But the polarisation thesis does not pervade Perlstein’s work: his habit of suspending judgement on the events he describes prevents that. This habit has something to do with his literary style. Each of the books contains nearly a thousand pages of non-stop somersaulting through period politics, and an inexhaustible well of outrageous characters – the “pornographer and born-again Christian Larry Flynt”, the right-wing International Women’s Year delegate who “was not, she insisted, herself a Klan member. She only attended its rallies, as ‘a concerned citizen’”. We savour the brief appearances like cameos (there is a televisual quality to the writing, after all) of characters thereafter known to posterity: Joe Biden (endorsed Carter), Hillary Clinton (dispatched to check up on an Alabama town’s civil rights record), Roger Stone and Paul Manafort (various “New Right” intrigues). But there are no real moments of reflection on the broader impact of the developments he relates. His sources are chiefly newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasts and, in some cases, the memoirs of leading figures.
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The result is a work that reproduces the spirit of the age very faithfully, but without any of the clarity that is supposed to be the benefit of historical writing. Like Thucydides, Perlstein shows us the maelstrom; but unlike Thucydides, he does not give us the chance to avoid being swept up in it. He has steeped himself so completely in the kitsch of the period that reading him is like living through the 1970s, or like turning on the television in the 1970s and frantically clicking through the channels for hours. The order is more or less chronological, but we frequently lose track of exactly when things are happening; appearances are jumbled with facts; major developments are announced from the perspective of historical participants. Key episodes receive 50 pages of close scrutiny, only for their conclusion to be briefly mentioned before we are jolted on to the next event. But for the foreshadowing of major set pieces – here, the Iranian Revolution – the work has practically no structure at all.
The only time Perlstein’s historian’s judgement emerges recognisably is in the smug parentheticals that point out instances when political figures, usually Reagan, abuse the truth in public remarks. This is the historian as fact-checker, no more; if journalism is the “first draft of history”, this is the second draft, not the finished product.