Speed, Contraction, and Lost Opportunities

Abstract

Speed, Contraction, and Lost Opportunities Daryl A. Carter (bio) Patrick J. Maney. Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2016. 344 pp., 25 photographs, notes, index. $37.50. Russell L. Riley. Inside the Clinton White House. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 464 pp., index. $29.95. Michael Nelson, Barbara A. Perry, Russell L. Riley. 42: Inside The Presidency of Bill Clinton. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2016. 324 pp., index. $89.95. In what historians have called the in-between years, the period between 1989 and 2001 was marred by growing racial, cultural, and economic tensions. The Cold War-victor United States was forced to consider how to redirect its attention and energies. These shifts in focus and priorities came to the fore with the election of the first Baby Boomer president, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Three recent books address the contexts and legacy of the Clinton era in those in-between years. The 1980s and 1990s showcased the rises of cable television, advanced manufacturing, and the service sector, but also lost economic opportunity for millions of workers, the emergence of a new class of millionaires, and the beginnings of the information age. Patrick J. Maney's Bill Clinton: A New Gilded Age President shows us just how much the Clinton presidency reflected this New Gilded Age. The last two and a half decades of the twentieth century were filled with economic and technological changes and contradictions. These changes benefitted the national economy as a whole, yet millions of Americans were also displaced as a result what the author correctly calls globalization, though globalization was nothing new. The phenomenon has been a defining feature of the West from the transatlantic slave trade to the beginning of the second industrial revolution after the American Civil War, which led to the urbanization and diversification of the American economy and created profound changes to the American landscape during what Mark Twain famously dubbed "The Gilded Age." [End Page 291] The Gilded Age was far more interesting and complex, as Maney notes, than just business tycoons versus the exploited. The nation changed faster than anyone could have predicted. Farmers left for cities. Women advocated for new laws in the public square. Organized labor groups moved aggressively to improve the material and working conditions of their members. The diverse, at times conflicting, groups of Americans challenging the new normal became collectively known as Progressives. So important were their actions and advocacy that three American presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson—became known as the Progressive presidents. As Maney describes it, the United States has been in a Second Gilded Age since Gerald R. Ford's presidency (1974–1977). Just like the previous Gilded Age, this period was exceptional for the rapidity of change, often so quick that many Americans took years or even decades to recognize the profound shifts that were already underway in how they ate, exercised, worked, and communicated with one another. Moreover, the paradigm shift affected the United States' global reach and importance, also demonstrating how differently Americans' expectations of government had evolved. During the first three quarters of the twentieth century, Americans became accustomed to the growing power of the executive branch of government. From Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon, presidents imposed their will on the nation, using their office to increase the role of government in the private sector. Whether through taxation, education, public works programs, defense spending or new, more expansive legal interpretations of the Constitution, American presidents increasingly took a decidedly more liberal and government-centered approach to addressing the nation's problems, such as inequality, lack of opportunity and economic development. The Second Gilded Age, however, would present new challenges and difficulties. These challenges were brought on by America's shift to finance and technology, demographic change resulting from immigration reform in the 1960s and the desires of peoples from around the world to leave in the United States. Moreover, the tremendous upheaval of the 1960s and growing distrust of government among the general populace forced American political leaders, especially presidents, to pursue more limited power. Second Gilded...