Blogger's note:

I apologize for the spontaneous changes in font size between posts. I used Microsoft Word to get a word count for my posts and I suspect that has caused some mayhem amongst their ranks. I will attempt to fix this as best I can. Thank you for understanding!!!

Post 4:

While The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why was an informative read I would not recommend it to other readers who didn’t major in political science or have a tremendous excess of time on their hands. The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why is by no means an easy read. Elizabeth Drew knows what she’s talking about, there’s no doubt about that; but she can’t translate what she knows into words for those of us who don’t for her life. Even a reader with a good grasp of the American political system may struggle to figure out exactly what point Drew is trying to prove. In addition, Drew provides an excess of totally unnecessary detail. No offense to her work (or Fred Thompson’s hair), but I have absolutely no need to know Fred Thompson’s hair color to understand his role in the Nixon trials. These purposeless tidbits serve only to aggravate readers like me who are in pain trying to decrypt Drew’s seemingly enigmatic writings. In addition to this, Drew seems to draw almost no conclusions over the course of a chapter: She throws details and quotes this way and that for pages, leaving the reader in wonder, and then finally, at the end of a chapter, explains how her writings were actually relevant to her point. Suffice to say, Drew’s writings were not intended to be read by the faint of heart… or the casual reader.

Despite how annoying some of the portions of Drew’s book were, her work was (ultimately) informational and it did enhance my understanding of the American political system (the reason why I wouldn’t recommend it, of course, is that there are much less grueling ways to go about doing such).  Drew’s deceptive seemingly-off-topic details actually do give the reader a good knowledge base from which to draw conclusions about American politics that they may be able to back up with such facts. She provides excellent information as to exactly what happened to the American political system to allow corruption and indicates that such corruption may be fixed by the events being somehow reversed (such as campaign finance reform blocking soft money). Hence Drew’s work does provide the reader with an better understanding of American politics.

Post 3:

The second portion of the book highlights (as I predicted) less economic forms of corruption in the American political system. Drew shifts emphasis from the exploitation of the partisan system with PACs and soft money to such scandals as those of former President Clinton and that of the Nixon administration. In addition to analyzing these scandals, Drew attacks the Clinton administration as being “poll-driven”. She quotes a Democratic political consultant (whose name is not given) saying, “Reagan used polling to figure out how to sell his beliefs. Clinton uses polling to figure out what to believe.” (152). At this point Drew seems to almost be in a fury of assaulting the Clinton presidency, further claiming that “…even into his second term, Clinton had given the country no sense of direction.” She even provides some form of proof: at the beginning of his second term, Clinton apparently formed a “legacy committee” of his staff designed solely to determine what his legacy would be. Suffice to say, I and many others would agree that a President shouldn’t have to use his staff to figure out what he should be passionate enough about for the country to remember him for it. Drew’s point now becomes quite clear: the quality of our politicians has declined and is declining. While our first president, George Washington was instrumental in leading our country to freedom, not seeking fame but seeking justice, presidents such as Clinton now, unfortunately, hire people to figure how to make them more famous. To assure the reader knows this, Drew outright states that “…the last great presidential leader was Lyndon Johnson…” to finalize her view that standard of our leaders has plummeted.

Curiously, Drew’s review of the Clinton impeachment trials has surprisingly little to do with Clinton himself. Instead, she stresses another source of corruption of American politics: extreme partisanship. Drew points out that the Senators’ opinions on Clinton’s impeachment had a tremendous tendency to be partisan in nature. One needs only examine the results of the vote to see this: almost every Republican senator voted guilty on both Articles (a perjury charge and an obstruction of justice charge), and the opposite holds true for every Democratic senator. Perhaps fortunately for Clinton, a handful of Republican senators voted not guilty on both or not guilty on one charge, which hence turned the tides in Clinton’s favor. It is, however, highly unlikely that the opinion of every Democratic senator was, without regard to Clinton’s party affiliation, not guilty on both counts, and that the verdict of almost every Republican senator was the opposite. This exemplifies the partisanship displayed in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.

To shift the focus away from Clinton from a bit and back to the world of money, Drew points out another attention-catching flaw in our political donation system: Senatorial sabotage. Particularly in the case of campaign finance reform advocates, certain senators have donated money to campaigns in an effort to defeat these advocates. One example Drew uses features Senators McConnell and Feingold. According to Drew, “…McConnell poured money into Wisconsin in an effort to defeat Russell Feingold, a leading backer of campaign finance reform.” It would appear, then, that McConnell could not rely on his own advocacy to defeat campaign finance reform, but instead felt it would be easier to get someone, anyone, into the Senate who wouldn’t support campaign finance reform. This almost-petty behavior demonstrates the continued decline in the quality of politicians.

My prediction from the last post was correct. The second portion of the book did focus on less-economic aspects of the corruption of the American political system.

Post 2:

The book The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why has been an interesting read thus far, to be sure. Drew describes a plethora of flaws in the American political system, many of which are obvious to the educated reader. She proceeds to detail, in more specifics, what allows these flaws to work through use of an actual example. Up through Chapter 7, Drew mostly describes the influence that money has had on the political system, especially presidential elections. Other than this, she points out that increased partisanship and lack of virtue has caused a dramatic decrease in the overall quality of recent politicians. To demonstrate the latter, she goes into (unnecessarily excessive) detail about the Watergate Scandal that defeated the Nixon administration as well as scandals amongst other administrations (such as the Clinton administration). To show the former, the author analyzes the effect soft money has had on the political system, and notably she describes the soft money loophole (which, in my opinion, was poorly explained: I still have no idea how exactly the loophole works, other than that it allows illegal amounts of money to be transferred to parties) and political action committees (PACs). Another example, which particularly caught my attention, was the Ted Sioeng/John Huang/Hsi Lai temple conspiracy. To quote the book, “[an article said] that Sioeng ‘may have been a conduit’ for some of the ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ that intelligence agencies traced from mainland China into California banks and that he used some of those funds to make political contributions” (92-93). John Huang then had a suspicious meeting with the President, following which intelligence agencies confirmed that China might have been attempting to influence American presidential elections through contributions. This, of course, was illegal, as nonresident foreigners couldn’t make contributions to party national committees, though he ultimately gave four hundred thousand dollars to the Democratic National Committee in 1996. Drew describes this particular incident for pages and pages, which is in one way a pro and in another way a con. Drew is very detailed in her description of particular events, which certainly draws the reader in, but it appears at times that she is rambling. Some of her details are important; others, like the color of a prosecutor’s assistant’s hair, are so trivial that it seems one would not include such in a book of any prestige. It is clear to me, however, that Drew’s intended audience is not a teenager with only a little knowledge of political corruption. Her book is likely written for a deeply involved political scientist or someone more avid on the topic than I. In retrospect, I would rather have selected another book, but I’ve gotten thus far and I do not intend to quit. I predict that the remainder of the book will focus primarily on some form of corruption less associated with commerce.

Post 1:

I chose the book The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why by Elizabeth Drew. The process I used to select a book was simply that I selected a book that I felt would be both interesting and educational. I selected a few candidates and than chose the book that was most easily available to me (i.e. "The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why" was available at a local library while my other possible choices were not). Hence, I chose the aforementioned book because I thought it would be intriguing, informative, and convenient to retrieve. Elizabeth Drew, the author of the book I chose, appears to have legitimate expertise in her field. She has made a variety of impressive accomplishments. She has been a Washington correspondent for two different publications, hosted a PBS interview show for two years, moderated a presidential nomination debate in 1984, has published 13 books on a variety of political topics, and was a former director of the Council on Foreign Affairs. I consider these achievements of hers to qualify her as adept with political topics. I expect the book may contain minimal bias, mostly of a partisan nature, since the author seems to have a moderately liberal view overall, judging by the summaries of a few other books she’s written. I do, however, expect that the material will be factual enough that I will be able to draw my own conclusions from it as opposed to relying on the author’s potentially slanted viewpoint.