From: london@rain.org ()
Subject: Review of PROMISES TO KEEP by Richard Goodwin
Date: 9 Feb 1995 23:42:55 GMT

Book Review:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

PROMISES TO KEEP
A Call for a New American Revolution
By Richard Goodwin
Times Books, 177 pages, $15.00


It seems fitting that this book, published around election time 1992,
should be endorsed by both Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton, since it mimics
the tone of the 1992 campaigns in both style and substance.  Early drafts
of Goodwin's manuscript were passed out to several presidential hopefuls 
as the race got under way and, not surprisingly, sound bites from the book
cropped up in a number of speeches on the campaign trail. The most notable
instance was when Brown announced his candidacy using rhetoric taken
verbatim from Promises To Keep. 

As a former adviser and speech-writer to both Kennedy and Johnson, and an
architect of the Great Society and Alliance for Progress, Goodwin is no
stranger to Washington.  But in the three decades since JFK and LBJ,
things have changed considerably.  Goodwin is well aware of that fact, and
deeply concerned about it.  The robust idealism of America in the early
'60s, he says, has been all but lost in the past couple of decades. 
Democracy and capitalism Ä the "twin pillars of American society" Ä are
both at risk, he charges, and nothing short of a "new American revolution"
can reverse the ominous decline.  For those of us still hungover from the
campaign rhetoric of the last elections, Goodwin's thesis seems fairly
tame, at best.  The familiar litany about the "soaring power of money" in
Washington, about "anxiety for office and mediocrity" among legislators,
and about "greed, corruption, and the failure of enterprise" in corporate
America, is beginning to sound as tiresome as Ross Perot. 

What is most remarkable about this book is the forceful delivery, the
sparkling prose, and the soaring rhetoric.  Goodwin's talent for
speech-writing is evident all the way through.  Just about every quote
is by some great president, and variations on the phrase "the promise
of America" figure on almost every page.  The book begins with a
sentence about America's "common dream" and ends with the word "hope." 
Like a great political speech, this is at once a rallying cry and a
masterful act of persuasion.  The only problem is that in oratory, as
in life, the most eloquent speakers often have the least to say.