Podcast
The Ezra Klein Show
The hosts referenced the book as a historical account of how strong early American parties devolved into hollow vehicles for individual presidential ambition, highlighting its analysis of party evolution.
In the great book, The Hollow Parties, Sam Rosenfeld and Dana Schlossman tell the history of how the strong parties of yesterday became the hollowed out vehicles for individual presidential ambition w...
— Episode: What Is the Democratic Party For?
Episode: What Is the Democratic Party For?
The hosts referenced the book as a historical account of how strong early American parties devolved into hollow vehicles for individual presidential ambition, highlighting its analysis of party evolution.
In the great book, The Hollow Parties, Sam Rosenfeld and Dana Schlossman tell the history of how the strong parties of yesterday became the hollowed out vehicles for individual presidential ambition we see today.
The ethos of the early American political parties was that they were a bulwark against politics becoming about one person at a time when Americans feared a return to that.
The idea, Rosenfeld told me, was, quote, that parties subsume individual ambition. You commit to the party and to the cause, never to the man.
They did live up to it at key moments. Famously, it was a delegation of Republican members of Congress who persuaded President Richard Nixon to resign.
There is not more to the Republican Party today than Donald Trump's ambitions.