Mother Jones; Jim Bourg/Pool/AP, Daniel Sheehan/AP When people talk about the most consequential elections of their lifetimes, you don’t hear many of them mention Bill Clinton’s race against Ross Perot and President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
In When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s , out today, the writer John Ganz finds the early shoots of the Trump era amid the right-wing reshuffling during the first Bush administration. It was an awkward and tumultuous moment in American politics, sandwiched uncomfortably between the mythmaking of the Reagan era and the tabloid boomtimes of Bill Clinton. The book explores the parts of the ‘90s that ‘90s nostalgia leaves out, through the lens of the right-wing figures who never really won anything—until, decades later, their ideas finally broke through.
Ganz, author of the Unpopular Front substack and co-host of “ Unclear and Present Danger ” with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, offers a lively and revelatory tour of the right-wing populist revolt that foreshadowed the politics of today—an insurgency powered by guys like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Murray Rothbard, and the Washington Times columnist Sam Francis . I spoke with Ganz recently about the antecedents of Trumpism and the right-wing affinity for flashy mobsters. Let’s talk about Ross Perot.
He’s a recurring character throughout the book—I hadn’t realized how strange he was. Oh yeah. He w.
