What’s the Matter With Washington?
By MICHAEL LIND
NYT Book Review
THE WRECKING CREW
How Conservatives Rule
By Thomas Frank
369 pp. Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $25
In “The Wrecking Crew,” the liberal journalist Thomas Frank tells the story of free-market ideologues who came to Washington to start a revolution and built a lucrative lobbying empire instead. Now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank established his reputation as the editor of The Baffler and then as the author of the best-selling “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (2004) by combining two things absent from most liberal commentary: muckraking reporting and satiric wit.
Frank’s gifts as a social observer are on display in his description of the contemporary Washington metro area: “The airport designed by Eero Saarinen; the shopping mall so vast it dwarfs other cities’ downtowns; the finely tuned high-performance cars zooming along an immaculate private highway; the masses of flowers in perfectly edged beds; the gas stations with Colonial Williamsburg cupolas; the men all in ties and starched, buttoned-down shirts; the street names, even, recalling our cherished American values: Freedom, Market, Democracy, Tradition and Signature Drives; Heritage Lane; Founders Way; Enterprise, Prosperity and Executive Park Avenues; and a Chivalry Road that leads, of course, to Valor Court.”
The growth of government as an industry, Frank notes, has transformed the capital region: “The richest county in America isn’t in Silicon Valley or some sugarland preserve of Houston’s oil kings; it is Loudoun County, Va., a fast-growing suburb of Washington, D.C. … The second richest county is Fairfax, Va., the next suburb over from Loudoun; the third, sixth and seventh richest counties are also suburbs of the capital. ”
(Continued here.)
NYT Book Review
THE WRECKING CREW
How Conservatives Rule
By Thomas Frank
369 pp. Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $25
In “The Wrecking Crew,” the liberal journalist Thomas Frank tells the story of free-market ideologues who came to Washington to start a revolution and built a lucrative lobbying empire instead. Now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank established his reputation as the editor of The Baffler and then as the author of the best-selling “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (2004) by combining two things absent from most liberal commentary: muckraking reporting and satiric wit.
Frank’s gifts as a social observer are on display in his description of the contemporary Washington metro area: “The airport designed by Eero Saarinen; the shopping mall so vast it dwarfs other cities’ downtowns; the finely tuned high-performance cars zooming along an immaculate private highway; the masses of flowers in perfectly edged beds; the gas stations with Colonial Williamsburg cupolas; the men all in ties and starched, buttoned-down shirts; the street names, even, recalling our cherished American values: Freedom, Market, Democracy, Tradition and Signature Drives; Heritage Lane; Founders Way; Enterprise, Prosperity and Executive Park Avenues; and a Chivalry Road that leads, of course, to Valor Court.”
The growth of government as an industry, Frank notes, has transformed the capital region: “The richest county in America isn’t in Silicon Valley or some sugarland preserve of Houston’s oil kings; it is Loudoun County, Va., a fast-growing suburb of Washington, D.C. … The second richest county is Fairfax, Va., the next suburb over from Loudoun; the third, sixth and seventh richest counties are also suburbs of the capital. ”
(Continued here.)
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