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Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy
Who Will Tell the People is a passionate, eye-opening challenge to American democracy. Here is a tough-minded exploration of why we're in trouble, starting with the basic issues of who gets heard, who gets ignored, and why. Greider shows us the realities of power in Washington today, uncovering the hidden relationships that link politicians with corporations and the rich, and that subvert the needs of ordinary citizens.
How do we put meaning back into public life? Greider shares the stories of some citizens who have managed to crack Washington's "Grand Bazaar" of influence peddling as he reveals the structures designed to thwart them. Without naiveté or cynicism, Greider shows us how the system can still be made to work for the people, and delineates the lines of battle in the struggle to save democracy. By showing us the reality of how the political decisions that shape our lives are made, William Greider explains how we can begin to take control once more.
How do we put meaning back into public life? Greider shares the stories of some citizens who have managed to crack Washington's "Grand Bazaar" of influence peddling as he reveals the structures designed to thwart them. Without naiveté or cynicism, Greider shows us how the system can still be made to work for the people, and delineates the lines of battle in the struggle to save democracy. By showing us the reality of how the political decisions that shape our lives are made, William Greider explains how we can begin to take control once more.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 1992
24 people are currently reading
709 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 30, 2010
I bought this book years ago at a booksale for a dollar, and it's sat unread along with many others, gathering dust. I finally got around to it a couple weeks back, and was seriously impressed by the quality of Who Will Tell the People. It is a far cry from the "Democrats Good, Republicans Bad" book that I thought it might be. Instead, it is a complex and challenging text exploring the many ways that American democracy does not serve the interests of US citizens.
Written in 1992, this book does not show its age, except for its failure to anticipate the rise and importance of the internet. But the core of the problems laid out by Greider remain as intractable as when the book was new. Particularly notable is the emphasis on how policy is made rather than focus on elections. While money in elections is of course a major issue, the presence of corporate entities in every step of the policy-making process--from executive agencies to the halls of Congress to regulatory rulemakings--is the central fact of how policy is made. Greider is a perceptive observer of this process and lays out a very convincing case about the powerlessness of citizens in our democracy, both its causes and its effects.
The chapter that examines the Savings and Loan bailout is particularly interesting, as much of the same material was repeated on a larger and more expensive scale during the lead up to the financial crisis of 2008. The chapter on the politics of federal tax issues also bear a striking resemblence to the current debate regarding tax cuts first passed under the George Bush Jr. administration.
This is a book of great power, written in an educated but not academic style. Though it's clear that Greider is politically of the left, his critique is systemic, and does not spare either major political party. A great primer for those interested in understanding the the power relations that dominate the policy making process.
Written in 1992, this book does not show its age, except for its failure to anticipate the rise and importance of the internet. But the core of the problems laid out by Greider remain as intractable as when the book was new. Particularly notable is the emphasis on how policy is made rather than focus on elections. While money in elections is of course a major issue, the presence of corporate entities in every step of the policy-making process--from executive agencies to the halls of Congress to regulatory rulemakings--is the central fact of how policy is made. Greider is a perceptive observer of this process and lays out a very convincing case about the powerlessness of citizens in our democracy, both its causes and its effects.
The chapter that examines the Savings and Loan bailout is particularly interesting, as much of the same material was repeated on a larger and more expensive scale during the lead up to the financial crisis of 2008. The chapter on the politics of federal tax issues also bear a striking resemblence to the current debate regarding tax cuts first passed under the George Bush Jr. administration.
This is a book of great power, written in an educated but not academic style. Though it's clear that Greider is politically of the left, his critique is systemic, and does not spare either major political party. A great primer for those interested in understanding the the power relations that dominate the policy making process.
August 5, 2008
This book is a stunningly detailed, smart, and unambiguous dissection of everything that's wrong with American democracy: all of the places where the reality of present-day American life contradicts the (we hope) more long-lasting collective ideal of what it should be.
I said "present-day" because, although this book was written over sixteen years ago, its age only enhances its power. The first few chapters, every page dense with concrete details where most political books content themselves with vague abstractions, lay out what now appears to be an over-familiar, even naive diagnosis: meaningless, manipulated elections; corporate control of the legislative process; the decay of community organizations and the consequent exclusion of most of the populace from democratic participation; the enslavement of the two major parties to the lawyer-lobbyist class; the degeneration of public political discourse and the abandonment by the press of its public trust in the mass media age; the exclusively economic imperatives of globalization, etc., etc. etc.
You've heard it all before, and it's frustrating to hear it once again with the usual pallid bottom line: "The American people could fix all these problems, if only...", usually followed by an exhortation to continue talking, reading, and protesting.
But here's how this amazing book is different: Greider goes beyond, way beyond, merely running down the laundry list of problems and analyzes each one with breathtaking precision and microscopic detail. Pick any wittily-titled political tome on the bestseller list and you'll find the equivalent of a gross anatomy textbook (emphasis on the "gross"). Greider's book operates on the molecular level. If you can just hang on and power through the wall of words (I took frequent breaks), I promise you'll learn at least ten things about the way our public institutions regularly operate that are so outrageous, disgusting, and out-and-out criminal that, depending on your general disposition, will either send you into fits of rage or plunge you into a deep depression. The breadth, depth, and specificity of the information reported and analyzed here indicate a dizzying feat of research, intellectual courage, and sheer back-breaking labor. And most amazing of all, it's mostly public information... acts of treachery, betrayal, and deceit that occur every day in full public view, but which go unnoticed or just un-cared-about.
And that gets to what's so interesting about picking up this book sixteen years later... almost every malignancy in here continues to fester unabated. In most cases, problems have not just magnified but exploded, and still nothing and no one has shown much will to stop them. As a result of these sad trends, much of the book has a prescient quality: Greider knew about a lot of really bad stuff years before it became common knowledge, and a lot of it (willful environmental degradation, the economic slash-and-burn of globalization, the concentration of executive power and its resulting parade of illegalities, etc.) has grown so operatically obvious at the hands of the Bush people that, it seems, we may finally haved reached the moment when people are finally catching on. But Greider never intentionally sets out to predict the future; he just understood his time so acutely that he couldn't help but get it right.
Two quick examples, one to chill and one to thrill... here's Greider, boldly proposing to modify the traditional role of the military in order to harness its overwhelming force in the service of addressing domestic needs:
"The military institution exists, a huge and expensive reality that permeates the national political life. After four decades in place, the national-security state is not going to go away any time soon. The daunting question is how its components might be reintegrated-- in productive ways-- with the concerns and institutions of a regular democratic order.
Otherwise, if nothing much changes, there will be a continuing political imperative to seek out new conflicts that justify the existence of the national-security state. The CIA, if it remains independent and secretive, will keep churning out its inflated assessments of new "threats." The armed services, if not restructured and reduced in size, will inevitably be dispatched to fight again on dubious battlefields. The presidency, if its warrior prerogatives are not rescinded, will be free to continue the Cold War under some other name."
The italics are mine; remember, he's writing a good ten years before 9/11, while we were still celebrating the success of the "good" Iraq war and collectively exhaling as we finally accepted that the Cold War really was over. Who else at the time could have anticipated that we'd be doing it again so soon, under the catchy new name "The War on Terror?" Obviously there's no way Greider could have anticipated Bush, 9/11, or Iraq, but he clearly knew something was bound to happen.
Now the good news:
"Sooner or later, the optimists would say, someone somewhere will discover the media methods for... developing and sustaining conversation with the listeners, activating the capacities of citizens without making them bit players in someone else's drama. The continuing emergence of wondrous new technologies... argues that human imagination will eventually find the links that can restore a sense of democratic vitality....
It is possible, in other words, the watch "[America's] Funniest Home Videos" and imagine America, someday soon, as a nation of TV producers. Citizens making their own messages for broadcast-- that's power. Citizens everywhere covering the news for themselves-- that's power too, as the Los Angeles policemen discovered when a home video recorded their brutal beating of a black motorist.
Possibly, some enterprising TV syndicate will eventually... invite citizens to tell other kinds of stories about themselves-- to send in videotapes that record deeper dramas from their lives or, who knows, even stories that express their own political ideas and aspirations. I can envision an entertaining and meaningful low-budget program that simply airs the most provocative works of America's TV guerrillas-- citizen filmmakers who harness the outrage of talk radio to more purposeful content and with less manipulation by the on-air personality....
...But the actual shape of the future still depends crucially on which economic and political forces get to design it....
...As individual citizens develop their own communications skills and organize their own computer networks, they will be able to go around the mass media and talk to one another. But they will still be shut out of the mass-audience debate if the owners refuse them access."
Not bad for someone writing three years before the release of Netscape 1.0. If Greider is even aware of the internet, he clearly doesn't yet see its importance (he makes quaint reference to a concept he calls "telecomputers"). But what fun to map the parade of insights detailed above on to the realities we've already seen come to pass: the de riguer attention now paid by big media to internet-enabled audience feedback and user-generated content; YouTube; the rough-and-tumble of the political blogosphere; the treacherous balance of power brought about by the privatization of the internet backbone (see Comcast's ongoing attempts to own their users' online experience).
When Greider talks about how technology may shape our cultural future, it's with a tone of cautious utopianism that lets a sliver of light in to this otherwise deeply dark and discouraging account. Like a lot of us, Greider looks around and fails to find much evidence that change is possible any time soon, yet he places a great deal of faith in the fundamental goodness and democratic instincts of Americans; he's also smart enough to know that the future's only definitive promise is its unpredictability. He just about tells us that he believes things will get better some day; he just has no idea how.
It's not much to hang on to, but it's something.
I said "present-day" because, although this book was written over sixteen years ago, its age only enhances its power. The first few chapters, every page dense with concrete details where most political books content themselves with vague abstractions, lay out what now appears to be an over-familiar, even naive diagnosis: meaningless, manipulated elections; corporate control of the legislative process; the decay of community organizations and the consequent exclusion of most of the populace from democratic participation; the enslavement of the two major parties to the lawyer-lobbyist class; the degeneration of public political discourse and the abandonment by the press of its public trust in the mass media age; the exclusively economic imperatives of globalization, etc., etc. etc.
You've heard it all before, and it's frustrating to hear it once again with the usual pallid bottom line: "The American people could fix all these problems, if only...", usually followed by an exhortation to continue talking, reading, and protesting.
But here's how this amazing book is different: Greider goes beyond, way beyond, merely running down the laundry list of problems and analyzes each one with breathtaking precision and microscopic detail. Pick any wittily-titled political tome on the bestseller list and you'll find the equivalent of a gross anatomy textbook (emphasis on the "gross"). Greider's book operates on the molecular level. If you can just hang on and power through the wall of words (I took frequent breaks), I promise you'll learn at least ten things about the way our public institutions regularly operate that are so outrageous, disgusting, and out-and-out criminal that, depending on your general disposition, will either send you into fits of rage or plunge you into a deep depression. The breadth, depth, and specificity of the information reported and analyzed here indicate a dizzying feat of research, intellectual courage, and sheer back-breaking labor. And most amazing of all, it's mostly public information... acts of treachery, betrayal, and deceit that occur every day in full public view, but which go unnoticed or just un-cared-about.
And that gets to what's so interesting about picking up this book sixteen years later... almost every malignancy in here continues to fester unabated. In most cases, problems have not just magnified but exploded, and still nothing and no one has shown much will to stop them. As a result of these sad trends, much of the book has a prescient quality: Greider knew about a lot of really bad stuff years before it became common knowledge, and a lot of it (willful environmental degradation, the economic slash-and-burn of globalization, the concentration of executive power and its resulting parade of illegalities, etc.) has grown so operatically obvious at the hands of the Bush people that, it seems, we may finally haved reached the moment when people are finally catching on. But Greider never intentionally sets out to predict the future; he just understood his time so acutely that he couldn't help but get it right.
Two quick examples, one to chill and one to thrill... here's Greider, boldly proposing to modify the traditional role of the military in order to harness its overwhelming force in the service of addressing domestic needs:
"The military institution exists, a huge and expensive reality that permeates the national political life. After four decades in place, the national-security state is not going to go away any time soon. The daunting question is how its components might be reintegrated-- in productive ways-- with the concerns and institutions of a regular democratic order.
Otherwise, if nothing much changes, there will be a continuing political imperative to seek out new conflicts that justify the existence of the national-security state. The CIA, if it remains independent and secretive, will keep churning out its inflated assessments of new "threats." The armed services, if not restructured and reduced in size, will inevitably be dispatched to fight again on dubious battlefields. The presidency, if its warrior prerogatives are not rescinded, will be free to continue the Cold War under some other name."
The italics are mine; remember, he's writing a good ten years before 9/11, while we were still celebrating the success of the "good" Iraq war and collectively exhaling as we finally accepted that the Cold War really was over. Who else at the time could have anticipated that we'd be doing it again so soon, under the catchy new name "The War on Terror?" Obviously there's no way Greider could have anticipated Bush, 9/11, or Iraq, but he clearly knew something was bound to happen.
Now the good news:
"Sooner or later, the optimists would say, someone somewhere will discover the media methods for... developing and sustaining conversation with the listeners, activating the capacities of citizens without making them bit players in someone else's drama. The continuing emergence of wondrous new technologies... argues that human imagination will eventually find the links that can restore a sense of democratic vitality....
It is possible, in other words, the watch "[America's] Funniest Home Videos" and imagine America, someday soon, as a nation of TV producers. Citizens making their own messages for broadcast-- that's power. Citizens everywhere covering the news for themselves-- that's power too, as the Los Angeles policemen discovered when a home video recorded their brutal beating of a black motorist.
Possibly, some enterprising TV syndicate will eventually... invite citizens to tell other kinds of stories about themselves-- to send in videotapes that record deeper dramas from their lives or, who knows, even stories that express their own political ideas and aspirations. I can envision an entertaining and meaningful low-budget program that simply airs the most provocative works of America's TV guerrillas-- citizen filmmakers who harness the outrage of talk radio to more purposeful content and with less manipulation by the on-air personality....
...But the actual shape of the future still depends crucially on which economic and political forces get to design it....
...As individual citizens develop their own communications skills and organize their own computer networks, they will be able to go around the mass media and talk to one another. But they will still be shut out of the mass-audience debate if the owners refuse them access."
Not bad for someone writing three years before the release of Netscape 1.0. If Greider is even aware of the internet, he clearly doesn't yet see its importance (he makes quaint reference to a concept he calls "telecomputers"). But what fun to map the parade of insights detailed above on to the realities we've already seen come to pass: the de riguer attention now paid by big media to internet-enabled audience feedback and user-generated content; YouTube; the rough-and-tumble of the political blogosphere; the treacherous balance of power brought about by the privatization of the internet backbone (see Comcast's ongoing attempts to own their users' online experience).
When Greider talks about how technology may shape our cultural future, it's with a tone of cautious utopianism that lets a sliver of light in to this otherwise deeply dark and discouraging account. Like a lot of us, Greider looks around and fails to find much evidence that change is possible any time soon, yet he places a great deal of faith in the fundamental goodness and democratic instincts of Americans; he's also smart enough to know that the future's only definitive promise is its unpredictability. He just about tells us that he believes things will get better some day; he just has no idea how.
It's not much to hang on to, but it's something.
March 31, 2008
Dense but illuminating documentation of how wealthy interests (large corporations, PACs, their lobbyists) wield tremendous influence in Washington, and that a great deal of it happens when no one is watching, i.e. not during a major election season.
Nothing that will come as major news to a political veteran, but useful nonetheless for the stories and specifics. Of course, it's as relevant today as it was 15 years ago.
Nothing that will come as major news to a political veteran, but useful nonetheless for the stories and specifics. Of course, it's as relevant today as it was 15 years ago.
November 19, 2019
This book takes a comprehensive look at the corruption of our democracy and provides an inspiring guidebook for how to restore it. William Greider's work is a million times more relevant today than even was when he wrote it. It should be required reading for all citizens, and especially for those like myself who came to Washington as a journalist.
November 5, 2008
This book made me realize how important consumer advocates like Nader really are. It also made my stomach churn by heaping on so much depressing and morally outraging data about the dubious nature of the relationship(s) between government and commerce.
September 1, 2008
A great explanation of how we got where we are. Too bad nobody read it or heeded it.
May 12, 2010
This book is about the facade of American democracy.
February 15, 2013
Tremendous... a very illuminating walk through how money operates the levers of power. Highly recommend.
August 8, 2019
A perfect companion to "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. Given these insightful readings, there really is no excuse to be surprised at the unraveling of America.
January 14, 2020
"My earliest political memory was at the death of Lincoln when I cried inconsolably."
In the immortal words of Greil Marcus, "what is this shit?"
I actually liked this book a great more deal than the following review is probably going to suggest. Several parts of it outright irritate me, as evidenced by the quote I've chosen to dunk on in opening this review.
William Greider's "Who Will Tell the People?" isn't so much a nonfiction book about the American political process and how it's evolved in something else by time of publishing, as it is detailed autopsy over what's wrong with America. Like a clinician, Greider takes us through the political process, through lobbyists, think tanks, grassroots consumer groups and others to paint a picture of how government operates.
He's one hell of a writer in this book. It's excellently organized, wonderfully reported, and Greider has a stack of un-famous notables and examples to choose from. He shows how laws are rendered inert and the federal-level legislative process is made impotent (unless you work for a Fortune 500). Stand outs include Byron Dorgan's crusade against the S&L industry in the early 80s, the way the rich militantly crow for tax cuts (and get them), and the chapter, "the Fixers."
Much of it still upholds today, and reading this in the early days of the year 2020, the book is both out of date, and prescient. It talks about concerns of endless war, financial catastrophe, concerns which the book was correct about 25 years ago. The only thing it doesn't discuss at all is the internet, which given Greider's diatribes against television he would think even less of being "online." The examples seem dated, but given 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession and its causes, Greider is more on the nose than you might think.
Someone in a review suggested to pair reading this with Zinn's People's History, which is a fine idea. A better and shorter pairing might by with Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal, or any of his books on the Republicans.
But here's what I hated:
I opened this review with the start of the book's conclusion. While Greider for much of the book is at this best, it's sandwiched constantly between West Wing brained writing. What child cries when he finds out Lincoln died, not because a person died but because what he meant to "the fufillment of America's democratic faith?" What the fuck does that mean? It's Sorkin-esque nonsense. Democratic faith sounds nice but doesn't actually mean anything.
And the book is absolutely riddled with shite language like that. The introduction is 25 pages long, you can cut at least 20 of them because it's full of abtract or poetic-sound language. It doesn't mean anything and it only obscures what the book is actually about. Going further, the first few pages of each chapter is also full of this filler hooptedoodle, and can easily be cut. If you were to cut all this nonsense out, the book is at least a good 50 pages shorter.
It sounds all very nice, but it actually obscures what Greider is trying to say. I also think his repeated use of metaphors doesn't help him out at all. To me it's puzzling, the meat of the book is so rich and well-done, and he spends a good portion of it dumping literary ketchup on it.
In the immortal words of Greil Marcus, "what is this shit?"
I actually liked this book a great more deal than the following review is probably going to suggest. Several parts of it outright irritate me, as evidenced by the quote I've chosen to dunk on in opening this review.
William Greider's "Who Will Tell the People?" isn't so much a nonfiction book about the American political process and how it's evolved in something else by time of publishing, as it is detailed autopsy over what's wrong with America. Like a clinician, Greider takes us through the political process, through lobbyists, think tanks, grassroots consumer groups and others to paint a picture of how government operates.
He's one hell of a writer in this book. It's excellently organized, wonderfully reported, and Greider has a stack of un-famous notables and examples to choose from. He shows how laws are rendered inert and the federal-level legislative process is made impotent (unless you work for a Fortune 500). Stand outs include Byron Dorgan's crusade against the S&L industry in the early 80s, the way the rich militantly crow for tax cuts (and get them), and the chapter, "the Fixers."
Much of it still upholds today, and reading this in the early days of the year 2020, the book is both out of date, and prescient. It talks about concerns of endless war, financial catastrophe, concerns which the book was correct about 25 years ago. The only thing it doesn't discuss at all is the internet, which given Greider's diatribes against television he would think even less of being "online." The examples seem dated, but given 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession and its causes, Greider is more on the nose than you might think.
Someone in a review suggested to pair reading this with Zinn's People's History, which is a fine idea. A better and shorter pairing might by with Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal, or any of his books on the Republicans.
But here's what I hated:
I opened this review with the start of the book's conclusion. While Greider for much of the book is at this best, it's sandwiched constantly between West Wing brained writing. What child cries when he finds out Lincoln died, not because a person died but because what he meant to "the fufillment of America's democratic faith?" What the fuck does that mean? It's Sorkin-esque nonsense. Democratic faith sounds nice but doesn't actually mean anything.
And the book is absolutely riddled with shite language like that. The introduction is 25 pages long, you can cut at least 20 of them because it's full of abtract or poetic-sound language. It doesn't mean anything and it only obscures what the book is actually about. Going further, the first few pages of each chapter is also full of this filler hooptedoodle, and can easily be cut. If you were to cut all this nonsense out, the book is at least a good 50 pages shorter.
It sounds all very nice, but it actually obscures what Greider is trying to say. I also think his repeated use of metaphors doesn't help him out at all. To me it's puzzling, the meat of the book is so rich and well-done, and he spends a good portion of it dumping literary ketchup on it.
April 3, 2021
Top-notch, scholarly; salient, pertinent, relevant! My views, frustrations & complaints were articulated, & expounded upon. It’s not a dated but smart book. I wish I could’ve understood more readily the finance-economic arguments that were made but it was comforting to know that the author appreciates that most ordinary people are not familiar with technical jargon & such abstract knowledge. Greider provides even solutions, and alternative ways to go about things—he goes further than just describing the shortcomings & the grievous deceits of both government & corporations, and discusses with the reader viable answers. It was just such a well-written book too! The author’s trove of vocabulary is put to good use. One can feel, in a sense, the weight of every paragraph, and see the craftsmanship not only in his sentences, but in the layout of the book, and in the specificity of every chapter. I wanted to quote so much of what he wrote for I’ve always felt disenchanted with politics, and have usually been despondent to the calls for active citizenry, but have never been able to express myself past an ambiguous anger/disappointment. My mistrust. My apathy. Greider urges people from all nations to get involved, to educate themselves, and to be hopeful for democracy.
This deserves five, not four, stars. You might already know mildly about the connivings of corporations such as GE, and of the baleful influence of money in everything, but this book has an excellent scope on matters national & international, & transnational. It’s dense, & is ~415 pgs. So it’s not very accessible to most people. Casual readers might be fatigued or overwhelmed at some point as it meticulously illustrates how stifled citizens have become, and how oppression has actually deprived people of access to critical & essential information. But it’s SO informative & cogent. A perfect book.
This deserves five, not four, stars. You might already know mildly about the connivings of corporations such as GE, and of the baleful influence of money in everything, but this book has an excellent scope on matters national & international, & transnational. It’s dense, & is ~415 pgs. So it’s not very accessible to most people. Casual readers might be fatigued or overwhelmed at some point as it meticulously illustrates how stifled citizens have become, and how oppression has actually deprived people of access to critical & essential information. But it’s SO informative & cogent. A perfect book.
August 31, 2025
This book is not quite as brilliant as Grieder's excellent volume on the Fed, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE. But despite being about one hundred pages too long, it remains an enjoyably punchy and cogent panorama of the political scene in 1992, examining the manner in which both parties significantly eroded what was possible for the people. Grieder was prescient enough to see the rise of YouTube and TikTok as legitimate mechanisms to give voice to the people (and, of course, we know that Democratic lawmakers who voted in large numbers for the TikTok ban based on what we now know to be a phony "national security threat" of TikTokkers posting about Palestine). He also has a number of masterful observations on the DNC. Even in the early 1990s, neoliberal power was consolidated around money and poor organization. Grieder leans perhaps a little too much on Daniel Moynihan as the great American liberal sage, but it's clear from reading this volume that he knew who and what to fight. And I deeply regret never meeting him or interviewing him back in the day. This is one of those fun little books that used to be published all the time. A journalist near the end of his days being a little half-assed in the "investigation," but who has pragmatic and trenchant thoughts about his issues with the great American experiment.
February 27, 2017
Even if you don't agree with Greider that the whole game is rigged, still worthwhile reading just to get another perspective.
Theme is that corporate interests rule, and that the law is randomly applied, which causes a number of suboptimal outcomes. (the latter point is one of the tenets of conservatism)
Theme is that corporate interests rule, and that the law is randomly applied, which causes a number of suboptimal outcomes. (the latter point is one of the tenets of conservatism)
October 23, 2024
a must read for anyone who's starting to see the cracks in the facade of our current political system. could really use a revised edition after this next election
September 26, 2011
It has taken me several months, but I have finally finished reading Who Will Tell The People by William Greider. It wasn’t an easy book to read, it deals with government policy, protocol, politics, economics, and history. However, it was a fascinating book, therefore I stayed with it as I read several other books in between its completion. I have been a fan of Greider’s since I started reading his articles about politics and the economy in the pages of Rolling Stone.
It is amazing how accurate Greider’s description of the failings of democracy is today, 12 years after the book had been published (1992)-not much has changed, especially during the build up to the November 2004 elections. Most of his examples come from the Carter-Regan-Bush administrations or before. But he does an amazing job of showing how the power of the people has been transferred over the years into the hands of the rich and powerful. However, he does provide examples of how these powerful forces have been overcome by grass roots movements, and he seems hopeful that someday the true spirit of democracy will be seen in government.
One of his biggest concerns is how government fails in its greatest role upholding laws:
”Corrective mechanisms that are supposed to prevent political manipulations have been purposely weakened. And public inherits a grave injustice: a government that will not faithfully perform its most basic function-enforcing laws.” (107)
Corporations will often accept fines rather than changes business practices that are in opposition to laws passed by the government for the good of the people. How long did it take to get air bags installed as a matter of course in cars?
He goes on to look at the unseemly practice of government officials going from public office to corporations:
”The federal government as a whole has been reduced to a training camp for private enterprise-a school in which the students learn the skills and insider knowledge that will be most valuable to outside employers. Under those circumstances only the most dedicated civil servants-or the most incompetent-are willing to remain in the public’s hire.” (116)
I know every administration is guilty of this, but it seems more visible in Bush's administration with Condi Rice coming from Exxon and Dick Cheney from Halliburton. The first MBA president, who has run every company that he has led into the ground save the Texas Rangers, scares me-business leaders are beholden to their stockholders-everyone else has to fend for themselves, this model works well when you think of shareholders as the people who gave money to his campaign,
The Democrats are just as guilty of this as the Republicans as Greider discusses in his chapter "Who Owns The Democrats?" And it’s the same sort of big business types who fund Democrat candidates. The move to the center economically happened long before Clinton. This in turn leads to the kind of corporate welfare documented here:
”As it turned out, General Electric was possibly the biggest single winner in Ronald Regan’s celebrated tax cuts. It had corporate profits of $6.5 billion during 1981-1983 and, astonishingly, received a tax rebate of $283 million form the federal government. Its tax burden went from $330 million a year to minus $900 million a year-money the government now owed GE. By rough estimate, the 1981 tax legislation yielded as much as $1.3 billion for General Electric over several years and probably much more in the long run.” (341-342)
In the chapter “The Closet Dictator” he discusses the dangers of globalism, a chapter I’ll guess that led him to write his book on globalism, One World Ready Or Not. All in all, it was a very thought-provoking book. Actually, it riles me up, because there’s so little we can do about it. I guess democracy is a sort of utopian goal that we have to constantly strive for.
It is amazing how accurate Greider’s description of the failings of democracy is today, 12 years after the book had been published (1992)-not much has changed, especially during the build up to the November 2004 elections. Most of his examples come from the Carter-Regan-Bush administrations or before. But he does an amazing job of showing how the power of the people has been transferred over the years into the hands of the rich and powerful. However, he does provide examples of how these powerful forces have been overcome by grass roots movements, and he seems hopeful that someday the true spirit of democracy will be seen in government.
One of his biggest concerns is how government fails in its greatest role upholding laws:
”Corrective mechanisms that are supposed to prevent political manipulations have been purposely weakened. And public inherits a grave injustice: a government that will not faithfully perform its most basic function-enforcing laws.” (107)
Corporations will often accept fines rather than changes business practices that are in opposition to laws passed by the government for the good of the people. How long did it take to get air bags installed as a matter of course in cars?
He goes on to look at the unseemly practice of government officials going from public office to corporations:
”The federal government as a whole has been reduced to a training camp for private enterprise-a school in which the students learn the skills and insider knowledge that will be most valuable to outside employers. Under those circumstances only the most dedicated civil servants-or the most incompetent-are willing to remain in the public’s hire.” (116)
I know every administration is guilty of this, but it seems more visible in Bush's administration with Condi Rice coming from Exxon and Dick Cheney from Halliburton. The first MBA president, who has run every company that he has led into the ground save the Texas Rangers, scares me-business leaders are beholden to their stockholders-everyone else has to fend for themselves, this model works well when you think of shareholders as the people who gave money to his campaign,
The Democrats are just as guilty of this as the Republicans as Greider discusses in his chapter "Who Owns The Democrats?" And it’s the same sort of big business types who fund Democrat candidates. The move to the center economically happened long before Clinton. This in turn leads to the kind of corporate welfare documented here:
”As it turned out, General Electric was possibly the biggest single winner in Ronald Regan’s celebrated tax cuts. It had corporate profits of $6.5 billion during 1981-1983 and, astonishingly, received a tax rebate of $283 million form the federal government. Its tax burden went from $330 million a year to minus $900 million a year-money the government now owed GE. By rough estimate, the 1981 tax legislation yielded as much as $1.3 billion for General Electric over several years and probably much more in the long run.” (341-342)
In the chapter “The Closet Dictator” he discusses the dangers of globalism, a chapter I’ll guess that led him to write his book on globalism, One World Ready Or Not. All in all, it was a very thought-provoking book. Actually, it riles me up, because there’s so little we can do about it. I guess democracy is a sort of utopian goal that we have to constantly strive for.
December 6, 2023
Published in the early 90s, this book screams out a warning backed up by factual data. And tho the people, businsesses, and government have changed - the message remains constant. Loosely paraphrased . . . it is well understood that most Americans cannot stand their congressional representative, executive(s), or judiciary. What is less known, but far more dangerous, is the fact that representatives, executive(s) and judiciary cannot stand the American public. Reading it the first time, I would get so angry that my wife told me I could not read it before bedtime! Now....it's your turn!
February 3, 2008
I just remembered reading this when reading Howard Kurtz's new book, I discovered Kurtz areound the same time as Greider. I think this book may be out of print which means combing used bookstore shelves or ebay, it is worth it.
May 17, 2007
The best work of journalism on recent American politics. Creates a way of understanding our frustrations with government and the slow, but steady implosion of American democracy.
May 31, 2012
In depth review of how media presents propaganda.
July 25, 2012
I stopped reading this book after 30 pages. It is a dated attempt to blame modern technology for the world's not conforming to the way Greider wishes it would operate. Tant pis.
April 18, 2013
20 years on, it's still a great analysis of how special interests run DC.
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