Book review: ‘The Fierce Urgency of Now,” LBJ’s Great Society, by Julian E. Zelizer

Julian E. Zelizer's book The Fierce Urgency of Now was reviewed in the Washington Post.

Frustrated by congressional inaction on a pressing social issue, a president decides to do what he can through executive action. The Democratic chief executive characterizes the Republican Party’s philosophy thusly: “We are told the object of leadership is not to pass laws but to repeal them.” For their part, conservatives view deficit reduction as “the cure for a cancer that was gradually destroying the economy”; the only budget deal they will consider includes deep cuts in spending on social programs.

Those words and deeds aren’t products of the dysfunctional 21st-century U.S. political culture; they are from the 1960s, popularly considered the heyday of activist government. In his insightful history of the ambitious package of laws known as the Great Society, Princeton professor Julian E. Zelizer briskly dispels nostalgia for a time when politics were supposedly easier, asserting that “this period of liberalism was much more fragile, contested, and transitory than we have usually remembered.”