What's the matter with Thomas Frank

On Ross's recommendation, I finally read Nicholas Lemann's essay/review of Thomas Frank's new book The Wrecking Crew. Frank's first second third book is a classic, if somewhat problematic. The thesis (that working class whites were being tricked into voting against their interest) soft-pedaled the first being the uncomfortable possibility that said whites had not been tricked at all. Telling them to put aside their values and vote their pocketbook seemed, to me, like a good way to verify the stereotype of the condescending liberal. Furthermore, my own upbringing has left me with a visceral distaste for talking down to the working people by changing the subject. Holding two jobs does not, in and of itself, mean that one has to be anti-gay. That said, I'm not a politician. And I think you now know why.

Anyway Lemann's article basically takes on Frank's new book for its "Right-Wing Lobbyists Run This Piece" thesis. Instead Lemann prefers Authur Bently's The Process of Government , an  forgotten classic of political science which pushes the notion that politics is all about interest groups. Here is a particularly lovely--if poignant graph from Lemann's article:

"The Wrecking Crew" is what Arthur Bentley would call a discussion-group activity, meant to fire up the troops. It is reportorially and intellectually imprecise. How many lobbyists are there in Washington, exactly? By what yardstick did Frank conclude that we are undergoing "the greatest wave of political corruption in living memory"? What would be the sign that conservatives no longer rule, if Democrats' controlling the political apparatus doesn't count? Frank rarely mentions Democratic lobbyists or interest groups and glosses over the complexity in the coalitions that form the two parties: "corporations" and "conservatives" seem always to operate in perfect concert, on the Republican side. "Lobbying brings a constant pressure in a single direction," he writes. An illustrative example is one that he offers in passing: "There was the two-day get-together between House Republicans and media company CEOs, after which the various broadcasters and publishers were asked to replace their Democratic lobbyists with Republicans; the Telecommunications Act of 1996, almost certainly written by industry lobbyists, followed soon afterward, deregulating the airwaves and trailing clouds of glorious profits for the media companies." You'd never guess from this that the Telecom Act pitted one group of telephone companies and their lobbyists against another group of telephone companies and their lobbyists--or that business-versus-business battles of this kind go on constantly in Washington.

As I said, it's a good essay. I just wish Lemman had discussed technology. When the biggest social networking page on Barack Obama's website is made up of people opposing one of his policies--people who can dole out or withhold donations, what do we say about the future of  interest groups? I don't mean to apply an end, but that there must be some consequence for the hurdles of organization being lowered

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/08/what-apos-s-the-matter-with-thomas-frank/5627/