Ohio History Journal

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BOOK REVIEWS*

BOOK REVIEWS*

 

American Political Parties: Their Natural History.      By Wilfred

E. Binkley.    (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. 389p.

$3.75.)

This book presents a keen and careful analysis of American

political parties from  the development of Federalism      to the Re-

publican prospects in 1944.     It is not a history of politics and

elections.  Indeed one finds not very much about national con-

ventions, events of campaigns, Congressional debates and White

House pre- and post-election politics.    The red-fire, the horse

trading, the flaming oratory, the slanderous whisperings, the roor-

backs and the other political phenomena of the American scene

are  relegated  to the background.                      Professor Binkley is after

more significant objectives.     Starting              with the interest groups

who constructed Hamiltonian Federalism, he follows the trail

of parties relentlessly to find out how and why they appeared,

what manner of men operated them, how and why they succeeded

or failed.  While not ignoring luck or fortuitous circumstances,

he makes it clear in his hard-headed appraisal that the compro-

mise of economic interests, the force of habits and traditions,

clever propaganda, and skilful leadership and organization ex-

plain the course of American parties.

The opportunism of the great political leaders will strike the

general reader as the outstanding feature of the book.        Andrew

Jackson. "taking counsel with the coterie of professional poli-

ticians he had gathered about him," and seeking out issues to hold

his party together, may cease to be the Old Hero but his political

success becomes easier to understand.      Lincoln as a conservative

 

* Editorial Note: Due to the upheavals of the war, a good many of the Quarterly's

most faithful book-reviewers left their assignments undone when the call came to enter

the armed services. As a result, an unusual backlog of books "to be reviewed" piled

up in the editorial office. This fact so weighed on the conscience of the editor that he

called upon members of the staff to volunteer their services for book-reviewing. They

responded even better than expected, and this issue and the next one, therefore, will

contain, along with commentaries of more recent works by our regular reviewers, the

hasty but sincere efforts of our own staff "to clear the decks."

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