The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s

by G. Calvin Mackenzie, Robert Weisbrot

A vibrant, revelatory history of the liberal moment of the 60s, one which argues that Washington wasn't simply a target of reform but was actually the era's most effective engine of change. In many accounts of the 60s, Washington is portrayed as a target of reform: a reluctant group of politicians coaxed into accepting the radical spirit the day demanded. In this volume of the award-winning Penguin History of American Life, Mackenzie & Weisbrot argue that the most powerful agents of change in the 60s were those in the traditional seats of power, not the counterculture. A masterly new interpretation of this pivotal decade, The Liberal Hour explores the seismic shifts that led to an era when demands that had lingered on the political agenda for years entered the realm of possibility. By the time JFK was elected in '60, the political system that had prevailed for most of the century was based on crumbling economic, social & demographic realities. The growth of the suburbs shifted power out of the cities, rendering urban political machines & bosses increasingly irrelevant, which in turn allowed younger, more independent-minded politicians to rise. In Congress, Democrats retained their long held control, but the Southern wing of the party was losing its grip. Postwar prosperity led many to believe there was enough wealth to go around, an optimism that lent powerful support to antipoverty programs, not to mention civil rights. For once the Supreme Court, which has traditionally served dominant interests, was aligned with the progressive spirit of the age. The 60s represented a rare convergence: a public ready for change & a government ready to act. Liberal reform may have begun with JFK's New Frontier, but his assassination only gave emotional urgency to his agenda. His successor, LBJ, knew he had a window of opportunity before reactionary forces set in, an awareness that may have fostered his occasionally bullying tactics to push legislation thru Congress. The result was a burst in government initiatives--for civil rights, consumer protection, environmental reform etc--that hasn't been matched in American history. Ultimately the liberal hour promised too much, & couldn't afford both a costly & unpopular war abroad & a Great Society at home, but when it passed it left in its wake a vastly altered landscape. With elegant, accessible prose, The Liberal Hour casts one of the most dramatic periods in American history in new light, revealing that for all that has been written about the more attention-grabbing protest movements, the most powerful engine of change in that tumultuous decade was Washington itself.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, Government

432 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2008

Reviews

[Kevin Scott]

This did not turn out to be the book it claims to be. Most fundamentally, the authors frame this as a book about how the elites, Congress, the President (and his staff), and the Supreme Court, issued in so much of the social change of the 1960s that is typically attributed to broader social movements. But I guess, to me, the story of the Court and of LBJ's big push in 1964 and 1965 is a well-told story. I was looking for, and thought I would get, the story of how Congress was so remarkably productive after decades of only minimal significant legislation. This book is really not that book. There are discussions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but I consider a lot of that to be well-covered elsewhere. I was much more interested in how Congress moved through so many other major pieces of legislation in such a short time period--Medicare, Medicaid, environmental legislation (there is some of that covered here), urban renewal legislation, major parts of the war on poverty--and who in Congress was pivotal. The authors promise, on page 3, the book about the role of Everett Dirksen and Emmanuel Celler in passing civil rights legislation and Celler basically never reappears in the book.

This is still a very good book--it is well researched and does a nice job of focusing on legislation and its strengths and shortcomings and tracing the origins of the policies that would become the liberal hour, but I just wish it had been more focused on the 1964-5 period and why those Congresses were SO different from any before or since.

[Erik Graff]

This book reviews the spate of progressive legislation initiated by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and passed by the Congress during the period spanning 1962-67. Covered also are rulings by the Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren. The thesis propounded by the authors is that the political initiative during these years was primarily with legislators and the courts, spurred in some cases by popular demands, but often anticipatory of public sentiment. This liberal direction in public policy was substantially continued under the Nixon administration, but at a slower pace owing primarily to the economic exigencies of the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia.

[Peter]

I'm a total failure as a son for taking this long to finish my own father's Pulitzer-finalist magnum opus. But I'm so glad to have finally gotten around to it and so proud of my Dad and our dear family friend Rob Weisbrot. They cover so much ground in this book, it's amazing that it's less than 400 pages long. It throws the decade of the 1960s into a whole new light, showing that much of the progress made in that era happened not because of social revolutions and street protests, but because of emboldened liberal elites in Washington. It's also a cautionary tale of how even the most successful ideological movements can end up in ruins.

[AliLikesToTalk]

Listen I READ MOST OF THIS for my class AND I wrote an essay on it so I’m counting it

[Daniel]

This book was a slow read for me, most likely because I hadn't read an honest-to-God political science text since I switched majors from political science to theater ten years ago. However, it was remarkably cogent and easy to read for all that it required the exercise of mental muscles long left dormant. There are parts that are repetitious, but each chapter goes over the decade with a new focus and some things invariably need repeating.

I picked this up as a recommendation to help me submerse myself in the 60s in preparation of a play about Vietnam, but the chapter on the Vietnam Conflict was near the end, which also made my "payoff" long in coming.

But while I was a fan of the book from the first chapter, I don't think I realized the extent of its brilliance until the final chapters when I really found my understanding of this period of American history expanded and deepened, as well as of the consequences with which we are currently contending.

While it may be considered irresponsible for an historian to be sympathetic toward their subject matter, I liked how Mackenzie and Weisbrot were compassionate toward all involved, outlining strengths and weaknesses, ideals and realities.

I would recommend this for anyone interested in the time period as it was informative and dispels a lot of romantic illusions about it.

[Andrew Klein]

Get yer lib-ruhl bona fides in order. One thing to take away: liberals provided a lot of the rational for massive military spending as a way to stimulate American industry. Oh yeah, and Vietnam. That, too.

[Emily Bragg]

not bad for a book picked up off the streets. only annoying thing was that when they kept going back to the start of the decade, it was hard to keep track sometimes of whether Johnson was VP or president when he comes up.

[Andrew]

Another book that has been on my shelf for a while now. The Liberal Hour is a clear-eyed look at the perfect storm that produced the liberal consensus that resulted in the unprecendented legislative output of the mid-1960's. Mackenzie and Weisbrot take a close and expansive look at both the domestic and international policies of the JFK and LBJ administrations. One thing that I found interesting was that the authors describe a Kennedy administration was not quite as politically dormant and resistent to liberal policies as portrayed in presdidential and other histories of the time. Even more fascinating, in the concluding chapter, was the description of the Nixon administration as continuing and even expanding liberal policies of the 1960's while rhetorically playing to the "silent majority" who had had enough of the liberal excesses. Makes me want to read John Roy Price's The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider's Perspective.

[Chelsea]

“The country would change in profound ways, and its politics and its policies would change as well. Never again would candidates rely so heavily on personal campaigning. Soon radio and television and jet travel would become the dominant election technologies. Never again would political parties ride so high in American politics. In 1948, the Democratic Party would blow apart over the civil rights issue, and parties would never be the same thereafter. And never again would America be the urban nation that it was in 1944.” (12)

“Still, the liberal hour demonstrated what democratic politics can produce when public consensus crescendos, when coherent majorities prevail, and when skilled leaders provide direction, inspiration, and relentless energy. In our own time, when so many Americans are disillusioned with our fractious, often ineffectual national politics, a glance at the 1960s reminds us of the potential of government to set lofty goals and actually build consensus to achieve them.” (376)

[Susan Halliday]

This was a tremendous read. I gained a deeper understanding of the politics, history, and sociology of the 60s. I particularly enjoy understanding how aspects of post- wwII America all converged to create the great strides of the 60s. Well- written, completely absorbing- one of my top 10 of all time.

[Les]

A very thorough and readable history of the politics of the 60's. The authors present the personalities of the key figures in a very vivid and unvarnished way.

[Frank Duke]

Somewhat superficial account of the apex of liberalism in the US in the 1960s.

[The_J]

The "Liberals" trying to remake a country, with circumstances that the country lives in on a continuing basis.

[Craig Werner]

Coin flip between this and Allen Matusow's The Unraveling of America as the best place to start reading about the (mostly mainstream) political culture of the 1960s. Matusow published his study in 1985, when some of the longer term patterns in the historiography and post-60s political culture hadn't yet come into focus; Mackenzie and Weisbrot have done a good job taking more recent scholarship into account in their synthetic history. They write clearly and keep the main narrative concerning the ways in which JFK and (especially) LBJ took advantage of a unique set of circumstances to push through what's arguably the most aggressive progressive agenda in American history. That, of course, is followed by the collapse of the liberal consensus in the face of Vietnam and the seismic shifts in the public presence of the African American Freedom Movement following the heroic (and often mythologized) campaigns in the South.

I do have some arguments with their interpretations; like a plurality/majority of 60s historians, they have a tendency to romanticize JFK a tad, crediting him with a much stronger contribution to civil rights than I would. And they provide only a thin page or so on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. They're at their best on the culture of legislation and political parties, weakest when they circle outwards to comment on the broader culture of the decade. Because their title makes it clear that they're focusing on Washington and politics conceived of fairly narrowly and traditionally, that's not a major problem.

[Nathan]

The 1960's are often a blip on the screen of popular historical perception: a quick burst of hair, hippies and getting high. Mackenzie and Weisbrot reveal that the liberal attitudes of the hippie movement were reflected in the establishment to no small degree, despite the former's antipathy to the latter, across a much broader spectrum than is often thought. The usual liberal causes are examined, including civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, and anti-militarism. This is a work of synthesis more than revelation; its contribution seems to be a convenient one-volume overview of topics covered in more depth elsewhere. For what it is, it's capable and efficient. For what I wanted it to be, it came up short. No real reasons for the liberal movement were posited, and none of its implications or ramifications were explored. Most of this stuff is a slightly more involved treatment of your standard history textbook, albeit better written. Optional.

[Wendy]

This is a fascinating and very timely book that tackles the question of why there was such an outpouring of liberal legislation in the mid-1960s, and why that outpouring stopped. Definitely a must-read for anyone who is interested in how legislation gets passed or how political consensus is built, although if you really want details of the inner workings of Congress, you'll have to go elsewhere.

[Joe Rodeck]

There's a good, if worshipful, LBJ bio buried inside these pages. But this book is so disorderly that it's hardly worth the time. With its cast of thousands, this would be mostly of interest to hard core elderly Democrats.

Lesson of the Day: Beware of books written by professors: brilliant babble; mostly "So what else is new?"

[Seth]

See review by Kevin Scott. It's a history of the 60s, and one that retraces the decade over and over, by issue. The foreword was a bad sign, florid and repetitious. The rest of the book was just not at all what was promised. Did they write the things they promise, only to have them edited out? Or did they just not know what they wrote? I hope the book they describe is out there.

[Marlise]

Good book to read prior election and still a good book. Mackenzie is a good speaker, too. Professor at Colby College in Maine.

[Trinity School Summer Reading]

How Washington–Congress and the President—led the movement that resulted in the great legislative reforms of the 1960s.

[Mills College Library]

973.923 M1565 2008

[A.D. Elliott]

A detailed look into the rise of liberalism.

Explains the major causes and contributors.

A great read about how modern liberal philosophy came into being.