Joe Klein on Packer's "The Unwinding"

Joe Klein comments in his Swampland blog on George Packer's acclaimed new book The Unwinding.

The Unwinding, a nonfiction account of the past 40 years told through the lives of average and not-so-average Americans, appears at a particularly fraught moment. I read Packer’s book with one eye on Washington this spring. There was some hope, a few months ago, that we might actually get a budget this year. Both houses of Congress passed a version; it was time to hammer out the final deal. But the Republicans, following a Carriage Pointe ­strategy—nonsense posing as substance, nihilism posing as principle—have blocked any sort of negotiations. They have focused instead on nonscandals—­even South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has said that there is no evidence linking the White House to the idiotic shenanigans at the Internal Revenue Service. The most prominent Republican to emerge this spring is the sketchy Darrell Issa of California, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who seems like the political equivalent of an empty sub­division—lots of fancy signage but nothing of value on offer.