Not-So-Beautiful Losers: How Conservatism Won the Cold War – and Lost the Peace

Ronald Reagan was America’s greatest twentieth century statesman. It is altogether fitting to remember him as the “Great Communicator,” but his rhetorical excellence went deeper than mere personal charisma. More than any president since, he understood that ideas have consequences – and that to defeat Soviet communism and restore confidence in America’s future, he needed to unite the people around a truly conservative vision.

There is no doubt that John Ganz, author of, would disagree with that sentiment. A fully committed man of the Left, he clearly believes that conservatism broadly and Reaganism specifically are little more than ideological fig leaves for oligarchy and hate. But his book, a history of the political crack-up that occurred in the early 1990s after Reagan exited stage right, nonetheless proves just how sorely this country needs an imaginative conservatism.

The fall of the Soviet Union should have heralded a bright new dawn for American politics, but as Ganz demonstrates, that was far from the reality. He intricately documents the rise of a new kind of political extremism in the early ‘90s, suffusing the atmosphere of American life with a sense of fear and loathing. This moment, according to Ganz, planted the seeds for “the politics of national despair” that now dominate American populism.

Ganz ably profiles many of the flamboyant figures that emerged from this environment, from the eccentric Ross Perot to the racist David Duke. But perhaps the most important—and disturbing—character in this history is Samuel T. Francis, a Washington Times columnist and adviser to Pat Buchanan. A longtime foot soldier in the conservative movement, Francis became one of the most radical members of the emerging paleoconservative faction in the 1990s. His ideas have come to shape right-wing politics today.

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