Digital List Price:	$17.99
Kindle Price:	$9.99 Save $8.00 (44%)
Sold by:	Amazon.com Services LLC

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Jay Cost

+ Follow

More books from this author

Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic Kindle Edition

by Jay Cost (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 44 ratings

See all formats and editions

A popular columnist for The Weekly Standard, conservative journalist Jay Cost now offers a lively, candid, diligently researched revisionist history of the Democratic Party. In Spoiled Rotten, Cost reveals that the national political organization, first formed by Andrew Jackson in 1824, that has always prided itself as the party of the poor, the working class, the little guy is anything but that—rather, it’s a corrupt tool of special interest groups that feed off of the federal government. A remarkable book that belongs on every politically aware American’s bookshelf next to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, Spoiled Rotten exposes the Democratic Party as a modern-day national Tammany Hall and indisputably demonstrates why it can no longer be trusted with the power of government.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Democratic Party has long presented itself as the party of the poor, the working class, the little guy. As Jay Cost's sweeping revisionist history reveals, nothing could be further from the truth.

Why have the Democrats gone from being the people's party of reform to the party of special-interest carve-outs? In Spoiled Rotten, political analyst Jay Cost tells the story of the modern Democratic party from the end of the Civil War to the present, tracing the sad decline of a once noble political coalition that is no longer capable of living up to its lofty ideals.

When Andrew Jackson formed the Democratic party in 1828, he promised to stand up for the little guy against the rule of privileged elites. What has become of this promise? According to Cost, recent history has shown the Democrats to be anything but the party of and for the people. Instead, they have become a collection of special-interest groups feeding off the federal government, exchanging votes for subsidies and benefits.

With the creation of a partisan spoils system in the nineteenth century, both parties practiced the politics of patronage. But, starting with the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the power of big government to transform whole classes of society into clients of the Democratic party. Urban machines, southern segregationists, and organized labor all benefited from this approach. FDR's successors—Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter—followed suit, turning African Americans, environmentalists, feminists, government workers, teachers, and a number of other groups into loyal Democratic factions. As a result, the Democratic party has become a kind of national Tammany Hall whose real purpose is to colonize the federal government on behalf of its clients.

No longer able to govern for the vast majority of the country, the Democratic party simply taxes Middle America to pay off its clients while hiding its true nature behind a smoke screen of idealistic rhetoric. Thus, the Obama health care, stimulus, and auto bailout health care bill were created not to help all Americans but to secure contributions and votes. Average Americans need to see that whatever the Democratic party claims it is doing for the country, it is in fact governing simply for its base.

Hard-hitting and uncompromising, Spoiled Rotten is a timely, powerful polemic from a rising intellectual star.

About the Author

Jay Cost writes the twice-weekly "Morning Jay" column for the Weekly Standard and was previously a writer for RealClearPolitic and a popular political blogger. Cost received a BA in government from the University of Virginia and an MA in political science from the University of Chicago. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005Z0JHUE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (May 15, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 15, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2292 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 373 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,194,901 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #492 in Corruption & Misconduct in Politics
- #1,145 in Political Parties (Books)
- #1,234 in Political Corruption & Misconduct

Customer Reviews:
4.3 44 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jay Cost

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Jay Cost is the Gerald R. Ford nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on political theory, Congress, and elections. He is also a visiting scholar at Grove City College and a contributing editor at the Washington Examiner.

His books include James Madison: America’s First Politician (Basic Books, 2021); The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy (Basic Books, June 2018); and A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of Political Corruption (Encounter Books, 2015). He earned a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and a BA in government and history from the University of Virginia.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

44 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Michael T Kennedy

A history of the Democratic Party and its clients.

Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2012

Verified Purchase

This is an excellent history of the evolution of the Democratic Party from its belief in small government and individualism in the Andrew Jackson era to the changes that occurred with the New Deal and , especially, under Lyndon Johnson. The Civil Rights acts of 1957, and especially 1964, shifted the black vote from Republican to Democrat in a very short period. The black vote and the Congressional Black Caucus became an integral part of the Democrat structure. The labor unions were similar, especially after the Wagner Act of 1935 which created an adversarial relationship between labor and management. Mickey Kaus, among others, has decried the effect of this 1935 law on the ability of unions to adapt to the modern economy. The auto industry is one example.

Reviewing Kindle editions is more difficult because it is not easy to leaf back and forth in the book to refer to earlier sections so this review will be written, as I have done others, as I read the book. One main theme that runs through much of the story since the Depression is the desire of the unions to eliminate section 14b from the Taft-Hartley law of 1947, passed over Truman's veto. This is the provision that allowed states to ban closed shops, the "right to work laws." The provision originated in the alliance between Republicans and the old Southern wing of the Democratic Party. These two Congressional entities combined to frustrate many left wing desires of the Democrats over the years, none more important than the right to work laws. When the Japanese car companies were obliged by US tariffs to build plants in the US, they expected them to be unionized. However, they found that southern workers did not want unions and that situation continues today. It can be seen in the controversy over the Boeing plant in South Carolina.

The Public Employee Unions are the next topic to be taken up in the book. John F Kennedy allowed federal employees to join unions by executive order in 1962 and Wisconsin permitted public employee unions about the same time. The numbers of private industry union members declined after 1954 as public employee union membership rose. However, the members had very different interests and this would affect the Democratic Party in years to come. The 1968 election was a watershed for the party. The Republicans dominated after the Civil War, partly due to the residual animosities in the North-South divide. This lasted until the Depression, after which the Democrats dominated for 30 years. The Viet Nam war and Johnson's political and fundamentally dishonest way of conducting the US side of the war, plus deterioration of American life in the cities and the disturbances around the Democratic convention in Chicago, all contributed to a loss of confidence in the Democratic Party's way of governing. After the 1960s, the southern wing of the Democrats faded away, partly due to the shift to the black vote dominating in southern states but also to the increased prosperity as northern skilled workers moved south now that air conditioning had changed the climate.

I don't want to summarize the entire book but simply to report that it is fascinating as an analysis of US political life over centuries and the effects of changes in both parties. I will add more after I finish the book, but so far, I can't put it down and I usually do not read political books. It is highly recommended as history, more than politics. There is one error at location 3079-3087 in the Kindle edition which states that Proposition 13 was passed in California in 1961 to avoid a state anti-discrimination housing law. Prop 13 was passed in 1978 to limit rising property taxes. There was an Unruh Fair Housing Law, which may be what the author was referring to, passed about 1961. It was not, however, Prop 13.

He goes on to discuss the Jimmy Carter presidency where Carter fought with the clients of the party as he began to recognize the dilemma of inflation and a slowing economy, which would not permit the spending demanded by the clients. The result was disaster and Carter had a divided party going into the 1980 election. Bill Clinton faced a similar problem, which was solved by the 1994 Republican landslide. Now, Clinton could deal with Republicans and here is where "triangulation" came to be used. The impeachment crisis cause Clinton to shift left again to seek support from the party but his accomplishments came during the period of cooperation with the new Republican Congress.

Once again, the story is very well done and fascinating as political history, somewhat in the style of Theodore White's books, "The Making of the President..."

66 people found this helpful

Helpful

Generic Personage

A Useful But Incomplete Account

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2012

Verified Purchase

Every political party delivers something to its adherents -- otherwise they wouldn't have any reason to adhere. Jay Cost details the legislative and policy gains that the Democratic Party has delivered to its clients, and the ways in which the party is constrained from careful consideration of the public good by the preemptive obligations it has undertaken to its clients. So far so good. The tone eschews moral outrage, and lays the record before us in a calm, almost clinical, way.

What's missing is the explanation of the cultural matrix that sustains the Democratic Party's dominance in American political life. A significant and influential part of the Democratic Party's coalition consists of cognitively agile knowledge workers in the news media, the academy, the professions, and the arts who receive, and seek, PSYCHIC income from their perceived connection to an historically anointed narrative of progress and virtue. Cost fails to address this, except with glancing references to a changed media environment. It's like telling the story of the Civil War as a series of military engagements without discussing the fight over slavery.

Cost is a fine writer with a clear commitment to objectivity. Recommended.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Eric Mayforth

At Some Point You Really Do Run Out of Other People's Money

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

As Jay Cost notes in "Spoiled Rotten," all political parties in democracies bestow some amount of patronage on their supporters following an election triumph. However, the author asserts in this volume that this has practically become the modern-day Democratic Party's reason for being, and that the party has abused this practice to the extent that it is no longer capable of governing in the interest of the nation as a whole.

Since the era of Jackson, Democrats have viewed themselves as the party of the people and the defenders of the common man against privileged interests. But over the course of the twentieth century the party came to embrace what Cost refers to as "clientelism"--the showering of benefits on various interest groups who, in turn, regularly support the party. The author looks back at the last century of American history, describing how the Democrats themselves became a party of privileged interests and discussing how some of the many groups that support the Democrats came to do so.

Cost rightly avers that the modus operandi of the modern Democratic Party is "complaining loudly about inequality in society while enacting policies to advance the interests of its own clients," some of whom can in no way be described as needy.

By the 1970s, too many client groups had been added to the party, and the new presidential nomination procedures adopted following the 1968 election gave these groups even more power. Cost looks at the different ways that presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama dealt with the conundrum facing any Democratic president in this era--he must divert resources to keep his party's clients as happy as possible while also looking after the greater interest of the country as a whole, and the author shows why the party has now been so overwhelmed by client groups that it cannot govern as the Founders intended.

With our current debt level and unfunded liabilities, it goes without saying that this state of affairs cannot continue--social spending will of necessity decrease sharply at some point in the future. And if the severe recession that some expect arrives in the next year, the Republicans, unlike in 2008-09, have the House majority and this time will be able to block any stimulus boondoggles designed to insulate Democratic client groups like public-sector bureaucrats from the recession and will also be able to prevent any middle-class tax increases needed to pay for new social spending.

"Spoiled Rotten" is an outstanding analysis of one of the foremost problems facing the country, and Jay Cost is another of the brilliant young political scientists to have appeared on the scene in recent years. I look forward to reading his work for a long time to come.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jim Babb

IT MAKES ONE THINK

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2012

Verified Purchase

This book details a lot of nuanced stuff too many liberals and progressives are reluctant to think clearly about. The bias is evident, but most every thing Cost says is worth reflection.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

J. Rupp

Der Siegeszug der Partikularinteressen

Reviewed in Germany on May 19, 2013

Verified Purchase

Der amerikanische Journalist Jay Cost, der für den konservativen "Weekly Standard“ arbeitet, geht in seinem Erstlingswerk der beunruhigenden Frage nach, wie es dazu kommen konnte, dass aus der einst respektablen Demokratischen Partei eine Hochburg der linksliberalen Sonderinteressen wurde. Die Antwort liegt für ihn in einem entgrenzten Klientelismus begründet, der sich im Verlauf des 20. Jahrhunderts in rasanter Weise bei den Demokraten ausbreitete und verfestigte.
Statt sich im Sinne ihres Gründungsvaters Andrew Jackson für die Belange der "kleinen Leute“ einzusetzen und stark zu machen, hat sich die Demokratische Partei zunehmend mit der Pflege und Kultivierung von gruppenspezifischen Sonderinteressen beschäftigt. Heute sind die Interessengruppen derart mächtig geworden, dass sie sich extrem schädlich auf die Politikgestaltung auswirken.

Cost geht zunächst auf die Herausbildung der modernen Demokratischen Partei näher ein, die sich gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts unter dem wachsenden Einfluss von progressiven Strömungen ideologisch neu zu formieren begann. Die treibende Kraft hinter diesem Wandel war William Jennings Bryan, der sich als ein Verfechter der populistischen Bewegung einen Namen gemacht hatte. Er trat 1896, 1900 und 1908 als demokratischer Präsidentschaftskandidat an und verlor alle drei Wahlgänge. Seine Versuche, die Landbevölkerung des Westens als zuverlässige Klientel und Wählergruppe zu gewinnen, kollidierten frontal mit den urbanen Schichten des Nordens, die hiervon nichts wissen wollten.
Trotz dieser Niederlagen war das politische Gewicht, welches Bryan bei seinen Parteifreunden einbringen konnte, ganz erheblich. Dank seiner Unterstützung wurde Woodrow Wilson zum Kandidaten für die Präsidentschaftswahl im Jahre 1912 nominiert. Durch die Schwäche und Spaltung der Republikaner gewann dieser dann die Wahl relativ mühelos. Im Unterschied zu Bryan war Wilson ein ausgewiesener Intellektueller, der keine Schwierigkeiten damit hatte, die Mittel- und Oberschicht der Ostküste anzusprechen. Wilson hatte sich dem progressiven Zeitgeist angepasst und glaubte an die gesellschaftlichen Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten der Regierung und des Staates. Insofern ist er bis heute ein Vorbild für die Demokraten geblieben.

Weniger vorbildlich war sein Unvermögen, neue Wählergruppen durch eine gezielte Patronage langfristig an die Demokratische Partei zu binden. Hierin unterschied er sich grundlegend von Franklin D. Roosevelt, welcher der unbestrittene Meister in der Bildung von politischen Abhängigkeitsverhältnissen war.
FDR verfolgte mit seiner Politik des "New Deal“ nicht nur die Intention, dass Land aus der verheerenden Wirtschaftskrise zu führen, sondern auch breite Wählerschichten dauerhaft an die Demokratische Partei zu binden. Mit Hilfe von massiven staatlichen Subventionen verteilte er großzügig Unterstützungsleistungen an die Arbeiterschaft und an die Landwirtschaft. Außerdem berücksichtigte er die speziellen Interessen des Südens, womit er sich den Rückhalt der konservativen Demokraten im Kongress sicherte.
Mit der Umverteilungspolitik gelang es Roosevelt, die Gewerkschaften an seine Partei zu binden. Selbst die schwarze Bevölkerung, die seit dem Bürgerkrieg überwiegend die Republikaner gewählt hatte, begann als Nutznießer der staatlichen Sozialleistungen langsam aber sicher zu den Demokraten überzulaufen.
Die mächtigen urbanen Parteimaschinen wurden von FDR entweder zerstört, wie in New York City, oder gegen die "Grand Old Party“ in Stellung gebracht. Der Präsident transformierte nicht nur die USA zu einem ausgebauten Wohlfahrtsstaat, sondern zugleich die Demokratische Partei, die er für die genannte Klientel attraktiv und wählbar machte.

Sein Nachfolger im Amt, Harry S. Truman, festigte die Verbindung der Demokratischen Partei zu solch einer Klientel noch mehr, weil er seine hochgradig gefährdete Wiederwahl lediglich durch die Mobilisierung von eben dieser Klientel sichern konnte. Er erinnerte die Gewerkschaften, die Landbevölkerung und die sozial schwachen Schichten an die vielen Leistungen und Vergünstigungen, die sie der Demokratischen Partei zu verdanken hatten. Gleichzeitig verdammte er die GOP als eine Partei, die sich nur für Reiche und Wohlhabende einsetzen würde. Sein Kalkül ging auf und die demokratischen Politiker merkten sich die Lektion, dass nämlich für den erfolgreichen Ausgang eines engen Wahlkampfes die schlagkräftigen Interessengruppen unverzichtbar waren.
Die sechziger Jahre stellten für die Demokratische Partei einen Wendepunkt dar, weshalb Cost den Schwerpunkt seiner Ausführungen auf diesen Zeitraum legt. Mit der Bürgerrechtsbewegung wurde die politische Emanzipation der Schwarzen wesentlich vorangetrieben, wovon primär die Demokraten profitierten. Hinzu kam der steigende Einfluss der Gewerkschaften des öffentlichen Dienstes, welche die Industriegewerkschaften als klassische Klientel der Demokraten in Bedrängnis brachten. Außerdem bildeten sich von der Mittelschicht getragene Lobby-Organisationen heraus, die Fragen des Feminismus, des Umwelt- und des Verbraucherschutzes auf die gesellschaftliche Tagesordnung setzten. Politisch standen derartige Gruppen dem linksliberalen Lager nahe, weshalb sie die Demokratische Partei als ihre Heimstätte betrachteten. Mit dem sich abzeichnenden Wegfall des konservativen Südens, der seit dem Sezessionskrieg zum Kernbestand der Partei gehörte, bedeutete diese Entwicklung eine deutliche Verschiebung des politischen Koordinatensystems nach links.

Während Präsident Kennedy nur noch den Anfang dieses Umbruchs erlebte, wurde Lyndon B. Johnson sowohl zum Katalysator als auch zum Opfer des beschriebenen Wandels. Auf der einen Seite forcierte Johnson mit seiner Bürgerrechtsgesetzgebung und seiner Vision von einer "Great Society“ die klientelistischen Tendenzen innerhalb seiner Partei. Auf der anderen Seite brachte ihn der eskalierende Krieg in Vietnam zunehmend in einen unüberbrückbaren Gegensatz zur neuen Klientel der Demokraten. Die unhaltbare Situation explodierte schließlich 1968, als es während des demokratischen Parteitages in Chicago zu bürgerkriegsähnlichen Ausschreitungen kam.
Von diesem Zeitpunkt an manifestierte sich eine Machtverschiebung zugunsten der linksorientierten Interessengruppen, die sich zunächst auf die demokratischen Abgeordneten und Senatoren auswirkte. Wie die Präsidentschaften von Jimmy Carter und Bill Clinton aber demonstrierten, blieb auch der höchste Amtsinhaber davon nicht verschont.
So glückte es Carter nicht, die Inflation unter Kontrolle zu bringen, da seine diesbezüglichen Versuche mit den Interessen der demokratischen Klientel unvereinbar waren. Auch Clinton konnte erst mit Hilfe einer republikanischen Mehrheit im Kongress seine moderate Reformpolitik verwirklichen. Roosevelt und Truman konnten noch das öffentliche Interesse des Staates mit den Partikularinteressen ihrer Partei in Einklang bringen; ein politisches Kunststück, welches ihren Nachfolgern immer schwerer fiel.

Präsident Obama hat dagegen nicht einmal mehr versucht, die demokratische Klientel und ihre Ansprüche einzuhegen. Wie seine Gesundheitsreform oder seine Programme zur Stimulierung der Wirtschaft belegen, hat sich die parteiische Berücksichtigung von Sonderinteressen noch potenziert.
Der Autor hält diesen Trend für unumkehrbar, weil die konservativeren Elemente in der Demokratischen Partei permanent marginalisiert worden seien. Cost unterschätzt hierbei allerdings gerade solche Gegenkräfte. Schon während der Regierungszeit von Jimmy Carter, die Cost für komplett gescheitert hält, ignoriert er bei seiner Analyse die Tatsache, dass es dem Präsidenten zumindest im Bereich der Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik gelang, sich dem negativen Einfluss der linksgerichteten Interessengruppen zu entziehen. Wie Brian Auten in seiner herausragenden Studie "Carter's Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy“ eindrucksvoll zeigen kann, hat Carter letztlich eine harte Haltung eingenommen und die Verteidigungsausgaben signifikant erhöht.
Diese Kritik ändert aber nichts daran, dass es Cost gut gelungen ist, die Unterminierung des öffentlichen Interesses durch das demokratische Klientel-System klar herauszuarbeiten. Sein Buch ist in jedem Fall sehr lesenswert.

Jürgen Rupp

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Jay Cost

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries