New Books in American Politics

Eric Lomazoff has written a kind of detective novel about the national bank controversy during the early years of the new republic. Lomazoff poses, in the introduction, and at the start of each chapter, the general understanding that many scholars and citizens have about the bank controversy itself and the constitutional decision in McCulloch vs. Maryland. And Lomazoff notes that these contours are generally accurate but that they elide significant components of the controversy that is actually spread out over an extended period of time. Given this more extensive time frame, Reconstructing the National Bank Controversy: Politics and Law in the Early American Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2018) does exactly what the title promises, in compiling different aspects of our understanding of the controversy, and integrating key shifts in the political and economic landscape that also changed parts of the actual controversy itself. Lomazoff takes the reader through the general understanding of the National Bank controversy, untangling different threads of the argument and the changing political and economic dynamics in the United States. Because the bank controversy is often collapsed into the debate over either a strict or broad interpretation of the Necessary and Proper clause of the Constitution, many aspects of American political development are generally pushed into the background—these ignored or obscured aspects of the controversy are the focus of Reconstructing the National Bank Controversy: Politics and Law in the Early American Republic, and rightly so, since they trace a deeper and more complex understanding of changing monetary policy, banking regulation, and congressional and executive fiscal power in the new republic. This is an action-packed discussion of the general understanding of the early American Republic, and the real controversy around the establishment of the national bank.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not in My District (Peter Lang Publishers, 2003). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve to the question of representation – and how to shift or change the American political system so that it better represents the voters themselves and the plurality of perspectives and opinions across the country. Lee Drutman’s new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (Oxford UP, 2020) dives into both the problems with the current political dynamic and the possible solutions. As the title indicates, Drutman’s analysis investigates the current binary “doom loop” of two internally consistent parties, and the elected officials who rarely have to compromise within the Madisonian system set up to compel compromise. Drutman’s examination takes the reader through the historical shifts in terms of the parties themselves and American political development, and how Americans have come to find themselves in this “doom loop.” Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop also explores contemporary “toxic politics” and the existential threat that every election seems to pose for parties, partisans, those in elected office, and ultimately for the country itself and public policies. Ultimately, Drutman proposes a number of reforms that, without amending the Constitution, could, as he says, break this doom loop and open up opportunities for more actual representation. Following the examples of a number of cities in the U.S. and the state of Maine, Drutman posits that electoral reform, especially options like ranked choice voting, would shift the dynamic during campaigns, and would lead to coalition building and compromise by lawmakers and elected officials in office. The final section of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America makes the case for how a multiparty system in the United States would work without amending the political institutions established by the Constitution. This is, ultimately, an optimistic book with a variety of proposals designed to untangle some of the persistent knots within the American political system.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding their full participation in public life, bringing their arguments all the way to the Supreme Court. The law is on their side, but that doesn't mean that their attempts are not met with suspicion or outright hostility.The book I’m looking at today is Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others Are Demanding Their Rightful Place in Public Life, by Jay Wexler. In it, he travels the country to engage the non-Christians who have called on us to maintain our ideals of inclusivity and diversity. With his characteristic sympathy and humor, he introduces us to the Summum and their Seven Aphorisms, a Wiccan priestess who would deck her City Hall with a pagan holiday wreath, and other determined champions of free religious expression. As Wexler reminds us, anyone who cares about pluralism, equality, and fairness should support a public square filled with a variety of religious and nonreligious voices. The stakes are nothing short of long-term social peace.A Professor at Boston University School of Law, Jay Wexler is also a humorist, short story writer, and novelist. A one-time clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former lawyer at the US Department of Justice, he has written for National Geographic, The Boston Globe, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Salon, and many other outlets. His non-fiction books include When God Isn't Green (2016) , The Odd Clauses (2011), and Holy Hullabaloos (2009). He joins me today, to talk about Our Non-Christian Nation.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Bobelian has written a history of the nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968. In Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court (Schaffner, 2019), he reminds us of the intense political battle over Lyndon Johnson’s legacy nomination of then-associate justice Abe Fortas to the chief justiceship. Bobelian’s account, relying upon a wealth of archival materials, including primary sources from presidential libraries, Senate hearings, and interviews, recreates the political world of Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, during the height of the Warren Court’s influence. Bobelian assesses the motives for various actors, such as segregationist Strom Thurmond, moderate Robert Griffin, and liberals Abe Fortas and Earl Warren, in their roles in the nomination process. He makes the argument that the politicization of the nomination process did not begin with Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987, but truly began with the nomination of Fortas. Bobelian also considers the political and popular responses to the then-novel consistently activist Warren Court and how the Fortas nomination and the opposition to it were motivated by combinations of jurisprudential ideology, institutional prerogatives, and the dynamics of personal relationships.Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Co-Authored podcast takes you behind the major academic collaborations in the study of politics. The first episode of the Co-Authored podcast focuses the multiple decade collaboration between Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones. This study initially focused on American politics and policy change, but it grew and grew to encompass new questions about information and new places stretched out across the world. Listen to the co-authors, collaborators, and former student share all the inside secrets.The Co-Authored podcast is supported by the American Political Science Association Centennial Center and the New Books Network. It is written and produced by Heath Brown and edited by Sam Anderson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is often said that with the election of Donald Trump nativism was raised from the dead. After all, here was a president who organized his campaign around a rhetoric of unvarnished racism and xenophobia. Among his first acts on taking office was to issue an executive order blocking Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. But although his actions may often seem unprecedented, they are not as unusual as many people believe. This story doesn’t begin with Trump. For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have employed xenophobic ideas and policies, declaring time and again that “illegal immigration” is a threat to the nation’s security, wellbeing, and future.The profound forces of all-American nativism have, in fact, been pushing politics so far to the right over the last forty years that, for many people, Trump began to look reasonable. As Daniel Denvir argues, issues as diverse as austerity economics, free trade, mass incarceration, the drug war, the contours of the post 9/11 security state, and, yes, Donald Trump and the Alt-Right movement are united by the ideology of nativism, which binds together assorted anxieties and concerns into a ruthless political project.All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It (Verso, 2020) provides a powerful and impressively researched account of the long but often forgotten history that gave us Donald Trump. Join us to hear Daniel Denvir lay out the grim history and current state of US immigration politics and policy.Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What standard should be used to assess presidential misconduct during the Trump presidency? How should the public, press, Congress, and bureaucracy resist and punish executive misconduct? Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today (The New Press, 2019) insists we must look back to look forward. The book provides a comprehensive study of American presidents' misconduct and their response to charges against them. The book provides a unique context by which to understand and evaluate the impeachment of Donald Trump.The origins of the book are unique. During the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings, committee leaders ask a group of historians to catalogue presidential misconduct – in 8 weeks. This updated edition provides case studies through the presidency of Barack Obama as well as an excellent introduction by James M. Banner, Jr. (one of the original authors of the 1974 study who also provides chapters on Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe). Jeremi Suri’s analysis of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (EPA, HUD, illegal lobbying, Pentagon bribes and kickbacks, Savings and Loan, Iran-Contra) concludes that Reagan’s personal integrity contrasts with the managerial negligence and deregulation that “encouraged corruption and law-breaking.” Although Reagan did not profit personally, his penchant for deregulation and dislike of confrontation created an environment which made possible crimes committed by others. In her chapter on Bill Clinton, Kathryn Cramer Brownell highlights how changes in television and cable (the twenty-four hour news) impacted the presidency. Through an analysis of Travelgate, Whitewater, 1996 Campaign Finance Violations, and Monica Lewinsky, Brownell concludes that the “line between public and private life, as well as the public’s distinction between the two, disappeared during the Clinton administration.” During the podcast, Brownell expands on complex issues of gender and the separation of public and private.The podcast concludes with thoughts on how a historical review of presidential misconduct informs our understanding of the impeachment of President Trump and the impact of public vigilance in American politics.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America's postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.Hong is an assistant professor of history at Occidental College where she specializes in 20th-century U.S. immigration and engagement with the world, with a focus on Asia.Siobhan M. M. Barco, J.D. explores U.S. legal history at Duke University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the modern, American body come into being? According to Rachel Louise Moran this is a story to be told through the lens of the advisory state. In her book, Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), she tracks the emergence of the American advisory state -- a key analytic introduced and developed by the author in this book -- and draws attention to polyvalence of bodies as both instruments and objects of public policy. Presenting a series of “body projects” which were pursued both formally and informally by the US federal state, Moran makes a case for the persistent political uses of physique throughout more than a century. In this manner, the author manages to tell a story not only of state expansion and citizenship, but also of gender roles, heteronormativity, standards of normality, and weight. This book, therefore, will be of great interest not only to US historians but also scholars interested in the medicalization of the body, gender and sexuality, childhood development, public health, and fat studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Joseph Blocher and Darrell A.H. Miller insist that the Second Amendment is widely recognized but fundamentally misunderstood by the public and public officials. Misconceptions about what the amendment allows, forbids, and how it function as law distort American debates and public policy. Blocher and Miller provide a nuanced synthesis of politics, history, and legal arguments to recover a more balanced discourse – what they call a “positive” Second Amendment” – that accommodates both a right to bear arms and reasonable regulation.Blocher and Miller begin with a puzzle. After the Sandy Hook shootings, 90% of the public and 74% of NRA members supported background checks for guns purchased at gun shows and online – yet the Manchin-Toomey Amendment failed in the Senate. The power of interest groups, Blocher and Miller insist, does not fully explain the disconnect between public opinion and policy. Examining the powerful constitutional rhetoric around what is “allowed” by the Second Amendment provides a fuller picture of the political and legal landscape. The book systematically works through the legal history of the amendment to demonstrate how extremists on both sides fail to understand the Second Amendment. Written in clear terms (such that it can be read by citizens, students, and scholars), The Positive Second Amendment provides accessible and balanced scholarship on a polarizing topic in politics and law.The podcast concludes with thoughts on the firearms law case heard by the Supreme Court in December 2019.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University Carroll in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices