With his characteristic patrician sarcasm, Vidal casually scraps the enduring notion of American exceptionalism, the idea that our politics, unlike those of the corrupt Old World, are founded on ideals of democratic equality and public virtue. “Burr” delights in subverting everything we think we know about how the country was built. That line could serve as the epigraph to one of the most entertaining novels ever written about American politics, Gore Vidal’s “Burr.” Vidal, who died July 31 at the age of 86, published what many regard as his best novel in 1973, when Vietnam and Watergate were dealing Americans’ confidence in their government a series of blows from which it has yet to recover. A lot of folks wrassling round,” he scoffs. In “All the King’s Men,” however, Willie Stark learns to dismiss the idealized portraits of the Founding Fathers in American history textbooks: “I bet things were just like they are now. The Tea Party, named for the most famous anti-tax revolt in American history, was the clearest expression of this Revolutionary nostalgia, and for many voters this year, 2012 will be an election about returning to what they see as the values of 1787. under President Barack Obama was drifting from the principles of its founding leaders and documents. They were drawing on the widespread conservative sense that the U.S. After winning control of the House in 2010, Republicans opened the next session of Congress by reading the Constitution.
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