IN DEFENSE OF GOVERNMENT: The Fall and Rise of Public Trust

by Jacob Weisberg

In his In Defense of Government, Jacob Weisberg draws on the entire history of the republic to construct a lucid and compelling case that the government can and must be an agent for social change and economic progress.
Explaining why the public really lost faith in government, Weisberg lays bare both the incoherence of the Republican assault on everything the federal government touches as well as the feebleness of the Democratic responses coming from the Clinton administration and elsewhere.
As an alternative to conservative evasion and liberal confusion, Weisberg proposes a new progressive answer. The restoration of public trust, he argues, demands limited but activist government. A reasoned polemic, this book is both an antidote for depressed liberals and a powerful challenge to thoughtful conservatives.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Jacob Weisberg (born 1964) is an American political journalist, who served as editor-in-chief of The Slate Group, a division of Graham Holdings Company. In September 2018, he left Slate to co-found Pushkin Industries, an audio content company, with Malcolm Gladwell. Weisberg was also a Newsweek columnist. He served as the editor of Slate magazine for six years before stepping down in June 2008. He is the son of Lois Weisberg, a Chicago social activist and municipal commissioner.

Reviews

[J. Wootton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weisberg historicizes the (largely performative) Congressional turbulence and party status of the early-to-mid-90s United States, placing policy positions, campaigns, political analysis, and voter sentiment into context. Along the way, he explains and reclaims "federalism" and "progressivism" in terms of their historic movements and traces their philosophic and practical development over time. I found his analysis refreshingly balanced and insightful; not neutral, as he does advocate for a return to historical progressivism and explains what that would need to look like in the present era, but rather critically honest.

Because of its historical approach as well as, surprisingly, its close examination of the Reagan - Clinton era, In Defense of Government turns out to be highly relevant to the political situation in the U.S. today. Weisberg makes no pretense to prescience, but (as some analysts would have it), we began reaping in the 00's what the parties began sowing ~30 years prior.

[Chris Foley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars, some very good points still relevant today. But a little preachy at times.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is tough to call. It reads much like the typical bleeding-heart liberality it claims not to be. He does offer some useful ideas, several of which align with my own views. But ultimately, Weisberg believes the solutions to the problems of welfare, race, and social justice, lie in the same scale done better. And how is that going to happen? I like that he believes the New Deal ran rampant into the Great Society, which then ran amok. I like that he argues for a balanced budget, for universal acceptance that there is risk, for the individual right to make harmful choices, for flexibility to eliminate government programs (even if it means government jobs are impacted), and for defense and police as the primary functions of government. But from there, he believes government at a federal level is necessary for successful health care, health insurance, a safety net, and promotion of arts. Probably his most useful stance is that Congress should be required to act directly on any actions it wants enforced, rather than handing off the defining responsibility to agencies and delegates.