H.W. Brands attempts to trace the history of liberalism and it's notions of an activist state through the history of the Presidency in his book The Strange Death of American Liberalism. He gives a nice review of the times and events that occured during dramatic shifts of power of the state, but it seems to be missing a deeper insight into ideology and the times.

His central theory of American liberalism is simple:

• Historically, Americans are generally conservative and prefer the state to remain small.
• During wartime, Americans allow some temporary increases in the state.
• These increases usually legitimate increases in domestic spending and taxation.
• After war, states typically trim back spending, but never a complete resersal.

This theory is well accepted by most scholars of the Presidency and the Federal government, though Brands attempts to show through evidence the truth and validity of this theory. His argument on these grounds in less convincing, in light of the fact he ignores or downplays the actions of Presidents and the expansion of the state in peacetime.

In downplaying this aspect of history, he often cites popular resistance to the expansion of government in peacetime. Indeed, there is a particularly strong resistance to this during peacetime, as there is no threatening issue to push people in line to support any one proposal. To back up his theory, he notes the resistance to anti-trust laws of the Teddy Roosevelt's administration, the problems that Wilson ran into with the League of Nations and other issues, and those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ran on a rather conservative party platform for President. I agree that all of those presidents faced strong conservative opposition to liberal action, but I don't think the snapping into line effect of war truly defined whether or not an issue could be pressed.

Fifties and Sixities: Cold War with Exception

Brands argues that the post-World War II expansion in government was largely legitimized, if not necesitated by the threat of the Cold War. The Cold War indeed was an ideological struggle to show if the free world or the communist world best be able to outproduce and outexist the other nature. Technology was neccessary, as was higher education to ensure that our productivity would grow.

Yet, that is where the abstraction starts to grow. Certainly the cold war was hawked back to in appropiating expansive social programs in the fifities and sixities, but to argue that people's threatened feelings forced action beyond the early fifties seems a bit extreme. People where living in expanding affluence at the time, so it seems only logical that government would expand to absorb some of this affluence and help the more needy.

President Lyndon Johnson is presented as the great exception to the issue of the cold war being the legitimation for his actions. Certainly, he often did not mention the cold war in what he did, but it was implicit or explicitly mentioned in debate. He liked domestic spending, he was a true liberal, unlike other Presidents. Brands is right to a degree, and fans of Lyndon Johnson would certainly support his position. Yet, there is an implicit bias to the golden terms he puts in President Johnson in, being that the author is from Texas A & M University.

Decline of Liberalism

Brands notes that liberalism died for many of the reasons mentioned in other books:

• Dying out of Old Left and Party Stewlarts
• George McGovern and the Overwhelming Issue of the War
• Deaccelerating war, and liberals sticking to using that as anti-Nixon platform
• Growing diversity of the Democrats
• Confusion post-Watergate and loss of McGovern in the Democratic party
• Winding down of post-Cold War tensions

Brands tends to harp on the last point with particular clarity, as this is the central theme of his book. He goes on to give a brief history of Presidents from Carter to Clinton, noting that while some liberalism tends to exist in politics, the days of the LBJ expansion are rapidly disappearing.

Conclusions

This book is a nice summary of the Presidency and the history of liberalism. It's short and a quick read. Possibly not the most exiciting book for those experts in American history, as it provides little new insight and makes you wonder why he left certain critical moments of history out of his book.

The concise nature of this book makes it a fun and easy read. Clearly written, could make an excellent book for reading in a higher level college course on American political ideology. Students who have little experience with American history or never thought of liberalism and the nature of it in American politics could learn a lot.