The Red and the Blue

August 13, 2018
Kornacki, political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, delivers a hard-hitting look at 1990s election politics in this engrossing account of two political rivals and the cultural phenomena they shaped. Kornacki’s narrative, which covers the period from 1984 to 2000, focuses on the rise of Democrat wild child Bill Clinton and his Republican nemesis Newt Gingrich. But it also includes detailed accounts of congressional gridlock, salacious presidential scandals, and outlier billionaires’ third-party presidential runs. Kornacki persuasively argues that this “fateful decade” serves as the precursor to today’s “political tribalism.” He skillfully resurrects the scenes, culture, and major players of the time, including Pat Buchanan, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, and Henry Ross Perot. Kornacki switches focus between Clinton and Gingrich, highlighting the growing ideological rifts between the two parties; Clinton’s push for universal health coverage and tax increases are set in opposition to Gingrich’s disdainful view of government as the breeding ground for the liberal elite and tax hikes. Kornacki credits Gingrich with a major turning point in partisan politics: the 1994 midterm’s landslide victory for Republicans in Congress, which further cemented the coming tribalism. With rich detail about ’90s pop culture and astute political commentary, Kornacki tells an enlightening tale.

August 15, 2018
Tired of the political squabbling and incivility of our day? Blame it on hanging chads--and Newt Gingrich.According to NBC and MSNBC political correspondent Kornacki, the notion that there are two Americas, more or less equal in strength, dates precisely to Nov. 7, 2000, "the product of an entire nation torn perfectly in half." The rupture took time to build, though; one climacteric was the civil rights movement of the postwar era, which led to the formation of a Southern, segregationist wing of the Democratic Party that would in time switch to the Republicans and take the South with them. When Bill Clinton came along in the 1990s, he brought a "New Democratic" style meant in at least some regard to woo the region back into the fold, but Republican firebrand Gingrich would have none of it. Instead, he practiced a slash-and-burn, us-vs.-them politics that verged on civil war. Few of his allies liked him, but indeed, "even if they still despised him, they had to respect him" after he toppled Speaker of the House Jim Wright with a decidedly malign but effective campaign. Gingrich, rising to that position, took it as his brief to "obliterate all that modernism had created," and were it not for his considerable failings, he might have succeeded--unfortunately, others have continued that project. After eight years of Gingrich versus Clinton, and after some serious missteps on the part of Clinton's would-be successor, Al Gore, the electoral map took the form it bears now, with blue states north of the Mason-Dixon Line and red ones mostly below it--and with intractable differences that all but guarantee the impossibility of any future candidate's winning by a transnational landslide as Ronald Reagan did.Revealing reading to think about before the midterms heat up.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
Obstructionism. Partisan infighting. Special counsels. Capitol Hill gridlock. The country has faced this government-in-free-fall before. The time was the 1990s, during the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush administrations. If Bill Clinton, a young, small-state governor, was the unlikely choice to lead the Democrats back into power, then Newt Gingrich, a brash, come-from-nowhere Georgia congressman, was the equally improbable provocateur who would thwart him at every turn. As Clinton hoped to captain the country on a course of economic growth and social and cultural acceptance, Gingrich's plan was to challenge every initiative with a scrappy, street-fighting demeanor not previously experienced in the once-genteel halls of government. A divide was forming, along with the Reform Party challenge that would include Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and, eventually, Donald Trump among its charter members. Reminding readers that Buchanan ran on a Make America Great Again slogan and promoted an anti-immigrant wall along our southern border, Kornacki connects the dots between then and now. NBC/MSNBC political numbers cruncher Kornacki is known for his predictive ability to read electoral tea leaves and spot trends. Now his journalistic prowess is on display in this sharp narrative tracking the steps and missteps over the last quarter-century that brought us to today's combative political stasis.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2018

NBC News political correspondent Kornacki writes an instructive assessment of the contentious politics of the 1990s, arguing that the intensity of today's partisan climate is rooted in the battles between former U.S. president Bill Clinton and his chief antagonist Newt Gingrich. Kornacki devotes almost 100 pages to the run-up to the 1992 election to offer a revealing account of how Gingrich rose from obscurity to become the leader of the Republican insurgency and then Speaker of the House. While some of his success was owing to luck and fortuitous timing, it was Gingrich's tenacity and eagerness that won him eventual power in Congress. Clinton's rise and fall is equally fascinating. The supporting cast in this book is irresistible: Mario Cuomo's hesitations, Jesse Jackson's impact on the 1988 primaries, and Ross Perot's political movement that gave President Trump his first political opportunity. The brief account of Trump's flirtation with a presidential run in 2000 presents a cautionary tale and foretaste of what was to come 16 years later. VERDICT This work reads like a novel with many footnotes and is ideal for anyone interested in contemporary American politics. [See Prepub Alert, 4/30/18.]--Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2018

A national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, Kornacki argues that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich took advantage of weaknesses in their respective parties to climb to the top, thus paving the way for today's political tribalism. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.