Last week I drove over to Lawrence, that wonderful isle of blue in a sea of red, to hear Author Rick Perlstein, the most erudite chronicler of the modern conservative movement, give a speech at the University of Kansas. The faculty guy who introduced him joked how lucky we were to not be watching the Republican debate that night. If you haven’t read Perlstein’s books, Before the Storm (about the Goldwater campaign of 1964), Nixonland, and The Invisible Bridge (about Nixon’s impeachment and the rise of Reagan), you should. They are absolutely delightful. Perlstein paints a vivid picture of what things were really like, fusing culture and politics to show what has happened to the U.S. in the last 50 years. There’s more to come, he promises.
Follow me below the mutant sheaf of Kansas wheat for more.