‘Liberty and Coercion,’ by Gary Gerstle

CreditMatt Chase


By Beverly Gage

Between 1913 and 1920, Americans amended the federal Constitution four times. Each amendment solidified a major reform: the direct election of senators, the first federal income tax, votes for women, the banning of alcohol nationwide. Taken together, they reflected the progressive view that the Constitution was a living document, able to be adapted to and updated for the nation’s needs. A century ago, most Americans seemed to agree that new circumstances required new tools, and that the federal government would have a key role to play in meeting the challenges of the modern age.

As the historian Gary Gerstle points out, this sense of possibility — the hope that the federal government will rise to meet its historical moment — has been all but lost in our era of partisan sniping, Washington gridlock and the “party of no.” How we got into this mess is the subject of Gerstle’s terrific, engaging and deeply analytical new book, “Liberty and ­Coercion,” which offers an ambitious re­interpretation of American political history from the founding to the present. ­Gerstle does not blame one set of bad actors for our current predicament (though he evinces little fondness for the modern Republican Party). Rather, he notes that the United States has always been a nation of competing political traditions, in which hostility to federal power has existed side by side with vast ambitions for what the federal government might do.

One of our finest political historians, Gerstle aims for chronological sweep rather than a deep archival dive. His narrative begins with the founding fathers and ends with Obama and the Tea Party. In between, he traces what is by now a familiar story: the growth of the federal government over more than two centuries of American nationhood. The excitement of Gerstle’s book lies in his ability to tell this story anew by homing in on the long neglected role of the states, and by staying attuned to uncertainties and contingencies of history. “Liberty and Coercion” is no Whiggish tale of triumph. ­Gerstle argues instead that American political development happened in fits and starts, and that compromise, evasion and accommodation make up their own venerable political tradition.

Gerstle’s title hints at his central argument that at least two competing strains of governance have long coexisted in the United States. As we learn in high school, the nation was founded as a federalist republic, with the power of the central government constrained by the Bill of Rights. But the individual states, Gerstle notes, exercised a stunning level of coercive power from the beginning, with the right to create and enforce laws on everything from marriage to human slavery. What happened in American history, Gerstle argues, is not simply that “government” began to play a greater role in citizens’ lives over time, but that the power to legislate and declaim on such matters shifted increasingly from the state to the federal level. Gerstle’s aim, to paraphrase the political scientist Theda Skocpol, is to “bring the states back in” to this larger narrative of federal transformation.

Easier said than done, as Gerstle notes. For entirely practical reasons, historians have been loath to examine the states; after all, there are 50 “dreary state archives” to visit if one is to do the job well. ­Gerstle himself rejects the 50-state ­approach, jumping lightly from illustrative case to illustrative case without suggesting that he has tapped out every possibility. Some of the most fascinating chapters come early on, as Gerstle describes the tension between Lockean liberalism at the federal level and the far more coercive reality on the ground in any given state. Early Supreme Court decisions, he writes, concluded that the Bill of Rights simply did not apply at the state level. The Constitution did, however, severely limit the administrative and political capacities of federal leaders.

Gerstle shows a healthy appreciation, even admiration, for the ways that early politicians sought to get around these limits. Andrew Jackson emerges as a model of making do with less, managing the nearly impossible task of securing territorial sovereignty while commanding a ragtag volunteer army prone to desertion. As the author of an excellent book on American racial politics, Gerstle is hardly blind to the racialized violence inherent in Jackson’s military campaigns. He nonetheless admires Jackson’s creativity and ability to wage effective war in a nation that wanted big things but refused to support a standing army.

By the time the book enters the 20th century, stories about creative and heroic individuals such as Jackson tend to give way to chronicles of undifferentiated sprawl at the federal level. Certainly in the postwar years, the federal government poses the same research problem presented by the states: There are so many agencies, so many bureaucrats and politicians, that one can hardly study them all. In Gerstle’s narration, the central government itself emerges (perhaps unintentionally) as a semi-personified individual, exhibiting “courage,”“ambitions” and even “confidence” on its path to power. Gerstle nonetheless maintains his appreciation for ­individual men and women who managed to achieve big things — good or bad — by accommodating longstanding constitutional constraints. At the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover deployed a newly potent logic of “national security” to justify ­unprecedented domestic surveillance. At the White House, Lyndon Johnson relied on an overstretched interstate-commerce clause to secure federal supremacy in civil rights. In both ­cases, vast new powers emerged by tweaking and evading the existing system, not by changing its fundamental structure.

Gerstle does not hesitate to note what a weird way this is to run a government, and how different the United States remains on this front from the rest of the world. In that sense, this book runs against the “transnational” vogue within the historical profession, which emphasizes connections and continuities beyond national borders. Though it is hardly a celebratory work, “Liberty and Coercion” embraces a certain kind of old-fashioned American exceptionalism. For better or worse, ­Gerstle argues, the United States is not much like other nations when it comes to some basic mechanisms of governance.

Gerstle’s sensitivity to the odd features of the American system may be heightened by his recent move to Britain, where he now teaches American history at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle worries that our cobbled-together way of doing business may not prove sustainable in the 21st century, when Congress seems incapable of keeping the government operating day to day, much less tackling major issues such as climate change and economic inequality.

Gerstle concludes by urging Americans to take up the progressives’ favorite tool: amending the Constitution. He does not hold out much hope that this will yield immediate changes. “Instead,” he writes, “it will open up an ideological space that ­allows a belief in a living constitution to take root and grow.”

Without that space, he suggests, Americans are in danger of becoming locked in “the split between Democrats and Republicans about the proper scope of government.” As Gerstle reminds us, both parties represent viable if competing traditions within American political history. But there is a third, even more powerful tradition: muddling through. However difficult it may be, the parties have no choice but to find a way forward. To give up now would be positively un-American.


The Paradox of American Government From the Founding to the Present

By Gary Gerstle

452 pp. Princeton University Press. $35.

Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale, is writing a biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 17 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: A Check on Balance . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe