Review of 'Politicians & the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics'

Sean Wilentz has become our generation’s foremost historian as public intellectual, positioning himself as a blend of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Richard Hofstadter, the historical giants of the mid-20th-century era of consensus. Wilentz, however, lives in what another thoughtful historian, Daniel T. Rodgers, has called an ‘age of fracture’. Perhaps with that fact in his mind, Wilentz’s latest book, The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics, argues that consensus building and political action occur within the framework of the traditional American party structure and not from those who choose to stand outside the arena shouting platitudes in protest. In recent years, he argues, too many Americans have failed to recognize ‘both the permanent reality and effectiveness of partisanship and party politics’ (p. xiii). Instead, they have latched on to dreams of transcending the two-party system, a scheme that they argue stifles reform. Wilentz certainly sympathizes with the complaints of many political reformers who see troubling signs of economic inequality in modern America, but he regards their efforts to work outside the system as a fool’s errand. Antagonism to political parties and politics prevents change because, as Wilentz argues, the history of American partisanship shows that, quite simply, parties work.