Public Employee Press

Book review
How conservatives took over Washington

If you hoped President Obama would be able to carry out a more far-reaching and progressive agenda in his first term, you need only read "Winner-Take-All Politics" to understand the challenges and obstacles he faced.

"Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class" by political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (Simon & Schuster) tells how the financial elite and conservatives have taken over the nation's capital at the expense of the middle class.

Alarmed about the radicalism of the 1960s, big business and conservative ideologues launched a counterattack in the 1970s. Future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell captured that concern when he penned an influential memo declaring that the "American economic system is under broad attack." Powell, who was then education chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called upon the business community to respond by launching an organizational counteroffensive.

The result? Conservative think tanks, the economic elite and lobbyists have succeeded in shifting the political landscape in Washington and have been able to count on politicians like Ronald Reagan to carry out policies - deregulation, tax cuts, free-trade agreements - that have compromised the living standard of the middle class.

Only 175 firms had lobbyists in Washington in 1971; that number increased to 2,500 by 1982. The number of corporate PACs jumped from less than 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 in the mid-1980s. Increasingly, the Democratic Party has answered the call of big business and financial interests.

Today, the winner-take-all economy is characterized by a hyper-concentration of income. The nonrich have lost ground, unions have collapsed, and workplace benefits are disappearing.

A new "meaningful middle-class democracy," Hacker and Pierson say, will require "a long-term mobilization."

—Gregory N. Heires