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
among good people
One thing Republicans understand: In American elections, you have to choose from among only two people - not between the perfect and the good.
act bigger event future predicting
I'm a historian. The act of predicting the future discomfits me, in any event - and the bigger the prediction, the more distrusting I am.
conserving devoted supposedly
For a movement supposedly devoted to conserving the past, conservatives are oh-so-splendid at forgetting their own past.
issues
Economic issues are a subset of social justice. Social justice is unimaginable without economic justice. Isn't that obvious?
people
Do people still read before bed? I play 'Words With Friends.'
bill mansion swept york
Bill de Blasio was swept to the New York mayoralty on the promise of getting Gracie Mansion out from under the thumb of corporate elites.
awful believe beyond politics reasons sports system
I believe politics is a team sport. That, for awful and unfortunate reasons beyond any of our control, the American system only allows, effectively, for two teams.
good human reagan whatever
Whatever you think about his intelligence, what's unquestionable is that Reagan had extraordinary emotional intelligence. He could sense the temperature of a room, and tell them a story and make them feel good. And that's more fun, right? It's more fun to feel good than feel bad. That's part of our human state.
call freedom people virtuous
There is no freedom without groceries. There are no groceries without freedom. What people call 'capitalism' and 'socialism' are actually one and inseparable. It's a virtuous circle.
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.'
bore change clever cultural discard forget fullness rest time works
That's the way cultural change works in America: the rest of us discard a prejudice that the Right still clings to; in the fullness of time, the Right comes around, too, deploying clever rationalizations to forget they ever bore the prejudice in the first place.
exists failures judged people private public rescue sector suffer thus
Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the citizens.
against believed bones broke conspiracy honestly liberal literally nixon organized plotting richard shifted since
Richard M. Nixon honestly believed in his bones that an organized conspiracy of liberal media insiders had literally been plotting against him ever since he broke Alger Hiss in 1948 (he never shifted course, and lost his soul).
ability bore people saw
In Ronald Reagan's 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.