Love and Hate: Rick Perlstein

When I grow up, I want to be Rick Perlstein. Commercial success, major awards, critical acclamation…the man has it all. “Before the Storm,” his history of the Barry Goldwater campaign, remains the definitive take on the subject. Topping “Before the Storm” would be like dethroning Wayne Gretzky as history’s greatest hockey player. It can’t be done. Perlstein’s second book, “Nixonland,” is—the cover blurb from Newsweek swears—the “best book ever written about the 1960s.”

What makes him so successful? Panache. He writes in a snappy style reminiscent of journalist-historians like J. Anthony Lukas and William Manchester. He has a golden ear for anecdotes. His narrative grabs you in the back of your brain and drags you helplessly from chapter to chapter. And his chapter titles are hands-down the best in the business. Consider the craftsmanship that went into something like “In Which Playboy Bunnies, and Barbarella, and Tanya Inspire Theoretical Considerations upon the Nature of Democracy.”

But my love for Perlstein goes beyond style. The man works in my wheelhouse—heck, he practically lives there. Among all the books that inspired me to study conservative history, “Before the Storm” ranks second, behind only the immortal “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.” Perlstein helped create the modern history of conservatism, for goodness sakes. Without him, I’d be flipping burgers at the Burger King off I-95. My dorm room, my stipend, and my carrel all ought to be stamped “Courtesy of Rick Perlstein.”

Having covered the “love” part of this love-hate relationship, I’ll move on to the fun stuff. I could link to George Will’s review of “Nixonland” and be done with it. But that would be shirking my duty as a blogger. Read the Will review first, then come back here.

Finished? Good. I agree with every word. “Nixonland” is “compulsively readable.” Perlstein does have “a gift for penetrating judgments.” And, at the same time, he does tend “to catch the ’60s disease of rhetorical excess” and to “[pile] up jejune incongruities.” He is a tremendously gifted writer, granted, but gifts can be misused, and Perlstein often abuses his beyond all human decency. It is fair to describe Lyndon Johnson as “psychopathic”? Hardly.

My deeper criticism has nothing to do with language and everything to do with content. Perlstein never met an ideology he liked. As Will points out, Perlstein sees ulterior motives behind everything, motives that are invariably crass and usually racist. Liberalism is a smokescreen used by the elite to justify their elite-ness. Conservatism is a paranoid fear-fueled backlash. And don’t get him started on neoconservatism.

I’ll never give up on Perlstein. That doesn’t mean I have to cut him slack. Rick Perlstein, you are officially on notice with this blog.