Summary
From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the birth of political tribalism in the 1990s--one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape from Clinton to Trump
In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him Speaker.
The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns--their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the '90s were not just about them. Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo's stubborn presence around Clinton's 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton's star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot's wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others.
With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Tired of the political squabbling and incivility of our day? Blame it on hanging chadsand 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 succeededunfortunately, 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 itand 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 Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* 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.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
it can be a strange experience these days to read a book about modern American politics and divisions that is not about Donald Trump. Steve Kornacki's "The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism" renders such an experience lively and fulfilling, if not uplifting, by making a mostly convincing case that the brutal 1990s political battles led by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich had brought the country to its stark divide between "red America" and "blue America" by election night, 2000. Organized around searing episodes that defined the decade, the book alternately follows Clinton and Gingrich, starting even before 1990. It traces their early political rises, dwelling on the Democrats' postWalter Mondale fissures through which Clinton emerged and describing Gingrich's initial attacks on the House of Representatives' polite procedures. "I think you're going to see a much tougher and a much more militant Republican Party," Gingrich said after one 1985 fight, once his colleagues embraced his confrontational strategy. "I think it changes permanently the nature of the Republican Party of the House." Kornacki, an NBC News and MSNBC national political correspondent, appears to agree. Kornacki, who treats the Republicans' 1990 clash over raising taxes as an inflection point, may focus on Clinton and Gingrich's well-known battles, but he sprinkles in enough about other characters - among them Pat Buchanan, Jesse Jackson and A1 D'Amato - to keep the story line going. He suggests the growing difference between right and left can be explained early on by huge conflagrations like Clinton's scandals and Buchanan's culture war, but also by short-term political dust-ups like Zoé Baird's ill-fated 1993 attorney general nomination. Published just as the political world reckons with the results of the 2018 midterm elections, Kornacki's book is full of what can be read as nods to today, including its references to Hillary Clinton and its resonant descriptions of Ross Perot, who comes across as a kind of proto-Trump. The early Clinton era is presented as a parade of confrontations - over welfare, balanced budgets, health care - that, for a time, emboldened Gingrich's showdown wing of Republicanism, but also vaulted Clinton to a re-election that created an early version of today's blue America. Then came the probes and impeachment. By the time George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Kornacki writes, the country's split was set - "these divisions were geographic, demographic and cultural." For all his tightly researched tales of Washington drama, however, Kornacki seldom allows external events into the narrative, even where they might provide context (the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is one exception). The chapters also have little room for important foreign developments, for instance in Bosnia or Iraq. These omissions are mostly understandable: The book is already a long survey of the decade's domestic politics alone. But their role in shaping the 1990s is undeniable. Whereas Kornacki paints a clear picture of a bisected political landscape, Trump's sudden appearance - flirting with a Reform Party presidential run in 2000 - is somewhat jarring. His inclusion may be unavoidable, but after hundreds of pages of bare-knuckle politics having nothing to do with him, his appearance comes across as vaguely beside the point. Yet the cameo ultimately makes it impossible to reach the book's winking end without thinking of today. Kornacki's neatly crafted arc from the 1980s to 2000 concludes with a deft look at the blowback to Clinton's impeachment. The treatment could be longer, but it does give the answer to Kornacki's question: How did we get to where we were in 2000? In 2018, "The Red and the Blue" implicitly leaves us with another one: When, exactly, was the preTrump political calm for which so many now yearn? GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI is the national correspondent/or New York magazine.
Choice Review
In The Red and the Blue, Kornacki (national political correspondent, NBC News and MSNBC) painstakingly details the political battles of the 1990s, looking at fundamental changes in politics during that decade. Focusing on two major players who were catalysts for these changes--Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich--the author provides a rich narrative about the political campaigns immediately prior to and during the 1990s, but he offers no new theory about, or explanation of, why these campaigns resulted in the polarization and political tribalism that has come to dominate current political culture in the US. Kornacki's treatment is chronological, and he tracks the political workings of both major parties, the ebb and flow of Clinton's and Gingrich's political careers, and the interactions between the two during the Clinton presidency. The book is well organized and readable but is intended for general readership, not academic use. Those interested in a broad introduction to the political history of the 1990s will find it a good read. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and professionals. --Chad Kinsella, Ball State University
Library Journal Review
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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.