Book Review: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz

John Ganz, author of the Substack Unpopular Front, has published his first book which explores the political culture of the early 1990s. Primarily focused on the years 1990-1992, Ganz weaved an engaging narrative of how various historical, economic, and cultural forces put America on a political trajectory that helps make sense of the current moment. 

The end of the Cold War had a dramatic impact on domestic politics in America, bringing to bear forces that were suppressed and largely ignored since the 1940s. If Anti-communism was the glue that presented the semblance of bipartisanship of the mid-late 20th Century, the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed new paranoias, and eventually a new type of politics. Ganz focuses on several figures who were harbingers of things to come. 

Ganz's writing skillfully combines biographical sketches, historical context, and intellectual underpinnings. Anxiety and anger over economic forces and demographic change were starting to shift attitudes of the white middle class. An early sign was the rise of David Duke, former Klansman and proud white supremacist, who gained the GOP nomination for Louisiana Governor. A lifelong misfit with antisocial tendencies, Duke emerged as a voice for struggling lower-middle class whites. Ganz deftly explains the corrupt political structures of Louisiana and connects Duke to the populism of 1930s figure Huey Long who also championed lower class whites and ran the state like an autocrat. Although Duke lost his bid for Governor, he predicted that if the economic fortunes of the white middle class continued to erode, his brand of politics would own the future. 

Duke's reactive brand of populist and identity politics trickled their way into the 1992 election. The sitting President George Bush was riding the crest of the First Gulf War victory with a 90% approval rating until the economy went into a gloomy recession. Bush found himself challenged from the Right by Patrick Buchannan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon who specialized in red meat rhetoric. By the 1990s, he had turned against the dogma of free trade and championed a new isolationism. Buchannan raged against "elites" who fleeced hard working Americans and took up the culture war mantle, seeing traditional American values under attack everywhere from public schools to rap music. 

Conservative politics were changing, starting to lean into a radicalism that had always existed, but was oozing into the mainstream. For many, William F. Buckley was the face of the Conservative Movement, founder of National Review and host of the TV Show Firing Line, where his witty repartee with fellow conservatives and the occasional liberal offered the image of genteel conservatism. Buckley also dismissed the John Birch Society, the Anti-communist organization fueled by conspiracy theories, from the Conservative Movement. But the ground underneath conservatism was shifting by the early 1990s, traditionalists, libertarians, defense hawks, and supply side economics were somewhat adrift in the post-Cold War world. Buchannan proudly called himself a paleoconservative, a radical rightist modeled on Franco and Mussolini.

Intellectual paleoconservatives loom large in the book. Samuel T. Francis and Murray Rothbard, one a white nationalist and the other an anarcho-capitalist, gave voice to the new currents. They despised the limited government mantra of the Reagan era. They hated democracy, Rothbard spoke of repealing the 20th Century and "breaking the clock" of democracy. Francis advocated for a strong state not unlike the Mafia, The Godfather was his ideal "right wing utopia." For Conservatives to win, they must champion culture above all else, a strange blend of confederacy worship and Anglo-Saxon fetishization. Francis identified the growth of militias and militancy in 1980s America as the first stirrings of a new culture war, a sign of people starting to wake up in the heartland.

Ganz explains how the farming crisis of the 1980s radicalized many whites in the Great Plains. A chapter on Ruby Ridge, the botched Federal raid on armed militants in Idaho that led to the loss of innocent life, becoming a cause celebre for antigovernmental forces spreading like wildfire. Economic displacement fueled the new militancy, often fueled by crackpot theories, xenophobia, and antisemitism. The 1992 candidacy of Texas mogul Ross Perot (another major character in the book), which captured the imagination of many by promising he could fix everything with smarts and hard work was a foreshadowing of Trump.

The central question of the book, in the words of Ganz:

We are still working to answer why the loss of faith in the old order has registered an intensified anti-egalitarianism rather than a renewed egalitarianism, why perceptions of public corruption and criminality have led to the open embrace of corruption and criminality rather than its rejection, and why discontent with the distribution of wealth and power has fostered closer popular identification with certain types of capitalism and capitalists (22).

Part of the answer lies in the lack of imagination of liberal politicians. Ganz never quite argues the notion but suggests it. It's in his critique of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Governor of Arkansas, Clinton hammered Bush's economic policies while his folksy persona exuded charm and intelligence. But he was also temperamental and sensitive to criticism from the left of his own party, especially from the more progressive Jesse Jackson wing. Clinton liked the perks of being a statesman, he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with power brokers and celebrities a bit too much. His two terms as President saw him make many compromises with the Right on economic policy.

Ganz points out how the populists' movements on the Left such as Jesse Jackson's attempt to build a multi-racial working-class movement and Bernie Sanders championing social democracy never got their proper chance. The malaise of the Democratic Party, Robert Altman's TV series Tanner '88 is an excellent example, is another part of this story.

In a way, Trump is the main character in the book even though he only makes a few appearances in the chapter on 1990s New York City politics and the popularity of the gangster John Gotti. Trump's psychic connection with middle America did not happen overnight, he's like a Frankenstein the radical right envisioned promising to fix everything, stopping illegal immigration, casually endorsing conspiracy theories, talking like a mobster, famous for being famous, and promising retribution to all internal enemies. 

With the 2024 Presidential election looming, the Right has their radical plans in place for Day 1. The world of a year from now would look ominously different. When the Clock Broke illustrates how the fringe becomes the norm due to economic and cultural forces. But even if the immediate existential crisis of democracy is averted this time around, the problem of wealth distribution will remain, and it will rest on the shoulders of those who believe in democracy to prove they are up to the challenge.