Rick Perlstein

“Personally, speaking as a historian and a storyteller, when it comes to inaccuracy in historical fictioneering, I follow the Shakespeare principle: I'm willing to overlook gobs of mistaken d...”

“Social conservatism, business conservatism: the one side constitutes the other, like some infernal Mobius strip.”

“I can't summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tati's 'Play Time.' You just have to see it.”

“Indeed, it was largely the clubbiness of the Washington village press corps that let Nixon get away with Watergate and still win his landslide in 1972.”

“My liberal friends love to dismiss Reagan. You know, they'll say something like, 'Oh, didn't he, like, only read one-page memos when he was in the White House?' Well, that's just good manage...”

“One of the most important things liberals don't understand about conservatism, obscured by too much lazy talk about conservatism's various 'wings,' is that its tenets form a relatively organ...”

“We Americans love to cite the 'political spectrum' as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry.”

“Political scientists have long argued that party identification is the best possible predictor of voting behavior and is remarkably sticky over time.”

“Chicago's privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm's...”

“The fact is that the Democratic Party in modern times has always had a conservative wing, one frequently as strong or stronger than its liberal wing, and as such, when progressives speak of...”

“Polling only works in a country without a depressed, frightened populace. Where the public trusts authorities enough to tell them the truth without fear of retribution.”

“I'm reverent toward my sources. History is a team sport, and references are how you support your teammates.”

“Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the gr...”

“Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity....”

“While Obama might not push college education exclusively, like most Democrats he does oversell it and does shortchange the alternatives. And millions of young Americans pay the price.”