Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (78 page)

This book had an interactive relationship with my column and my work at the
Post.
Some of my reporting for the
Post
was extremely important to this account, notably key parts of a long interview with George W. Bush in 1998 for the
Washington Post Magazine.
At various points, I also draw on conclusions from my columns, since the reporting they involved gave me a courtside seat to many of the events described here. At the same time, reporting undertaken specifically for this book and made possible by a modest but very helpful book advance—particularly my road trips in 2014, research into the history of conservatism, and my interviews with conservative leaders and thinkers—fed back into columns that I could not have written had I not been working on this volume.

The list of people to whom I owe debts at the
Post
is long, and I have enumerated many of them in earlier books. I reiterate my thanks to two old friends, Steve Luxenberg and David Ignatius, who were essential to making my time at the
Post
a great blessing; to the late Ben Bradlee, Len Downie, and Bob Kaiser for bringing me on; to the entire political staff whose brilliant guide over many years has been my friend Dan Balz; to the extraordinary people at the Washington Post Writers Group, who syndicate my column and edit it with me twice a week in a truly cooperative spirit: Alan Shearer, the maestro of the whole operation, and Richard Aldacushion, Karen Green, Sophie Yarborough, and, until they retired, Jim Hill and Anna Karavangelos. Thanks to the late Meg Greenfield for giving me the chance to write the column; to editorial page editor Fred Hiatt for good advice and the opportunity to offer my views to one of the world’s most politically engaged audiences; to the deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl; and to Michael Larabee, our smart and level-headed op-ed editor, and Autumn Brewington, his excellent predecessor. The editors who make up the op-ed staff are hugely skilled; they are also a joy to deal with, week after week.

Thanks to my friends at
Democracy
journal, where I serve as chair of the editorial committee, particularly to Mike Tomasky and Elbert Ventura, superb editors and friends, and also to the magazine’s founders, Ken Baer and Andrei Cherny. The first words written for this book, about Reform Conservatives, first saw light of day in
Democracy
and some of them appear in Chapter 15. I appreciated the opportunity, and the excellent first round of editing.
Thanks also to Harold Meyerson and my friends at
The American Prospect;
to Paul Baumann and his colleagues at
Commonweal;
and for many kindnesses, to Katrina vanden Heuvel of
The Nation.

Two other institutions are central to my life: Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution. Thanks to all my colleagues at both places. At Georgetown, I owe particular debts to the university’s president, Jack DeGioia, to the former dean of Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Judy Feder, and to the current dean of the McCourt School of Public Policy, Ed Montgomery. At Brookings, my debts to all my colleagues are legion. I should say a particularly thank you to Tom Mann and Brookings former president Michael Armacost for bringing me in; to its current president, Strobe Talbott; and to the vice president and director of Governance Studies, Darrell West (who shares my diehard devotion to Boston sports and to the politics of southeastern New England).

I especially need to underscore my debt and (let’s just say it) love for Tom Mann. He is as fine and generous a friend and colleague as it’s possible to find. He and Norm Ornstein (another dear and brilliant friend to whom I also owe many debts) wrote a brave book,
It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,
that described the radicalization of the Republican Party and brought wide attention to the essential idea of asymmetric polarization. My thanks to Tom and Norm for sharing their ideas—and, in Norm’s case, for also sharing a constant stream of new jokes.

My assistant, Elizabeth Thom, has gone through the book so many times that she could probably recite large parts of it from memory. She is a brilliant editor, thinker, researcher, organizer, diplomat, and political sage. I cannot say enough good things about her, but can’t say all of them here except: my deepest thanks. Many thanks also to Elizabeth’s predecessor, Ross Tilchin, who did great work in helping me organize the early stages of research and interviewing. He is great, too, as are Emily Luken and Korin Davis.

An exceptional group of interns helped me throughout the time I was working on this book. Thanks to Sarah Engell, Sean Foley, Natalie Gould, Luke Hill, Ben Huber, Megan Rogers, Alexander Snowdon, Laura Sorice, and Jeremy Waldron. Thanks also to research assistants at Georgetown, Janou Gordon and Sean Long, and also Jacob Lupfer.

I am very grateful to Anton Mueller of Bloomsbury USA for his flexibility and deep thoughtfulness, and to my agent, Gail Ross, who first broached the thought of my doing this book in a conversation with Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster. Gail is hands-on, very smart about politics as well as the book business, and she has a profound loyalty to her authors that all of us appreciate. Thanks to her for making this book possible.

At Simon & Schuster, let me first thank Carolyn Reidy, the CEO; Jonathan Karp, president and publisher; Stuart Roberts, assistant editor to Alice, who was with this book from beginning to end and is exceptionally energetic, careful, smart, and engaged; Tom Pitoniak, my copy editor; Phil Metcalf, a truly amazing production editor who went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate many rounds of revisions that let me keep up with a fast-moving story as Donald Trump rose and the Republican side of the House fell into turmoil; to the designers who did such a lovely job on the book, Ruth Lee-Mui and Jackie Seow; and to Julia Prosser, Stephen Bedford, and Richard Rhorer, who are working hard to get the word out.

This book is dedicated to my editor Alice Mayhew with love and admiration. We became friends many years before I had writing books in mind through our friends Peter and Peggy Steinfels and Harvey Cox. When I first met Alice, I had no idea what a legend she already was in publishing. I just liked her immediately because of her passion for ideas, history, books, people, and politics, and for her directness. A decade later, it was Alice who signed up my first book,
Why Americans Hate Politics,
and then two others. This time around, it was her idea that it was an excellent time for a book explaining the strange journey of the American right, and I thank her for reestablishing our partnership. Working with her on this project was a particular joy and she was engaged at every level. She not only had views on every political controversy discussed here, but extraordinary insight and knowledge (down to the precinct level, you might say), and a brilliant sense of how to organize an argument. I owe her a great debt, and it is an honor to offer this book to her.

Thanks to my sister, Lucie-Anne Dionne Thomas, for so many things, not the least being that we shared very nearly identical political trajectories, and for the same reasons; and also to her husband, Drew, and their wonderful daughter, my niece, Kim Dionne Thomas.

The usual thing is to thank your immediate family for living through a book with you, and mine was, indeed, magnificently encouraging whenever I retreated to my office to write, and cheerfully tolerant whenever I announced triumphantly that I had finally done final revisions—which never seemed to stay final.

Mary Boyle and I first met twenty-nine years ago on public transit, a fine thing for liberals to do and the surest sign of the extent to which my life has been a series of unearned blessings. This one brought many other blessings, including friendship with Mary’s truly remarkable mother, Helen; her brothers Brian, Kevin, Mark, Chris, and Terry; and a splendid clan of nephews and nieces. It also brought us our children, James, Julia, and Margot.

I have been over the top about Mary and our kids (who are no longer kids) for many years. James, Julia, and Margot would disapprove of my doing it again here. To Mary, I’ll simply express my abiding love, admiration, and gratitude, and my profound appreciation for your unerring instincts—political, philosophical, personal, literary, and moral. James, Julia, and Margot, you know how much delight and wonder you’ve brought us. You have taught me more than I will ever learn from any other source, and you inspire me to keep my mind open about politics, music, sports, books, religion, and everything else. My faith in the future comes from the knowledge that you’ll be there to shape it.

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E.J. DIONNE JR.
grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. He attended Catholic schools, graduated from Harvard University, and received a D.Phil. in sociology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1975, he went to work for the
New York Times
covering state, local, and national politics and also serving as a foreign correspondent. He reported from more than two dozen countries, including extended periods in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. His coverage of the Vatican was described by the
Los Angeles Times
as the best in two decades. He joined the
Washington Post
in 1990 as a political reporter and has been writing a column for the
Post
since 1993. It is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group and appears in more than 240 newspapers. He is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Government Department. Dionne analyzes politics weekly on NPR’s
All Things Considered
and is regular analyst for MSNBC. In 2014–2015, he was vice president of the American Political Science Association and is chair of the editorial committee of
Democracy
journal. He is the author of six books and edited or coedited six other volumes. His
Why Americans Hate Politics
won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Boyle. They have three children, James, Julia, and Margot.