I felt instant sympathy for Stevens the minute I saw him in an interview. He is a Robert Redford-style archetypical American - athletic, handsome, plain-spoken, intelligent but pragmatic - who still possesses an almost cheerful, can-do attitude. And he also reminds me of Stan Beeman, one of the most likeable characters of one of the best TV-shows ever, The Americans. Plus, as a screenwriter, he penned some episodes for the Northern Exposure. And first and foremost, this is a redemption story. You really can't dislike the guy.
The aforementioned interview was about Steven's new book. In the last four years, I've read a couple of books on the American Right and Trump-phenomenon. Most of them were rewarding, but dense, packed with history and political philosophy (for laymen). For this reason, I wasn't very keen on reading yet another one, at least for a while. But after listening to a couple of subsequent interviews I gave in, and I didn't regret it. Steven's book is a refreshing one. There is a bit of soul-searching there, of course, but it's neither an explanation for the Trump-victory nor a history lesson on the conservative movement. It is short and straightforward - as a part-time writer of screenplays and travel books, Stevens knows how to engage the reader. Regarding the substance, in Stevens's words, the book is both a mea culpa and a j'Accuse.
Stevens starts it by admitting that he was naive, a sucker; he served the bad guys, and he is not looking for sympathy or absolution. He wrote the book in order to try to make sense of the world.
Many pundits have tried to answer, or at least marveled at, the question of how Donald Trump could hijack the Republican Party in a matter of a short couple of years. Everything the GOP nominally had stood for - fiscal responsibility, character counts, family values, strong on Russia, pro legal immigration -, it not only has abandoned but downright turned against. How do people change deep-held beliefs overnight? "They don't", says Stevens, "They were never deep-held, to begin with". And this is his excuse and mea culpa: I did believe those people shared my convictions, and I'm a sucker to have done so. The party hasn't become Donald Trump, rather dropped the pretense of ever being different.
Stevens's choice of metaphor for the Republican Party's evolution is that of a fight of two genes. One was what he thought to be the recessive one. The racist, white supremacist line (currently in the process of further evolution to the white grievance party), tracing back to the anti-civil rights politicians. It was thought to have fizzled out decades ago. The other, which he considered as the dominant one, championed by politicians from Eisenhower to George W. Bush, was the one cherishing the virtues listed above. And Stuart admits he was just plain wrong. The roles were reversed.
The Republican party's support among black voters dropped from 40% (with Eisenhower) to 7% (with Goldwater) in 1964, and has never recovered since. As the GOP realized it has no way of winning back blacks, from the seventies it followed the so-called Southern strategy, which combined voter suppression, dog-whistling, and using the race card to divide and conquer Democrat voters. The inability of the party to attract black voters was written off as a communicational problem, rather than the result of blatantly anti-black policies. Simultaneously, the language Republican politicians used to keep white votes has become more abstract while preserving some substance of the original meaning. Open support for segregation has been replaced by the advocation of state-rights and tirades against the welfare state.
I think Stevens oversimplifies a complex problem. He doesn't even mention the fundamentalist Christian influence and the almost-religious gun-right activism, both are relatively new (dating from the 80s) phenomena. His characterization of the GOP also suffers from contradictions. He claims that the GOP is a racist party, but at the same time, he recalls earlier conversations with former and friends clients - when they still were willing to talk with him - in which they expressed their disgust and exasperation of Trump. They are more cowards than racists.
But maybe Steven's is not very wrong after all. If the GOP's policies are effectively racist - like non-white voter suppression -, or silently condone racism - by refusing to condemn it -, does it matter whether the main motivation of its members is conviction or convenience?
Even beyond the stain of racism, Stevens's portrayal of the Republican party is devastating. By its own standards the GOP is a failure. To keep Trump in power, Republicans now practically work with the Russians ("... the Russians, crying out loud!"). Regarding fiscal responsibility, their spiritual attachment to tax-cuts has consistently lead to higher deficits than under Democrat presidencies. The party of traditional family values has probably more gay members than the Democratic Party. Ivy League graduates are railing against the "elites" and claim to represent the common man, and kooky theories creep into the mainstream right-wing conversation. The preachers of integrity and strong character cannot stand up to...a tweet?
If the GOP has always been rotten, why did Stevens for decades not only put up with it but did everything to keep it in power? His excuse is short and blunt, and as good as one can expect from a man who took a radical turn in his sixties. "I was respected, I was successful. I had my own confirmation biases. Had I forced myself to face the contradictions, I would have had to go to war against my own interest. So I chose to look the other way."
The book doesn't offer solutions. Stevens thinks the GOP is irredeemable. The book was finished a year ago, and in recent interviews, Stevens said he apparently had been overly optimistic. The party has only accelerated its fall since then. And, as he sees the facts, race is not only the original sin of the GOP, but it is also the solution. More than 50% of the 15 year-olds in America are non-white. Chances are that in three years they still will be non-white. The party's only chance of survival was to open to the non-white population, and they chose the opposite path. They made a Faustian pact with Donald Trump. You sign the papers we put in front of you to advance our agenda, and in return, we protect you. And they forgot how these pacts with the Devil always work out. Not only does he take your soul, but he doesn't deliver.
The parting thoughts of the book are of a sad, angry, and, most of all, baffled man.
"I can't understand these folks. Don't they think about how they gonna be remembered? Not in 20 years, but in 2. I don't get it. I really don't."
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