They say that a liberal arts education prepares one for lifelong learning, which is true. But less often acknowledged is how your earlier teachers prime you for both. I wish all children could experience the quality of education I enjoyed in some of America’s great suburban public schools. I am deeply grateful for the mentors I found there, foremost among them Franklin J. Wiener. After giving up a lucrative career in advertising to pursue his true vocation of teaching high school English, Mr. Wiener earned the love of generations of grateful students. In the belief that no starting teacher should have to work two jobs to pay the bills, he also supported his colleagues through his union activism. For years, I had over my desk a mounted newspaper photo of him walking a picket line with his signature pipe and a sign that read TEACHERS PAY TAXES, TOO. I lost the photo in a move, but his devotion to young people and belief in us changed my life.
I also had some amazing lucky breaks in the informal teachers to whom this research led me, and it is to them, above all, that the book is dedicated. When I first became interested in the Prince Edward County story, several people familiar with it said I must talk with Ed Peeples. An e-mail inquiry proved the start of a lasting friendship. As Ed welcomed me into his Richmond attic archive and he and his kind wife, Karen, put me up in their home, he taught me about life in Harry Byrd’s Virginia.
Ed’s friend James H. Hershman Jr. had never met me when I first contacted him after learning of James Buchanan from a footnote in his work. Yet Jim instantly understood the stakes of the research I was pursuing and took me under his wing, becoming my personal guide through the thickets of Virginia history, as well as a dear friend. His knowledge of the state’s past is encyclopedic, his analyses unfailingly illuminating, and his generosity as a scholar absolutely without peer. I have whole files of material from him, including scores of primary sources I would not otherwise have found, along with his own astute capsule histories on various matters. In short, I could never have written this book in this way had I not had the good fortune to be included on the ever lengthening list of researchers whom Jim has assisted over the years. I like to think he had special enthusiasm for this project because it tracked the stages of his own life in Virginia so closely, but either way, I am grateful beyond words that he also read the entire manuscript, saving me from errors while providing superb advice on interpretive matters large and small. If I still managed to get anything wrong, it is owing to my effort to simplify matters of byzantine legal and political complexity for a general readership, not to any want of careful guidance on his part.
Another teacher I wish to thank is S. M. Amadae, whose groundbreaking first book, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, alerted me to the existence of the Buchanan House Archives. When I called her to ask how she gained access, not only did she generously share her experience with research in this unusual setting, but she also allayed my fear that I might somehow be imagining things, because no one else had discovered the plan I was seeing take shape in the sources—and on the floor of the North Carolina General Assembly after 2010. There was a long pause on the other end of the line; then she said, “You have to realize that most of the critics of neoliberalism never read the theory.” That observation was a turning point; it made me determined to keep following the trail I was on to its end, wherever it led. The conversation also proved the start of another enlightening and sustaining friendship. No one I have read or met understands Buchanan’s philosophy of political economy as astutely as Amadae does; in her most recent book, Prisoners of Reason, she demonstrates the predatory will to power at the level of theory that I have shown in its practical application.
My deepest gratitude, though, is to my agent, Susan Rabiner, the most exacting teacher I have ever had and the dream coach for this project. From our very first conversation, Susan understood like no one else the stakes of this story, and she worked far beyond the call of duty to help realize its potential. She was, I thought more than once, the Anne Sullivan to my Helen Keller, patiently yet firmly teaching me how to speak to be understood outside my academic world. She has been the most brilliant interlocutor, supportive coach, and talented advocate a writer could dream of—and she has made the work fun. My editor, Wendy Wolf, showed tremendous faith in this project from the outset, and her reading of the manuscript taught me much about storytelling for a general readership. Will Palmer proved a peerless copy editor; his was the most meticulous and helpful review my work has ever enjoyed. I also thank Georgia Bodnar and Megan Gerrity at Viking for their expert work. Pamela Haag improved the book immensely with her incisive freelance editing. Her hard queries and helpful suggestions brought it to a new level.
I could never have persuaded Rabiner and Wolf to take me on had it not been for teachers closer to home: the members of my writing group. Laura Edwards, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, and Lisa Levenstein are a dream team of relevant historical expertise, as well as some of the smartest critics and most loyal friends a writer could hope for. For generously taking time from their own summers to read the entire penultimate manuscript and send me comments and suggestions that vastly improved it, I am also deeply grateful to another dream team of scholars: Alice Kessler-Harris, who believed in and supported this project and its author from the very beginning; Jason Brent, whose grasp of the varied traditions of economic thought saved me from missteps and sharpened the overall analysis; Joseph A. McCartin, whose knowledge of public sector workers and their history is unrivaled; and Sonya Amadae, whose critical command of the relevant body of theory is unrivaled and who took time from her research appointment in Finland to help me get it right. I also want to thank two leading Latin Americanists, John French and Jeffrey Rubin, for reading the chapter on Chile and offering keen insights. Thanks, too, to my colleagues in the Labor and Working-Class History Association, from whom I have learned much about the substance and stakes of the history recounted in this book.
Lisa Levenstein deserves a paragraph all her own for additional brilliant editing at the eleventh hour. I will never forget her generosity over the Christmas and New Year’s break, carrying out heroic and inspired surgery to shorten and sharpen each chapter, sometimes more than once. Possessed of an amazing editorial mind, she is a singular friend I am incredibly lucky to have.
I am profoundly grateful to the other distinguished historians who believed in this work enough to write letters in support of my applications for fellowship support: Linda Gordon, Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, Charles Payne, Michael Sherry, and Daniel T. Rodgers. And thank you to these institutions for heeding those letters and underwriting the research and writing: the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, and the Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research.
I would also like to thank some people I have never met but have learned from immensely: the dedicated journalists who have been covering the impact of big money on American politics. Many are named in the notes but all merit collective recognition here because I could never have pieced together the last two decades of this book’s story without their intrepid investigations.
One of the many joys of teaching is the two-way flow of information and insight. My graduate students have enriched my understanding of many topics touched on in this book; I thank them for sustaining me with the inspiration of their own research and fellowship. So, too, do I appreciate the many undergraduate students whom I have had the pleasure of learning from in the course of writing this book. I also want to thank the outstanding research assistants who helped at various stages of this project, first at Northwestern and later at Duke: Anthony Abata, Eladio Bobadilla, Jon Free, Alexander Gourse, Natalie Jean Marine-Street, Parvathi Santhosh-Kumar, Hunter Thompson, Brad Wood, and Martin Zacharia.
Many other colleagues and friends shared sources, ideas, and encouragement on various parts of this work, among them Ed Balleisen, Martha Biondi, Jack Boger, Christopher Bonastia, Eileen Boris, Andy Burstein, Margot Canady, Eduardo Caneda, Patrick Conway, Saul Cornell, Nancy Cott, Joseph Crespino, Emma Edmunds, Lane Fenrich, Melissa Fisher, Mary Foley, Nancy Fraser, Estelle Freedman, Paul Gaston, Jonathon Glassman, Thavolia Glymph, Sally Greene, Brian Grogan, Roger Horowitz, Nancy Isenberg, Jennifer Klein, Bob Korstad, Kevin Kruse, Matt Lassiter, Jules Law, Kelley Lawton, Brian Lee, Ariane Leendertz, Andrew Lewis, Nelson Lichtenstein, Mary Anne McAlonan, Joseph A. McCartin, Laura McEnaney, Alan McGinty, Jennifer Mittelstadt, Julie Mooney, Bethany Moreton, Alice O’Connor, Julia Ott, Joseph J. Persky, Christopher Phelps, Kim Phillips-Fein, Jedediah Purdy, Bernhard Rieger, Kyle Schaefer, Edward H. Sebesta, David Steigerwald, David Stein, Wolfgang Streeck, Shelton Stromquist, Kerry Taylor, Heather Thompson, Eckard Vance Toy (and his daughter Kelly Dittmar, for reaching out to me after his death and sending me valuable materials from his personal research collection on the far right), Kara Turner, Nick Unger, Jean-Christian Vinel, Daniel Williams, Peter H. Wood, Celeste Wroblewski, and Jack Wuest. If I have neglected to mention anyone, please know it is only from exhaustion!
As always, I am indebted to the many archivists and librarians whose knowledge, professionalism, and openhandedness assisted my research (though I will refrain from naming any, lest it cause some of them trouble). So, too, I appreciate the invitations to speak on aspects of this project and the hosts and audiences who helped sharpen the ideas.
Lastly, but most importantly, I am grateful to the many beloved friends (you know who you are, and I know how blessed I am to have you) and the family members who sustained my spirits throughout this work: Mary Anne, Ray, and Ryan McAlonon; David and Jacquie MacLean; Eli, Eve, and Les Orenstein; Celeste Wroblewski; and Ann Golden. Mary Anne arrived like a miracle in the final month, each day of which confirmed my belief that she is the world’s best sister. In a category all his own is Bruce Orenstein, my first reader and my soul mate, without whose love, vision, everyday help, sage advice, and sense of humor I could never have done this. Thank you all, so much.