James T. PattersonCritiques

Pivotal Moments in American History)

The 1940s was a low decade for the Republican Party in America. Still recovering from the damage inflicted on their image by the Great Depression, they struggled to win at the national level. Shut out from the presidency by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman’s victorious campaigns, they succeeded in controlling Congress for just a two-year period immediately after World War II. Such a dismal performance prompted much soul-searching among many of the party faithful about the path back to the national political dominance they had enjoyed just a few years before.

During these years, such figures as Thomas Dewey, Wendell Willkie, Arthur Vandenberg, and Herbert Hoover played prominent roles in leading the GOP. Yet only one of them was known by his contemporaries as “Mr. Republican”. That man was Robert Alphonso Taft. During his decade and a half in the United States Senate, Taft established himself as an unrelenting critic of Democratic policies and a staunch advocate for conservative values. Yet one of the great strengths of James Patterson’s biography of the man is his ability to go beyond the assumptions that came with his role during this period to analyze Taft’s ideas with nuance and insight, demonstrating in the process that his subject was a far more complex figure than his critics at the time gave him credit for being.

In many ways politics was in Taft’s blood. As a member of the Taft family, he grew up in a family that had distinguished themselves in public service. Not only did his father, William Howard Taft, enjoy a long public career that included stints as president and as the chief justice of the United States, but his grandfather Alfonso Taft, served as Secretary of War and Attorney General during the Grant administration. Young Robert was the beneficiary of his family privilege, enrolling at the prestigious Taft School before attending Yale and Harvard Law. At each institution he excelled academically, eschewing the social scene in favor of long hours engaged in solitary study. This reflected his serious, no-nonsense personality, which as Patterson demonstrates often hindered his political career yet helped him win much admiration for his dedication and sincerity.

After law school Taft followed his father’s advice and joined a law firm in Cincinnati, where he spent the next several years as an underpaid associate. When the United States entered World War I Taft moved to Washington, where he worked as an assistant counsel for the U.S. Food Administration. There he caught the attention of its director, Herbert Hoover, who brought Taft with him to Europe after the war to deal with food relief. With his principled, data-driven approach to solving problems, Hoover became a model for the budding public servant. Taft also shared Hoover’s disgust with the postwar settlement negotiations in Paris, which confirmed his conviction that the United States was better off avoiding involvement in European politics. This attitude would shape his response to global events throughout the rest of his career.

Soon after returning to Cincinnati in 1919 Taft plunged himself into politics. Winning a seat in the Ohio state legislature in 1920, he remained active in state politics throughout the decade while building a lucrative law practice. While his success as a legislator and his famous name ensured speculation that he would run for a statewide office, Taft declined to do so until 1938, when he challenged the incumbent Democrat, Robert Bulkley, for one of Ohio’s seats in the United States Senate. Taft’s victory that year was more a consequence of his hard work and the Republican electoral wave rather than any innate skills as a campaigner, as his cold manner and statistics-laden speeches won him respect rather than affection.

Once in the Senate, Taft quickly established himself as a staunch opponent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. This along with his famous name and the dearth of viable challengers quickly made him a leading candidate for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. Taft’s ambitions to run for his father’s old job were soon undermined by the war in Europe, however, which made Taft’s isolationist advocacy too much of a liability as a nominee. Here Patterson identifies the recurring irony that would plague Taft’s presidential hopes. Though interested primarily in domestic issues, all three of Taft’s attempts to become president would be frustrated by foreign policy. Here he found himself out-of-step not only with the course of events, but with significant elements of his own party, who worried that Taft’s views made him unelectable nationally. So it proved in 1940, when Wendell Willkie succeeded in winning the nomination instead of Taft.

Deprived of the chance to run against Roosevelt, Taft settled into the role of his foremost opponent in the Senate. Here he proved to be an effective adversary, as he established alliances with conservative southern Democrats to dismantle many of the New Deal agencies. Yet Patterson demonstrates that Taft was far from a reflexive critic of federal involvement in public policy, as he was a consistent advocate of both federally-supported housing and federal aid for education. While such positions often alienated Taft from more hidebound members of his caucus, he was widely respected as one of the Senate’s most effective legislators, which he demonstrated most memorably with the passage of the Taft-Hartley labor laws in 1948.

Nevertheless, the greatest prize continued to elude Taft. His ambitions for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948 were thwarted by Dewey, whose campaign outmaneuvered Taft’s forces at the convention. Truman’s unexpected victory that year provided Taft with one final opportunity for the White House, only for his hostility to America’s postwar military commitments in Europe to prompt Dwight Eisenhower to run the presidency as a Republican in 1952. Defeated for a final time, Taft nonetheless supported Eisenhower out of loyalty to the party, and had established a surprisingly effective relationship with him as president before Taft fell victim to cancer, dying just six months after his inauguration as president in 1953.

To recount the story of Taft’s life, Patterson draws upon the full range of Taft’s papers, as well as numerous other manuscript collections and dozens of interviews with his contemporaries. These he uses to provide an extraordinarily well-rounded portrait of his subject, one that balances effectively the personal and political aspects of his life. While his portrayal of Taft is a sympathetic one, Patterson doesn’t shirk from offering critical assessments of his subject’s personality and his thinking about public policy as a way of understanding the limits of his achievements. It’s this combination of diligent research and perceptive judgment that makes Patterson’s book one of the best biographies of an American politician that has ever been written, and one unlikely ever to be surpassed as an account of his career.

Solid overview of the Post-War era in the United States covering foreign and domestic affairs.½

James Patterson's second contribution to the Oxford History of the United States (after his Bancroft Award-winning Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974) is by far the weakest volume of the series. Part of it is the result of the problem posed by contemporary history, which lacks the perspective provided by distance from events and an ability to render an assessment based on knowing what were the long term consequences. Patterson recognizes this difficulty, yet his response exacerbates the problem by refusing to render pretty much any judgments. Instead he provides a bland summary of events, heavily supplemented by statistics, with none of the valuable analysis that characterizes the other volumes of the series. This limits the book's utility and ensures that the volume about the most recent events is sure to be the first to outlive its usefulness.

Patterson's book is a short, informative look at the Brown decision, one that sets it into the context of its times and examines its impact -- and limits -- over the half-century that followed. Though there are more detailed studies of the decision, Patterson's book is a fine starting point for anyone seeking an introduction to the subject.

5587. The Eve of Destruction How 1965 Transformed America, by James T. Patterson (read 16 Sep 2018) This book, published in 2012, has as its thesis that 1965 was a pivotal year in America. LBJ, just off the hugely successful 1964 election, was eager to enact meaningful legislation and with big majorities in Congress did get Medicare and the Civil Rights Act enacted. But in February he sent Marines into Vietnam and during the year he successively sent more ground forces there in response to General Westmoreland's pleas. Today we all know the Vietnam war was a big mistake but I along with most of the country at the time felt fighting that war was the thing to do. LBJ, to his credit, resisted those who sought to expand the war and risk a bigger war involving China and/or Russia. The book describes the events of 1965, looking at them from the view of 2012, and it is clear that those who favored the escalation of the war were wrong. But in 1965 this was not apparent, though the powers that be knew the war was unwinnable. The book, surprisingly, pays some attention to popular music, which, though I lived through the time, was all new to me (I had never heard of the song which is the title of this book.) This book is well done and relates well the events of the year.

5519. Restless Giant The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, by James T. Patterson (read 15 Dec 2017) This is the 11th volume of The Oxford History of the United States, and I have read nine of the 11 and no doubt will seek to read the ones I have not read. This volume deals with a period I lived through and had strong opinions concerning all that went on. I found I did not enjoy reading about things that went wrong during .during the years from 1974 to 2005. The author spends a lot of time on social trends and tends to accentuate the bad. whereas I, having lived through them and not in an area exemplifying the bad, did not view them as dolorously as the author paints them. His coverage of the political events of those years is super-interesting even though one does squirm over some of what is related, especially Bill Clinton's personal life which was no doubt what inflicted on us George W. Bush and his disastrous presidency. And since the book was written in 2005 we do not have the pleasure of reading about Obama's election in 2008 and his so satisfying re-election in 2012. But the book is well worth reading and does relate some good things..½

The context of Brown vs Board of Education and its legacy are well explained by James Patterson. The deep roots of racism in society cannot be simply overcame by a judicial decision, even by a Supreme Court one. The importance of the American Supreme Court decision though, most not be underestimated. The Court, overcoming an older precedent, opened the way for a more just society, one in with prejudices played a lesser role and new ways of social arrangements can be imagined. James Patterson told the history of Brown vs Board of Education, pointing the challenges faced by men and women that fought against racism and inequality.

A perfectly readable summary of political and cultural happenings between, as the subtitle puts it, the end of Nixon to the start of Bush II. Readable, but deeply unsatisfying, since Patterson is unwilling to actually exercise any judgement--this is a chronicle, not history. There's no causation here and no suggestion that people may have done good or bad things, just events and more events. The general tenor is "So and so said that this happened. But thus and thus said that that happened. Moving right along..." So you never know what Patterson actually thinks happened, or why you should care, or, indeed, if even he cares. This is all the more offensive when you think about what was about to happen to the U.S.: 9/11 had just passed, and he opted not to write about it at all. I imagine he'd make the same decision about the great financial crash. So, particularly in the last few chapters, this becomes an extremely odd read: you know that all the 'steady financial growth' is based on garbage, and that it's all about to fall down, but Patterson doesn't give you any reason to believe that he thought anything other than what the most fatuous optimists of the time thought. America was strong, and would remain strong and so on and so on. There's no hint that he's unhappy with the electoral process that gave us Bush v Gore. No hint that he was disturbed by Reagan's lunacy or Clinton's cynicism.

I skype-reading-grouped this with an historian friend, who summed it up very well. The first wave of books about historical events will be violently partisan. The second wave will revise the partisan arguments. The third will be post-revisionist and almost entirely neutral in tone. Patterson's tried to skip a couple of steps, but because there's no obvious idiotic background against which he can appear reasonable, he himself just looks morally bankrupt. Too bad, because the man can write, and you'll certainly learn a lot from his book. I can easily imagine recommending it as a first stop, but certainly not a state-of-the-art work on the time period.

This is the last of the Oxford history of the U.S. --- chronologically, though not in order of publication -- and provides a helpful overview of the period from 1975 to 2000. It does not, however, provide the sweep or narrative strength of some of the other volumes in the series. In large part, that may the inevitable result of attempting an historical approach so recent a period. With so many of the key issues of the period still very much unresolved, and so many of its effects still unfolding, it may not be possible to form a compellingly coherent view of what was "really" going on.

But this is still a very valuable book. It traces events on a presidency-by-presidency basis, while sticking with several underlying themes -- cultural confrontation at home, the collapse of communism abroad, and increasing political rancor across the board. It treats the very different presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in an impressively even handed manner, exploring the strengths and failures of each man without evident bias. And it clarifies what too often seems the jumble of recent events. For example, the foreign policy effects of Vietnam are made clear (no troops at risk), as is the gradual move back to military activism. I think that it is too soon for a definitive history of this period to be written. In the meantime, "Restless Giant" serves very well.

James Patterson's history of the U.S. in the post war era is an excellent omnibus overview of the period, covering a wide range of trends and themes, and bringing personalities vividly to life. Despite its considerable length, it is eminently readable, with an extensive index and a helpful bibliographic essay at the end. All this makes it a worthy entry in the magisterial Oxford history of the U.S., if perhaps bit less gripping than a few other entries in the series -- McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", and Kennedy's "Freedom from Fear". Two possible explanations for this may be worth noting. First, in a narrative sense, the period itself did not have a single focus like the Civil War or the Depression, but rather a multiplicity of themes. Patterson's trope of "grand expectations" is a good marker for American attitudes at mid-century, but there were as he demonstrates several sets of grand expectations at work. Secondly, this is recent history -- within the memory of many readers (including this one), and lacking perhaps the advantages of distance.

"Grand Expectations" explores events from 1945 -- when the U.S. was unquestionably 'top country' -- to Watergate, when the country seemed to many to be coming undone. Patterson examines the period from several perspectives. Certainly, he explores domestic and international political patterns, but also goes into cultural and economic trends. This makes it a richer and more nuanced work than many standard histories, which are too often political narratives of who did what to whom. Not that Patternson is short on who and whom. His political portraits are vivid and often show how leaders' personalities interacted with events to produce specific outcomes. Patterson's discussion of Lyndon Johnson's policies brings out what some might consider the tragedy of Ol' Lyndon,, while his discussion of the Nixon/Eisenhower relationship almost made me sympathize with Tricky Dick. He gives the struggle for civil rights its rightful place, putting it at the center of the changes that overtook America in the 1960's, as the key instance of the "rights revolution" that affected so many areas of American life.

In a work with so wide a scope, some readers may well feel that some themes, or events, or personalities have been short-changed. And in a work which clearly strives for balance. some may feel that the approach on certain still-contentious issues is too tepid. Overall, however, this book provides a compelling narrative of a critical period. And those of us who lived through the period may find it particularly interesting. Several times in reading this book, I had "ah-ha!" moments -- so that's what was really going on.½

Normally I'm rather skeptical of books claiming that some year or other was the pivotal moment in history, but Patterson makes a fairly good case for 1965 as the starting point for that period which has come down to us as "The Sixties", with its war protests and racial discord, conservative resurgence after the 1964 drubbing, &c. A nicely-written and well-argued book, filled with interesting details. Particularly for those of us who weren't around to experience the era, putting different major political/military/economic events into the context of the cultural and sociological goings-on (television shows, songs, movies, technological developments) works well, and when all that happened during the year (and even just during a completely insane three-week period during the summer) is laid out so coherently, it certainly does lend credence to the idea that the year was a key turning point in a number of areas.½

Freedom, now as well as in the past, is not enough to secure equality and justice. When dealing with a nation with racism so embedded in the history and psyches of the people, giving the oppressed freedom, whether de facto or de jure, does not guarantee that they will actually be treated non-discriminately. It takes a generation or two to really pull people out of their mindsets of prejudice, not to mention the generation or two it takes for the despondent to gain some considerable social and political traction.

This is what Moynihan was pointing out in his report (in reality a leaked memo meant for government officials), actually titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Substantial government support was needed, according to Moynihan, to stem the dysfunction within black communities, dysfunction caused by racist and economic pressures that drove crime, unemployment, and family splintering. For as meaningful and pressing his position, it was equally misunderstood and admonished.

Almost immediately after the memo was leaked, the backlash against Moynihan and his positions started. Here was a white man discussing black culture and family structure, stating how the current state of the Negro family was dysfunctional and needed to be changed, and that it was so off that the government needed to intervene did not sit well with many black leaders and civil rights activists. Sadly, the overriding sentiment of the report and the possible policy contributions that could be gleaned was lost in a wave of resentment and distrust.

That is not to say that the report did not have an effect on policy reform, however the reform did not pan out the way Moynihan had hoped or intended. When the report was written, women with children were able to procure monetary support from the government but not if they were married. This did nothing to remedy or alleviate the family situation or provide a system in which black men were able to secure employment. In many ways, the welfare system created that which it sought to destroy – broken homes and families dependent on government subsidies. As the years rolled on, subsequent presidential administrations did little to improve the situation.

Patterson’s analysis of the report’s impact on social science was the most striking. The report had the effect of closing off dialogue rather than opening it up. Based on the initial reactions to the report, many sociologists avoided the issue of black family structure because of the controversy it incites. Beginning in the 1980s things began to improve on this front with outspoken people like Ken Auletta, Benjamin Hooks, and Glenn Loury. Nevertheless, even to this day, regardless of the speaker’s race, discussion of black family dysfunction remains controversial and often verboten to discuss in a meaningful manner. Until we are able to discuss these issues openly and honestly, effective public policies will remain elusive.

Patterson argues that Moynihan’s controversial report was widely misread. A child raised in a poor single-family household, Moynihan was convinced that family structure had become an independent barrier to African-American success, and that the liberal policies he desired had to take that into account by promoting family formation. Patterson seems pretty kind to Moynihan’s report, given that it fit at least as neatly into conservative narratives about the uselessness of antipoverty programs as into liberal calls for improving economic conditions, but Moynihan himself insisted that he was trying to get the best results for an interventionist Great Society. Really a book for policy wonks.½

While faulting Paterson for missing an opportunity to show the intersections of public and private life, to merge popular culture with politics and to place women's lives on an equal footing with men's, Elaine Taylor May still calls it a balanced and moderate account of the first three decades of the post war world. Charles Alexander also sees the account as balanced and "judicious." By starting with a chapter on "Veterans, Ethnics, Blacks and Women," Patterson sets the tone for the rest of the book. which is the account of "grand expectations" excited by the triumph in WWII and buoyed by the remarkable post-war economic boom. It was, as May points out, often the disparity between these grand expectations and the ability of the government to meet these expectations that lead to many of the rights revolution that grew in the land. Rhetoric about American liberty, it would seem, often outstripped the actual commitment of America's leaders to deliver social equality to all regardless of race, ethnicity, class or gender.

In his review for Reviews in American History, Walter Hixson points out some of the key issues which Patterson addresses in putting forward his "grand expectations" thesis. On the Cold War, Patterson finds that it was close to inevitable. Truman may have added to the apocalyptic character of the conflict, but Stalin bears much of the blame. The Korean War, despite many errors along the way was essentially a necessary war to stop North Korean aggression. In line with recent scholarship that revives Ike's powers as a statesman, his assessment of Eisenhower is quite favorable. The Red Scare popularly known as McCarthyism is set in a larger cultural context, with Ike getting a slight chiding for not taking Tail Gunner Joe on earlier in his presidency. He is artfully able to catch the mood of the times for the common folk in pointing to the importance of prosperity, against the critiques of America's self-appointed elites. For people getting their first home, the alienation of the intelligentsia meant little. Yet, he is writing top-down history and there is little in this very think volume of grass roots history. He acknowledges the contribution of grass roots activism to the Civil Rights cause but focus on the national leadership. Ike resisted Brown (1954) believing that his appointment of Earl Warren was the single biggest mistake of his administration. The Kennedy administration was haltingly converted to limited support of civil rights. It was LBJ who emerges as the real champion of social legislation, but he oversold it and fell victim to his own pride. The escalation he pursued in Vietnam was driven by his absolute obsession not to be tagged as the guy who "lost" Vietnam. It is, in Patterson's view, wholly unproductive to engage in the Monday morning quarterback exercise. This was the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy -- as LBJ was to learn. Patterson's critique of Nixon in Vietnam is also insightful. Had Nixon been willing to compromise in 69 he might have gotten instead what he ended up getting in 73. In the end, the economy's slump in the 70s, in combination with the double psychic shocks of Vietnam and Watergate, destroyed the confidence many Americans had in their government and put an end to the "grand expectations" of an era.

Alan Brinkley, in reviewing another of Pattern's books (America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900-1980) for Reviews in American History, comments on how the welfare state is so late and so light a tax burden in comparison to other western countries but that it still evokes a great deal of anger. In a scant 200 pages, Patterson explains the history of attitudes toward the poor starting with Progressivism, working through the New Deal and bringing the discussion through the War on Poverty and into the present world of "welfare reform." Patterson demonstrates that conservative inhibitions have rendered the American welfare state too small to be effective. In a country where middle class critics of the undeserving poor still dismiss the poor as "loafers" and "bums," conservative attitudes toward the poor have something of a 19th century ring to them. Patterson presents a "vision of a rich and powerful nation creating a modern welfare state almost in spite of itself, of a society stumbling into a commitment it neither understood nor desired."

2974 Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974, by James T. Patterson (read 26 Apr 1997)`I read this because it is a co-winner of the Bancroft History prize for 1997. It covers a period I know well, and is based on secondary sources, but it does a good job and its views are neither too liberal nor too conservative. It was a tumultuous 30 years and this book tells the story thereof well.

3589. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, by James T. Patterson (read June 16 2002) I thought the early part of this book was simplistic and perfunctorily done, but I got caught up in the account of events after 1954 re segregation in schools. Patterson tells an important story though I think he is more pessimistic about Brown's legacy than I tend to be. I thought it encouraging to know that now 87% of the people believe Brown was rightly decided--which is a big improvement over the reaction I recall so vividly on May 17, 1954, even among knowledgeable non-biased law students. A very worthwhile book, making me want to read more on the subject, especially Richard Kluger's Simple Justice, which is apparently the classic treatment, published in 1975, and which I regret never yet having read. [I later did.]½

It's a grand book. I love James T. Patterson and his research is thorough. It's a long book but well worth it.

The New Deal makes a somewhat awkward fit for this book, since it was a broad campaign against the anomalies of depression, not against the pathology of persistent poverty as such. But it did commit the Democrats to the virtues of government intervention, and so forecast Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty. Patterson's narrative is somewhat discontinuous: in the lulls between legislative blockbusters, he turns away from politics to the social science of poverty. But perhaps that discontinuity reflects the disjunction between sociological expertise and political willpower over the course of America's most futile war.