When I first joined the Bush campaign, Karl Rove handed me a copy of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass by Myron Magnet. “Read it,” Karl said. “This is what the governor wants to talk about.” I’d never heard of Magnet and promptly devoured the book. It was an elegant description of a conservative alternative to deeply rooted problems of contemporary American society, from government’s role in enabling generations of welfare dependency to the success of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s approach to law enforcement that had greatly reduced crime in New York City.
