Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980

by Rick Perlstein

Among them was Teddy White. The author of The Making of the President 1960, The Making of the President 1964, The Making of the President 1968, and The Making of the President 1972 had not produced a Making of the President 1976—perhaps because he was so sickened by the duck-nibbling rituals presidential campaigns had become. His diary suggested he was almost to the point of a nervous breakdown—or a breakdown, at least, in his democratic faith. “It’s gone on too long,” he wrote on September 30. “How long can you stay interested in the problems of inflation and the tax cut? There were five national elections in Germany the year before Hitler came to power in 1933; the last, which Hitler won, showed a sharp drop-off in votes. We’ve had politics up to our ears, are gorged with it.”