Book Review: The Party is Over, Mike Lofgren

Lofgren’s book offers an important, convincing critique of America’s dysfunctional political system and exposes, in perspicuous style, the deep flaws and egregious practices that collectively undermine the democratic and constitutional credentials of the American political system. Arranged thematically, the book offers a comprehensive and highly penetrating account of the political malaise that infests American politics today; employing a historical approach, Lofgren charts the decline of the GOP and exposes, in refreshingly candid style, the inadequacy of the Democratic Party as an alternative force for good in the American political spectrum. Lofgren’s depiction of the Democratic Party as supine and equally beholden to corporate interests is particularly apt in light of Obama’s ongoing perpetuation of the flawed and deeply undemocratic policies of his predecessors. The deeply fragmented and highly polarized nature of American political discourse is attributed to the rightward shift in the trajectory of Republican politics; this Republican migration to the right has been accompanied by a rightward shift in the Democratic Party’s politics who, notwithstanding their hollow and otherwise mendacious posturing, have sought to present themselves as ‘tough’ on national security and supportive of business enterprise.

In many ways, although the author’s book doesn’t chart this trajectory, the Democratic Party’s capitulation to neoliberal ideology can be traced to the presidency of Bill Clinton; in a tremendously insightful book on the subject Michael Meeropol argued that Clinton, despite his seemingly socially progressive rhetoric, consolidated and further strengthened the Regan neoliberal program of small government, tax cuts, deregulation, free trade, and monetarist financial policies. Amidst the otherwise bitter partisanship that characterizes American political discourse today, there exists a fairly broad economic consensus that unites both parties and which renders them equally beholden to corporate interests and neoliberal ideologues. Unfortunately, (and excuse this digression) this deeply disquieting alignment of economic ideology and policy seems to have taken place (or at least be taking place) in India today; close perusal of the economic policies and practices of recent Congress-led and BJP-led administrations reveal a surprising degree of consensus that otherwise betrays the fractured and deeply polemical nature of political discourse in that country.

In a wonderfully insightful chapter on the misuse of religion by Republican ideologues, Logfren exposes the authoritarianism that seeps the self-styled libertarianism of the Republican right wing. Behind the politically useful rhetoric that focuses almost exclusively on debts, deficits and federal overreach, far right ideologues, in practice, seek to structure political discourse in ways that reflect the Manichean, anti-intellectual spirit of their deeply conservative religious faith and understanding. This infestation of Republican politics with the misdirected zeal of the religious right has contributed, in the author’s view, to the political accentuation of the main tenets of the GOP ideology; politicized fundamentalist religion offers the Party and its leaders with the means to rationalize, for example, the war mongering, wealth worship and culture wars that forms such a huge part of their Republican ideology. Moreover, their fiscally conservative orientation and their exaggerated and irrational fear of federal overreach is exposed by Logfren as a politically useful cover to mask their otherwise deeply anti-democratic pursuit of extremely intrusive government policies on issues such abortion, privacy and national security.

Lofgren argues persuasively that an end to the political dysfunction in Washington and the seemingly incorrigible corruption inherent in the political process requires a well-informed citizenry that is both aware of its constitutional and democratic entitlements and capable of articulating its political demands; Lofgren’s book ends with a note of optimism- participatory democracy of the right type can help to democratize political processes and structures rendering them more transparent and receptive to public demands.