Book Review: The Invisible Bridge

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<<<<  Note to reader:  Julia Orringer also wrote a book by the same title but with a very different theme.  

This review written by: Ted Lawrence  in the Washington Free Beacon.
August 2, 2014 5:00 am

Though America has had quite a few great presidents, iconic presidents are much rarer. Icons appear only in hindsight and are created in a very specific fashion. First, one party will hail the president as great, while the other claims he has wrecked the country. Then the opposing faction realizes the president wasn’t that bad, and reckons with his policies and broader influence, changing its own policies in the process. And finally, both parties fight to claim the president as their own, that they are his true heirs.

So, who makes the cut? Washington, Jefferson, Jackson (maybe), Lincoln (definitely), both Roosevelts, and … Reagan. Deceased barely a decade, he is already in the second stage of iconographic development. Liberal Democrats, who despised him and everything he stood for, are reckoning with Reagan and his legacy. Bill Clinton made “the era of big government is over” his cri de coeur, reformed welfare, and deregulated Wall Street. Barack Obama called Reagan a “transformational president.” And Rick Perlstein has written The Invisible Bridge.

Yes, the last is a big slide down the world-historical food chain. But Perlstein’s work is worth noting, because he is one of the few liberal writers to take conservatism seriously. 

The Invisible Bridge follows Perlstein’s Before the Storm and Nixonland, which, respectively, charted the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater (his first, in 1964) and Richard Nixon (his second, in 1968). Both books were provocative and fair-minded.

If conservatives needed a guide to the liberal reckoning with Reagan, Perlstein seemed to be the man to do it.    But he isn’t. The Invisible Bridge is intensely frustrating and ultimately flawed.

The Invisible Bridge is divided into three parts: Nixon’s second term, biographical sketches of Ronald Reagan, and a social-cultural history of mid-1970s America. The chapters on Nixon are a slog. Every literate person knows the story, and Perlstein’s version adds nothing new . . . .   you will need to read the full review at the Washington Free Beacon, here.