America's right turn

One of Perlstein's favourite sports is to poke fun at the cluelessness of establishment commentators from the mainstream media

In 1968, 17-year-old Patrick Caddell polled a working-class neighbourhood in Jacksonville, Florida, about the upcoming presidential race for a high school project. He was surprised to hear, again and again, “Wallace or Kennedy, either one.” This seemed to make no sense. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a segregationist, was the ideological opposite and avowed foe of Robert Kennedy, who had pushed civil rights as attorney general in his brother’s administration. Young Caddell had an insight: In politics, feelings mattered more than policy. For all their apparent differences, Wallace and Kennedy were both tough guys; they both seemed to be mad at