Review

Journalist Ganz writes a newsletter on Substack and cohosts a podcast called "Unclear and Present Danger." He is young and funny, and researched the '90s assiduously. When the Clock Broke is his first book and a surprise 2024 best-seller. This book should be required reading for voters not active in the early '90s who think we are in a uniquely weird era. Thirty-two years ago, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush ('41), third-party business magnate Ross Perot, conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan, and white nationalist David Duke were vying for the presidency amid a divisive American polity--well before Trump or MAGA were on the horizon. The early '90s marked the end of the cold war, and there was great angst over government debt, inflation-overhang and the economy, fostering a populist tilt against the established order. The title of Ganz' book is borrowed from American economist Murray Rothbard, whom Charles Koch bankrolled to found what became the Cato Institute, and who speechified that U.S. politics in the early '90s were poised to "break the clock of social democracy." Ganz notes the influences of conservative public intellectuals Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, as well as Sam Francis, a Heritage Foundation guy gone a bit white supremacist, who identified with "middle American radicals" (MARS) groups that voted for Wallace in '68 and '72, and later Nixon's 'Silent Majority'--a phrase Buchanan coined--as well as Reagan Democrats. Francis welcomed a rise of individual state "republicanism" over "old" Hamiltonian nationalism. In this milieu, Ganz describes incumbent Bush '41 as "representative of a class bred to govern, not to lead," and with "the worst common touch of any American president since John Quincy Adams." During the 1992 Rodney King LA riots Bush famously spoke of needed repairs to his vacation home in Kennebunkport and went to J.C. Penney to buy socks. Ganz describes Bush at a town hall meeting with a notecard reminder: 'Message: I care.' Meanwhile, the Black versus Korean violence in LA was real, and the riots were "being called the worst civil disorder" since the Civil War, causing Bush to call in marines under the Insurrection Act, again reminding us that some harsh Trump warnings are not altogether new. As to David Duke, Ganz quotes my favorite American novelist Walker Percy: "Don't make the mistake of thinking David Duke is a unique phenomenon confined to Louisiana. He is not." Fortunately, reports Ganz, "Duke came under assault from all sides, as if the immune system of the state and the entire nation was activated against a pathogen," reinforcing that majority resistance to bigotry can protect this country. Perot's bizarre exploits with "Bo" Gritz to recover alleged POWs in Southeast Asia are recounted in detail. Perot then appeared on 60 Minutes complaining that Republicans had tapped his phones to "smear" his daughter. Ganz says, "but it just made him look a little nuts again." When Perot dropped out of the '92 race (to rejoin it later and earn almost 19% of the popular vote) some supporters said it was like "boarding the buses for Buchenwald." Buchanan campaigned that the U.S. borders need protection from "an illegal invasion" of millions--sound familiar? Ganz employs a lot of pop culture and social referents from the early '90s throughout the book, such as Donald Trump as a regular caller to the Howard Stern show, Dana Carvey as Perot and Phil Hartman as Bush on Saturday Night Live, the Randy Weaver tragedy at Ruby Ridge, the conviction of junk bond king Michael Milken, and even a chapter on the parallel fall of John Gotti the crime boss as an archetype American antihero. Ultimately Bill Clinton, the slick and consummate politician, won the '92 race by "triangulation" between the competing and sometimes crazy movements. Jennifer Szalai in the New York Times wrote that When the Clock Broke "is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core." Agreed.

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