“lesser of two evils.” For some reason itrndoes not oceur to them to develop candidatesrnand political mechanisms betweenrnelections so that they will not bernin the same fix the next time. Whyrnshouldn’t Republican leaders take themrnfor granted?rnBut neither, also to their great credit,rndo the authors of Abandoned fall for therncurrent Republicarr line that the Reaganrnera was a kind of Garden of Eden forrnthe middle class and that Mr. Bu.sh wasrnthe serpent who led us out of paradise.rn”Nineteen eighty-eight earnings,” thevrnwrite, “were below 1968 earnings; theyrnwere 17 percent below the 1972 highrnpoint. Home ownership, which hadrnrisen steadily since the Depression, leveledrnoff in tile 1970s and, m the 1980s,rndeclined slightly. The country took on arnnew look; along the highways there werernendless strip malls, discount stores sellingrngoods from Asia and fast-foodrnrestaurants. This is the reality of thern’service economv.’ Jobs, in the new ‘KMartrneconomy,’ were low-skill and lowwage.”rnBythel990’s,rnMedian family income was alsorngoing nowhere despite the greatrnincrease of two-salarv families.rnFamily income took until 1987 tornget back to where it was inl973….rnCitizens have been forced to borrowrnheavily to maintain their standardrnof living as real wagesrndropped. . . . Since the interestrnrates on all these debts are high,rnconsumer borrowing is now a veryrnheavy interest burden for thernAmerican family to pull along, l brncover college and other expenses,rnAmericans have been forced tornconvert their main asset—the equityrnon their homes—into cash byrnborrowing against it. hi 1990, becausernof borrowing, U. S. homernequity fell by $300 billion, 16 percentrnof the total.rnMoreover, Reagan’s supposed majorrnaccomplishment for the economy, thern1986 Tax Reform Act, “took dead aimrnon the middle class. The promisedrnacross-the-board tax reduction was inrnfact a tax increase for them,” and “basicrnmiddle-class deductions—including interestrnon car loans, credit cards and educationrnloans—were abolished or weakened.rnA wealthy person could deductrnall the interest on two $^00,000 homes,rnbut a middle-class person could notrndeduct the interest on a loan to put hisrnchildren through college. Also abolishedrnwas [sic] the ‘two-earner marital deduction,’rnmost IRAs, the state and localrnsales tax deduction and the lower raternfor capital gains. “rnWho did benefit from the 1986 act?rnUnder “transitional rules” ostcnsiblv designedrnto ease the difficulties of changingrnover to the new s”stcm, the tax reformrncreated ” 174 special exceptions forrncorporations including Unocal, PhillipsrnPetroleum, Texaco, Pennzoil, GeneralrnMotors, Ghrsler, Goldman Sachs,rnManville, General Mills, \4ilt Disney,rnPan Am, Northwest Airlines, Delta,rnControl Data, Multimedia and Metromedia.rnA few foreign Princes rolled uprnto the trough and got their own transitionalrnrules, including Mitsubishi andrnIbyota.” For conscrvati’es who beliecrntheir mission in life is to defend and protectrncor]5orate socialism, the Reagan Erarnwas indeed a Golden Age. For the RealrnAmerica, it was a tombstone.rnYet, for all of the justified outrage ProfessorsrnQuirk and Bridwell muster andrnfor all the statistical ammunition withrnwhich thev arm themselves, there is arnserious conceptual gap in Abandoned.rnFor the authors, the norm b which thevrnmeasure the decline of the middle classrntoday is the post-World War II age ofrnEisenhower, the era when the UnitedrnStates was the dominant world powerrnand maintained at home a peaceful,rnprosperous, and higliK consensual socialrnorder. The Fall, for them, came in thern1960’s, when lAndon Johnson capturedrnthe federal goernment, expanded itsrnscope and cx]5cnsc far bc’ond what hernhad inherited, and recruited “intellectuals”rnto design, run, and benefit fromrnthe Great Society. Prior to that time,rnthe American middle class, the authorsrnbelieve, was dominant, and its interests,rnvalues, eeonoim’, and aspirations werernthe principal concerns of the government,rnwhich the middle class or its rcpresentatirncs controlled.rnNow the authors are pcrfecth correctrnthat, compared to the 1990’s, the 1950’srnwere indeed a prelapsarian state, and ifrnthe” had left it at that there would bernno more to sa. But what thc ha’crnmissed in their sometimes tendentiousrncontrast between the 1950’s and the presentrndecade is that the ab ss that todavrnvawns before the middle-class nucleusrnof American societv began to open longrnbefore the 1960’s. hi their account ofrnthe “I ,egal Abandonment,” a process thernauthors see as beginning around therntime of Louis Brandeis and the emergencernof “sociological jurisprudence” inrnthe carlv 20th cciitur’, thev are muchrnmore on target, but perhaps they sec thisrnhistorical aspect of “abandonment”rnmore clearly because it is a slice of historvrnmore familiar to them as legalrnscholars.rnYet it was in exactly the same periodrnof the early 20th ccntur- that variousrnchanges began to accumulate in Americanrnbourgeois societv that sowed thernseeds of the current dispossession ofrnMiddle America. The real “abandonment,”rnthat is, took place in the ideologicalrngreenhouse of the Progressive Erarnand in the structural changes in business,rngovernment, and culture that ledrnto the dominance of managerial elitesrnin all three sectors. Professors Quirk andrnBridwell place a good deal of emphasisrnon the “lack of accountabilitv” ofrntenured professors, judges, and entrenchedrncongressional incumbents asrnone of the main sources of the abandonment,rnbut it is exactly that absencernof accountability that bureaucratizationrnand technical specialization breeds andrnin fact bred long before the fruit becamernapparent in the 1960’s and later. ThernGreat Society was nierelv an intensificationrnand a vast expansion of the samernkind of social management, therapy, andrnengineering that originated in the ProgressivernEra, and the corporations, unix’crsities,rnfederal bureaucracies, and massrnmedia that began to develop in that erarnwere the grandparents of Lviidon Johnson’srndeformed children.rnThe reason it is important to understandrnthat the roots of the abandonmentrnof the 1965-92 era lie in the eady 20thcenturyrnrevolution in governnicnt, business,rnand cultural organizations is thatrnthe middle class itself underwent a revolutionrnat the same time, and what happenedrnto the middle class then helps explainrnwhv todav it so passuelv acceptsrnwhatever the misruling elite imposes onrnit. In the 19tli century, the Americanrnmiddle class was the dominant and formativernminority of American civilizationrnbecause it was an economically andrnsocialh’ independent force, based on privateU’rnowned and operated propertyholdingsrnin the form of farms and familyrnenterprises. The independence it enjoyedrnenabled it to think and do whatrnit wanted and to resist effectively proposalsrnthat threatened it. The organizationalrnrevolution that spawned nias-rn12/CHRONICLESrnrnrn