Bill Kauffman – författare

Barber B. Conable, Jr.—perhaps the most respected member of Congress of his era—kept a frank, insightful, revealing journal available now for the first time thanks to the efforts of editor Bill Kauffman in The Congressional Journal of Barber B. Conable, Jr., 1968–1984.

The journal is an honest, searching, sometimes humorous, occasionally cutting, and always fascinating look inside Congress. Conable, a Republican member of the House from upstate New York, wrote perceptively about Presidents Nixon, Ford, H. W. Bush, and the leading congressional figures of the day. For seventeen years he wrote about the big events as well as daily political life in an era that included Vietnam, Watergate, political realignment, and major changes in entitlements and taxes, where he played a key role.

Displaying his gift for clear expression and astute insight, Conable narrates the machinations of major tax measures, trade bills, and such special interests of his as public financing of congressional campaigns. While he is never shy about expressing personal judgments, he revels in the give and take of legislative politics. Conable had an acute sense of the human dynamics of legislating: In addition to the tax bills he shaped and struggled with as the leading Republican on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, his work with the 1982–1983 Social Security Commission, led by Alan Greenspan, is a classic exercise. Conable thought a deal was critical for the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund but politically almost impossible given the differing priorities of the chief protagonists, President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. In the journal Conable pronounces the effort doomed on January 13, 1983. Two days later he marvels at the political and personal dexterity and skill that ended up producing a deal.

The journal illuminates Conable’s intellect, his commitment to his constituents, and his appreciation of principled pragmatism; his writings are in real time, not rendered retrospectively to make himself look better, a rarity among political legacies.

From "the finest literary stylist of the American right," a surprising and spirited account of how true conservatives have always been antiwar and anti-empire (Allan Carlson, author of The American Way)Conservatives love war, empire, and the military-industrial complex. They abhor peace, the sole and rightful property of liberals. Right? Wrong.As Bill Kauffman makes clear, true conservatives have always resisted the imperial and military impulse: it drains the treasury, curtails domestic liberties, breaks down families, and vulgarizes culture. From the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, to the striving of Robert Taft (known as "Mr. Republican") to keep the United States out of Korea, to the latter-day libertarian critics of the Iraq war, there has historically been nothing freakish, cowardly, or even unusual about antiwar activists on the political right. And while these critics of U.S. military crusades have been vilified by the party of George W. Bush, their conservative vision of a peaceful, decentralized, and noninterventionist America gives us a glimpse of the country we could have had—and might yet attain.Passionate and witty, Ain''t My America is an eye-opening exploration of the forgotten history of right-wing peace movements—and a clarion manifesto for antiwar conservatives of today.