The book's most intriguing pages are those devoted to the curious schisms among the foreign policy advisers in the two campaigns.  On the Democratic side, the disparate forces for good (and sources for the author) are portrayed as underdogs struggling against the cabal of "Cold War mandarins" at Harvard's Kennedy School.  This group, Blumenthal charges--save the "influential" professor Robert Reich--kept Dukakis from accepting the wisdom contained in Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.(1)  On the GOP side, Blumenthal discovers an alleged split between former Henry Kissinger aides such as Brent Scowcroft, always "following the latest Kissinger ukase," and Bush's wily political partner, James Baker, himself slow to counter the Kissingerians until his eyes were opened by--whom else?--Eduard Shevardnadze.

In a 386-page book about the 1988 presidential election, this is all the author has to say about the result: "On election day, November 8, George Bush won the presidency, 54 to 46 percent, with 426 votes in the Electoral College to 112.  The degradation of political debate produced the lowest voter turnout since 1924."  There is nothing on such mundane things as how close the vote was in key states, on how the tickets fared in various regions, on how the vice presidential candidates helped or hurt the tickets.  It is not merely that Blumenthal is bored with the election (though he is); more than that, he is anxious to describe the events of 1989 as Gorbachev's triumph and Bush's awkward acquiescence.  The intimidation of the Baltic by Moscow in 1989 is absent, as is any other fact embarrassing to Gorbachev.  And why not?  As Blumenthal explains, "After Tiananmen Square, the course of repression, if it were ever a real option for Gorbachev, was decisively ruled out."

This book proudly repackages the "revisionist" view of the origins of the Cold War, which holds that the U.S. bears the brunt of the historical blame for the onset of hostile relations between the superpowers.  This thesis has not stood the test of rigorous scholarship or the release of archival evidence from Soviet sources.  But even the revisionists tried to explain what the "Cold War" was about: the division of Europe, strategic competition, alternate views of social relations, and so on.  Blumenthal has no such explanation; nor does he seem to feel the need for one.

Certainly the 1988 election was not among this country's most edifying.  Neither candidate will be remembered for his oratorical resonance or strategic vision.  Both were negative campaigners.  Neither expressed certainty about the permanence of Gorbachev's reforms, a decision which now appears to be quite sensible.  However one judges their competing foreign policy views, it is unfair to adduce, as Blumenthal does, psychological impediments for a reticence that was actually the product of a cautious and careful reading of available evidence.

Because of the author's selective approach to a conceptually daunting topic, this book fails as an account of either the 1988 election or the end of the Cold War.  What interest it has derives from its illumination of how certain leftist polemicists have coped with communism's collapse.  Behind the foggy musings on metaphysics and world historical events that are meant to elevate "mere" political reportage, there is the same readiness to see events in the Soviet Union from the point of view of the ruler rather than the ruled that has often stained much left-of-center thinking in the past.  But once that has become clear, the book is tedious going, leaving one yearning for the appearance of a new Teddy White--or even the old Hunter S. Thompson.

William C. Bodie, a New York-based writer, is chairman of the Manhattan Institute Seminar on International Affairs.

1.  Blumenthal plugs Kennedy's book repeatedly, a favor returned by Professor Kennedy with a blurb in the publisher's advertisement for Pledging Allegiance: "Beautifully done, ironic, learned, and with a strong argument."  Similar logrolling occurs with James Chace, who is flattered in the Acknowledgments and flattering on the back cover.

Essay Types: Book Review