The American Political Pattern

This ambitious book outlines and seeks to explain the structure of American politics from the New Deal to the present. It focuses less on personalities than on underlying assumptions and opinions of both the larger public and engaged interest groups. The author, a distinguished political scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, gives special attention to political party balance, ideological polarization, and substantive party conflict—all of which he sees as derived from a “New Deal order.” That order, he asserts, has gone through four historical phases: the high New Deal era (1932–1938), the late New Deal era (1939–1968), the era of divided government (1969–1992), and the era of partisan volatility (1993–2016). A sketchy but effective history of the New Deal era recounts a familiar story of the way the strong Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency drove American politics and policy but was checked by the Supreme Court. It overcame that obstacle only to be halted by the sharp recession of 1937–1938 and subsequent liberal Democratic reverses in the congressional elections of 1938

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