The Red and the Blue

This was a fascinating read for me because I lived through this period - it was the time at which I first started paying attention to politics - but so much of the underlying context was unknown to me then. If you're looking for a well-written summary of domestic US politics in the 1990s, this does that well.

Equally fascinating, though, was how much the culture has changed since then - not only with regards to how differently Clinton's impeachment would be treated in the social media age, but with how commonplace the idea of the US political parties working together was in the early 1990s? Newt Gingrich's remaking of the Republicans, and the ways the Democrats responded to it, seems so ingrained in everything now that it's hard to see a way out. Kornacki doesn't provide any thoughts on how to do that (and it wouldn't quite fit with the story that he's telling to do so).

Even more depressing, though, is thinking about how those ideological changes have become so apparent here in Canadian politics as well.