There’s a lot of surplus rage from the ’60s that was never really worked through publicly. I think a lot of that rage still exists, and I think you see that when John McCain runs a commercial that beats up on Hillary Clinton’s earmark for a Woodstock museum. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
There’s a certain kind of cultural energy pursued by the gatekeepers of elite discourse, who want to argue that Americans fundamentally agree with each other, and that’s the health of the nation. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Reagan’s emotional intelligence, his ability to suss out people’s longings and to channel them for political purposes, was better than just about any human being that ever lived. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
I think that all politicians who aspire to the presidency are a little nuts, but for different reasons. What kind of person aspires to be the most powerful person in the world? The answer is someone with an internal drive that is so dynamic and so determined. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
When I was a teenager in Milwaukee in the 1980s, life was pretty boring, and I found myself riveted by the sheer melodrama of everyday life of the 1960s. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan’s brand of leadership was what I call ‘a liturgy of absolution.’ He absolved Americans almost in a priestly role to contend with sin. Who wouldn’t want that? Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Everyone on the Left has a favorite story that allows them to kind of excuse Reagan, explain away Reagan, say he was dumb, but unless we reckon with that kind of emotional intelligence and his ability to kind of speak to the aspirations of the American people, the less liberals are going to be able to understand the soul of his appeal. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Liberals tend to stress how marvelous education is, in and of itself, and also adore it as a vessel for genuine equality. (That’s me, by the way: Hell, I think we should be spending $50 billion a year to make college education free). Rick Perlstein Read Quote
In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
