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
college democrats education might millions obama pay push
While Obama might not push college education exclusively, like most Democrats he does oversell it and does shortchange the alternatives. And millions of young Americans pay the price.
found life melodrama milwaukee sheer teenager
When I was a teenager in Milwaukee in the 1980s, life was pretty boring, and I found myself riveted by the sheer melodrama of everyday life of the 1960s.
constant electorate enamored estimate fighting hovering percentage relatively since states themselves united
The reactionary percentage of the electorate in these United States has been relatively constant since McCarthy's day; I'd estimate it as hovering around 30 percent. A minority, but one never all that enamored of the niceties of democracy - they see themselves as fighting for the survival of civilization, after all.
almost brand calling contend guide helping leadership liturgy mature people role
Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan's brand of leadership was what I call 'a liturgy of absolution.' He absolved Americans almost in a priestly role to contend with sin. Who wouldn't want that?
failure kennedy proverbial thousand utter
There's no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days.
people
Do people still read before bed? I play 'Words With Friends.'
call closet john kennedy ready received treatment vietnamese war
The argument that John F. Kennedy was a closet peacenik, ready to give up on what the Vietnamese call the 'American War' upon re-election, received its most farcical treatment in Oliver Stone's 'JFK.'
brand city close finally high license normal possible school spend teenage time warehouse
Back when I was 16, when I should have been doing normal high school things, I availed myself of my brand new driver's license to spend as much time as possible in Milwaukee's Renaissance Book Shop, a tumbledown five-story warehouse that the city was finally able to close down in 2011 for safety reasons. It was my teenage paradise.
explaining ifs
In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.
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.