Prelude to greatness

As I noted yesterday, every three months I announce that the Claremont Review of Books is my favorite magazine — every three months because the magazine is a quarterly. CRB is the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute, the organization whose mission it is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. The magazine is also popular in the White House; 30 copies of each new issue are shipped out by overnight mail upon publication. If you don’t subscribe, you should. The editors have allowed us to peek at the page proofs and pick a few of the items from the summer issue to debut exclusively on Power Line. We began yesterday and will continue tomorrow (we have a special treat in store) and Tuesday.
For Reaganites and political junkies, we have Andrew Busch’s review of Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All, by Craig Shirley. Why, you ask, may the Republican National Convention of 1976 have been “one of the most important conventions in the party’s history, and one of the most important in American history,” ranking up there with those of 1856, 1860, and 1964? Did it lead to the redefining of the Republican Party and of America along more conservative lines? Did Clarke Reed’s last minute betrayal of Ronald Reagan end whatever hope Reagan may have had of winning his party’s nomination in 1976? And was it good or bad for Reagan, conservatism, and the country that Reagan lost in ’76? Shirley (and Professor Busch) has something to say about all these things.
The merely politically prurient may also be curious to know (surely you didn’t!) that the uniformed policeman normally on the Watergate beat was drunk that fateful night and unable to respond to the burglary call. In any event, Professor Busch has read Shirley’s book closely, and the review is a model of excellence: “Prelude to greatness.”

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses