The Democrats' Dilemma

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In this political biography of Walter Mondale, Steve Gillon asks a central question that is the basis of his argument: What does Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democratic party and the crisis of post-war American liberalism? Gillon's answer is that Mondale provided a bridge between the Party's past successes and its still undefined future. By examining Mondale's rise in the 1950s and 1960s and his ultimately unsuccessful effort to adjust himself to a world in which basic liberal assumptions were being questioned, Gillon argues that we can begin to understand what has happened to the Democratic Party as a whole. Gillon argues that Mondale's failure to build this new consensus transcended his individual limitations and reveals the serious problems that confronted the Party. He cites the Democrats' reluctance to make simplistic ideological appeals at a time when television makes such appeals more attractive, and their previous inability to articulate a platform that included the sweeping agenda and hopeful rhetoric necessary to attract and sustain public support. These fundamental problems and tensions, Gillon argues, define the large problems with which Mondale and the Democratic Party had to struggle.