexicans and Mexican immigration have been fashioned out of preexisting racial projects that sought to exclude African Americans and Asian immigrants from acquiring the full benefits of American citizenship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 Sep 20151h 8min

Leah Wright Rigueur is an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her book The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2015) examines how the Grand Old Party of Lincoln lost its position as the home of the African American vote. Covering more than four decades beginning in Roosevelt’s New Deal to Ronald Reagan’s presidential election, Rigueur examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians to build and remain within the Party’s shrinking tent. Marginalized within their own communities and party, black Republicans fought political battles on two fronts. They continually sought to include black needs and interest in the changing formulation of conservatism. Their stories reveal an alternative approach to economic and civil rights within a party increasingly hostile to racially progressive ideas as it wooed the white vote. Rigueur introduces us to republican views of many including the Senator Edward Brooks, Robert J. Brown, Jackie Robinson and black organizations such as National Black Republican Council and the National Negro Republican Assembly. Black republicans dealt with numerous issues including ensuring black political participation, individual rights, economic opportunity, and racial equality. Rigueur has given us a thought-provoking examination on the failure of the Republican Party to live up the legacy of Lincoln, and to respond to its black members who remained committed to the conservative ideals of free enterprise, individual initiative, and limited government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Aug 20151h 7min

With over a dozen Republican candidates in the summer news, what will it take for one to emerge from the pack? Kristen Soltis Anderson‘s new book, The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up) (Broadside Books, 2015), has an answer. Anderson is the co-founder of Echelon Insights, a public opinion and data analytics firm that helps campaigns and companies design their messages and strategies. Anderson’s book draws on this experience as a campaign and polling expert to suggest that Republicans need to understand the changing values and behaviors of Millennials. She argues that successful candidates will move digital to the center of their campaigns and reach out to younger voters in new ways. Failing to do so, Anderson predicts, will lead to generations of new voters turned off to the GOP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4 Aug 201521min

David George Surdham is the author of The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (University of Illinois Press, 2015). Surdham is Associate Professor of Economics at Northern Iowa University. Just back from the Major League Baseball All-Star break, Surdham has written a book for sports lovers. Why do major league sports receive such preferential treatment from Congress? And what does this have to do with labor and economic development policy? Surdham examines Congressional hearings held over decades to figure out how Washington’s role in professional sports has changed over since the 1950s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Juli 201518min

Julian E. Zelizer is the author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (Penguin Press, 2015). Zelizer is the Malcom Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at New America. In the Fierce Urgency of Now, Zelizer focuses on the heated period of 1963-1966, and President Lyndon Johnson’s effort to pass a civil rights bill. Johnson has been credited as the chief architect of the passage of the ultimate bill, but Zelizer shifts focus to Congress and the variety of interest groups lobbying for and against the bill. In doing so, Zelizer argues that credit for the civil rights acts must be more widely shared. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 Juli 201519min