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In 1907, America stood at the edge of calamity. Overextended banks threatened to crack the brittle economy. Soaring prices brought profits to industrialists and hardship to farmers and laborers, fueling a vast income gap. The environment was polluted, the food supply was tainted, the government was corrupt.
President Teddy Roosevelt struggled against a recalcitrant Congress to reform the system, but conservative Republicans backed by bankers and industrialists shut him down. As the President faltered, a cluster of determined Republican reformers took up the charge. Their bold insurgency against their own party’s leaders shook the Capitol from its long slumber and propelled America into the 20th century, ushering in the income tax, child labor laws, the Federal Reserve, and direct election of U.S. senators.
Political analyst and regular CNN.com contributor Michael Wolraich tells the riveting, resonant story behind the first great battle between progressives and conservatives in...
When the War Began
Teddy Roosevelt, Progressive Republicans, and the Birth of Modern Politics
Palgrave Macmillan, Spring 2014
- Television sensation Glenn Beck warns of White House plots to institute fascism, communism, and other terrifying "isms."
- Radio titan Rush Limbaugh charges that a racist Obama regime encourages black schoolchildren to beat up white kids.
- Evangelical luminary James Dobson frets that Christians will be arrested for thought crimes and people will be allowed to marry donkeys
- Protesters in knickers and colonial-style hats march on Washington with signs that order Hitler-like caricatures of President Obama to return to Kenya
As madness reigns, pundits, politicians, and cab drivers debate the source of the hysteria. Some blame ignorance; some blame racism; some blame the economy.
After poring over mountains of political screeds and heedlessly subjecting himself to countless hours of Fox News, author Michael Wolraich discovered the secret formula that turns ordinary men and women into fire-breathing, smoke-blowing right-wing maniacs. It's "persecution politics"...again.
In Blowing Smoke, Wolraich documents, dissects and deconstructs the myths that underlie the right's growing reliance on the politics of persecution, from Joe McCarthy to the Tea Party movement. In the process, he delivers an original and compelling hypothesis with penetrating insight and blistering wit.
At turns hilarious, disturbing and edifying, Blowing Smoke is a must-read account of modern American politics.
"It's one of those books I couldn't put down, blazing through it in a day…Do get Wolraich's book. In addition to making me cry, it also made me laugh."
--The Belltown Messenger, November 2010
"A well researched look at media and politics (and the politics of media) delivered with a Daily Show-esque tone."
--Instinct Magazine, January 2011
"Wolraich is keenly analytical and often caustic in this compelling look at the use of persecution to push politics to the extreme."
--Booklist, December 2010