Authors Meet Critics: "Legacies of Losing in American Politics"

Session Submission Type: Author Meets Critic

Abstract

Described by renowned APD scholar and current APSA President, Rogers Smith, as “a riveting argument that may well prove seminal,” Legacies of Losing in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is a provocative account of how three significant political losers in American history transformed themselves into long-term victors. Jeffrey Tulis and Nicole Mellow re-cast the massive defeats at the three most pivotal moments in American political history: the founding, when Anti-Federalists failed to stop the ratification of the Constitution; the aftermath of the Civil War, when President Andrew Johnson’s plan for restoring the South to the Union was defeated; and the 1964 presidential campaign, when Barry Goldwater’s challenge to the New Deal order was soundly defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson. In each of these cases, the very mechanisms that caused the initial failures facilitated the losers’ eventual successes, and the seemingly discredited ideas and programs disrupted political convention by prevailing, often subverting, and occasionally enhancing constitutional fidelity.

In this author meets critic session, Tulis, Mellow, and a distinguished set of critics will discuss the book and its implications for the study of American political development, American political thought, and political science more generally.

These implications include: problematizing the meaning of political success; offering a new conception of political agency; providing a new interpretation of Federalist and Anti-Federalist political thought; revising the idea of constitutional moments; elaborating the multiple traditions thesis; and providing a new account of the mechanisms that sustain illiberal ideas and practices.

In addition to the authors (Tulis and Mellow), the panel will include the following critics:

Chair: Thomas Bell, University of Texas at Austin

Panelists: David Crockett, Trinity University; Terri Davis, Lamar University; Curt Nichols, Baylor University

Sub Unit

• American Political Development

Critics

• David Crockett, Trinity University

• Terri B. Davis, Lamar University

• Curt Nichols, Baylor University

Author

• Jeffrey K Tulis, University of Texas at Austin