Rick Perlstein
Rick Perlstein
Eric S. "Rick" Perlsteinis an American historian and journalist, who has won wide acclaim for his chronicles of the 1960s and 1970s and the American conservative movement. Perlstein is the author of three bestselling books and is the winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Politico has dubbed Perlstein "a chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
CountryUnited States of America
optimism people saws
In Ronald Reagans case, he always bore with him this extraordinary ability to radiate confidence, optimism, clarity, a blitheness of spirit, in what other people saw as chaos. And after the 1970s, that was catnip.
republic faces foundation
When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger.
authority business creates essential flows image keeps prediction provides substance
Prediction is structurally inseparable from the business of punditry: It creates the essential image of indefatigable authority that is punditry's very architecture; it flows from that calcified image, and it provides the substance for the story that keeps getting told about the inevitability of American progress.
among binding cultural glue grievance high noses shared somewhere
Conservatism is, among many other things, a culture. The most important glue binding it together is a shared sense of cultural grievance - the conviction, uniting conservatives high and low, theocratic and plutocratic, neocon and paleocon, that someone, somewhere is looking down their noses at them with a condescending sneer.
barack black key missouri november percent shown state swing turned vote
Black Fergusonians have shown that they will vote when they have something to vote for and know that their vote will count. Seventy-six percent of them turned out in November 2012, when Missouri was a key swing state for Barack Obama's reelection.
books sign somehow written
While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.
agree argue certain cultural elite health pursued
There's a certain kind of cultural energy pursued by the gatekeepers of elite discourse, who want to argue that Americans fundamentally agree with each other, and that's the health of the nation.
corps largely nixon press washington
Indeed, it was largely the clubbiness of the Washington village press corps that let Nixon get away with Watergate and still win his landslide in 1972.
ability channel human longings
Reagan's emotional intelligence, his ability to suss out people's longings and to channel them for political purposes, was better than just about any human being that ever lived.
jacques time
I can't summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tati's 'Play Time.' You just have to see it.
computers historical
Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory.
children might
Fight injustice, that our children might be blessed.
dozens literary nature rather second
I've summarized dozens of books in my literary career; it's become rather second nature.
best cite classify implies love metaphor
We Americans love to cite the 'political spectrum' as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry.