Commentary: Author makes ‘thought-provoking’ arguments

Right, left battle over merit of political tract

Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” is a wonderful telling of political change in Kansas on both a personal and social level.

Frank, once a “Ronald Reagan Republican” at Shawnee Mission East High School, describes his transition to a populist Democrat within the broader context of national change. The questions he raises are impressive: How did the economic interests of working people become lost in the conservative-led culture wars? What’s behind the mythical claim that liberals are in control? What’s happened to the economic soul of the Democratic Party?

He wonders, too, if Kansas, where not too long ago the State Board of Education tried to drop evolution from public-school curricula, is the nation’s laughingstock? Or, perhaps, in the vanguard of the post-Newt Gingrich America?

“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is opinionated, defiant, thought-provoking and sure to be very controversial.

Frank, who grew up in Mission Hills, chronicles the suburb’s 30-year gentrification, during which doctors and lawyers were displaced by bankers, brokers and CEOs. Modest homes were torn down to make room for the mansions there today.

It’s hardly a coincidence, he writes, that corporate captains Bill Esrey of Sprint and Bob Green of Aquila both lived in Mission Hills, or that Westar David Wittig grew up in the next suburb south. Or that all three orchestrated the economic collapse of their respective companies while pocketing millions.

Growing up in Mission Hills, Frank says he never thought much about class conflict in America. That changed when he encountered the exclusiveness of Kansas University’s greek system and, later, the cliquishness of College Republicans.

While all this makes for good story-telling, it’s Frank’s juxtaposing his life experience in a broader political context that is most compelling. His dismantling of the conservatives’ mantra that values matter more than economics is especially enlightening.

He explains that while vows to stop abortion, reverse affirmative action and get government off our backs are undeliverable, they serve as thick smoke screens for the true objectives: rolling back capital gains taxes, privatizing Social Security and Medicare and building intractable monopolies.

The trick, Frank writes, is to talk Christ but walk corporate.

Every movement needs a bogeyman. For today’s conservatives, it’s liberalism’s alleged grip on the nation’s politics.

Sounds ominous. But as Frank notes, Republicans have won six of the nine presidential elections since 1968 and, today, control all three branches of the federal government.

In his final chapter, Frank takes dead aim at the Democratic Party and its moderates — a group that includes Bill Clinton — who remained true to the party’s pro-choice base while making endless concessions on economic issues while courting corporations for mega-campaign contributions.

Democrats, Frank argues, couldn’t have picked a worse strategy for going after upper-middle class voters. In the process, working people were left behind.

Here in Kansas, this was particularly evident earlier this year when legislators had little trouble finding time to debate same-sex marriage and handguns but couldn’t spare a minute in the House for debate on a bond program aimed at first-time, low- and moderate-income home buyers. Not coincidentally, the state’s largest residential mortgage lender opposed the bill, even though Kansas is the only state in the nation without such a statewide program.

Indeed, this is what’s the matter with Kansas.


Paul Johnson is a market gardener and legislative advocate on poverty and family-farm issues. He lives near Lake Perry.

Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” will talk and sign copies of his book at 7 p.m. Monday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.The event, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by The Raven Bookstore and the Lawrence Public Library.C-SPAN will be in town to tape Frank’s appearance, says Pat Kehde, co-owner of The Raven Bookstore.