Are We There Yet? Reflections on the 2008 Political Scene

Abstract

Public sociologists have hit the trail this year in blogs, op-eds, essays, and designed to shine an analytic light on what feels-for better or worse-like the longest running presidential in history. Candidates have been no less prolific, pro viding the public more than one best-selling biography and assorted campaign books designed to lay out their political philosophies and the personal experiences that have led them to their convictions. Political sociologists work at the intersec tion of inequality and political participation (see Jeff Manza and Chris Uggen on felony disenfranchisement), or politics and social movements (from the classic works by Doug McAdam to the more contemporary analyses of Kenneth Andrews). Their are largely directed at a professional audience or the pol icy crowd that frequents the American Prospect or the recent addition to the pan theon, Pathways. Public sociology aimed at understanding the culture of modern politics is a different animal. It is more likely to trade on an insid er's vantage point, its authority deriving partly from the biography of the author or from extraordinary access seldom granted to the garden variety fieldworker. Todd Gitlin's engaging account of the forms of paralysis affecting both Republicans and Democrats, owes a great deal to his own history as an activist and political commentator. It rarely invokes sociology as an analytic framework, but it rests comfortably on the shoulders of organizational studies and social movements literature in ways that are recognizable to the disciplinary specialist. Its contribution lies in the clarity with which it points to contradic tions in political ideology, particularly among Republicans, although the Democrats come in for their fair share of critique. Gitlin is not aim ing to reframe the sociologists look at the modern political parties but, instead, to lead readers on a tour of the upheavals at the inter section of Clintonian third way politics and the radical right turn of the Bush administra tion. 7he Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals, by Todd Gitlin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007. 336pp. $25.95 cloth. ISBN: 978471748533.