Books in Brief

Middle-Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority, by Stanley B. Greenberg (Times Books, 338 pp., $25)

EARLY on, White House pollster Stanley Greenberg assures us that the Republican victories last year “were impressive, but merely political.” Which is akin to dismissing the U.S. victory in the Gulf War as “impressive, but merely military.” But such is the level of analysis in this thin book that, when it isn’t evasive, it is doggedly platitudinous. Mr. Greenberg should have rushed into print two years ago when he still seemed the brilliant public-opinion guru to the nation’s next JFK. Now he’s inconvenienced with tiptoeing around odoriferous messes such as the health-care reform he once argued would wed the middle class to the Democrats for a generation; here he devotes just two paragraphs to the Clinton proposal and blames its defeat on the machinations of Bill Kristol. Greenberg’s central idea is that the two parties have traditionally advocated clashing visions of prosperity: top down for the Republicans, bottom up for the Democrats. The party best able to sell its vision to the Average Joe wins elections. Not much new here. Nor is Greenberg’s call for a “new contract” to reconnect alienated middle-class voters to American politics. As Mr. Greenberg might have noticed, Newt Gingrich has been playing with a similar idea.

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

MM

About the Author

Maria McFadden

Middle-Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority, by Stanley B. Greenberg (Times Books, 338 pp., $25)

EARLY on, White House pollster Stanley Greenberg assures us that the Republican victories last year “were impressive, but merely political.” Which is akin to dismissing the U.S. victory in the Gulf War as “impressive, but merely military.” But such is the level of analysis in this thin book that, when it isn’t evasive, it is doggedly platitudinous. Mr. Greenberg should have rushed into print two years ago when he still seemed the brilliant public-opinion guru to the nation’s next JFK. Now he’s inconvenienced with tiptoeing around odoriferous messes such as the health-care reform he once argued would wed the middle class to the Democrats for a generation; here he devotes just two paragraphs to the Clinton proposal and blames its defeat on the machinations of Bill Kristol. Greenberg’s central idea is that the two parties have traditionally advocated clashing visions of prosperity: top down for the Republicans, bottom up for the Democrats. The party best able to sell its vision to the Average Joe wins elections. Not much new here. Nor is Greenberg’s call for a “new contract” to reconnect alienated middle-class voters to American politics. As Mr. Greenberg might have noticed, Newt Gingrich has been playing with a similar idea.