Jacob Weisburg On Kevin Philips

If Kevin Philips had been a musician, he'd have been a one hit wonder.  In 1969 he published a famous and influential book, The Emerging Republican Majority.  In it he argued that Republicans were about to build a national majority by using the race card to attract working class whites.  There was certainly some truth in that.  As Black voters (almost all of them) swung sharply to the Democratic Party in the sixties, Southern whites began a slow but steady drift toward the Republicans.  Of course race was hardly the only issue in this drift, but by emphasizing it, as Jacob Weisburg notes in Slate, he gave the book a Machiavellian edge that made it very successful. 

Since then he has occupied the coveted space of public intellectual without coming up with any more ideas or shedding light on anything.  This is mostly because he has, in front of his name, something the chattering classes value far more than a hereditary "Lord," or academic "doctor."  Its the word "even."  Philips began as a self-identified Republican, but he was in fact a man of the left.  So liberals loved to quote him.  "Even Kevin Philips, Republican, thinks Bush is stupid."  That sort of thing. 

Well, even Slate, a mostly liberal online journal, recognizes that Philips is full of hot air. 

Phillips' faults are on full, gaseous display in his latest jeremiad, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21^st Century. The book was No. 1 on Amazon before being released and has already been widely praised by liberals, who continue to welcome Phillips as a fresh convert to their side decades after his defection from the right. Alan Brinkley, a distinguished historian who should know better, last week praised American Theocracy in the lead essay of the New York Times Book Review as "frighteningly persuasive" and "a harrowing picture of national danger … that none should ignore." Time calls the book "indispensable."

Let me help dispense with it. Phillips' argument is that oil dependency, Christian fundamentalism, and excessive debt are destroying the country. He is not wrong that these are dangers. But he wildly misunderstands, distorts, and overstates all of them.