When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

In 1928, a new kind of experiment began. “There is no dictatorship in Louisiana,” Huey P. Long said. “There is perfect democracy there, and when you have perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship.” After winning the governorship by campaigning in a populist mode against the Bourbon oligarchy’s concentration of wealth and power, “The Kingfish” quickly coordinated the organs of the state to concentrate his own wealth and power. In office, Long marshaled the governor’s vast powers of appointment to build an empire of patronage jobs, sweeping from office the allies of his political opponents and replacing them with his own people. No state office was too petty to serve as an opportunity for rewarding a friend or avenging an enemy, as well as that enemy’s family and friends. With this apparatus in hand, along with his fine-honed talents of personal insult and threat, Huey set himself to pushing through an ambitious legislative agenda: