When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, becoming the nation’s first Black president, the stage was set for Donald Trump’s eventual rise to power. Backlash Presidents shows how, throughout American history, administrations that challenge the country’s racial status quo are followed by presidents who deal in racially charged politics and presidential lawlessness, culminating in impeachment crises.
In this incisive book, Julia Azari traces the connections between racially transformative presidents and their successors, examining the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and Obama and Trump. When he signed long-awaited civil rights legislation in 1964, Lyndon Johnson unleashed a perfect political storm that swept Nixon into the White House. Azari demonstrates how Nixon’s rhetoric, relationship to Congress, and attitudes about executive power exhibit striking parallels with Andrew Johnson and Trump. She discusses how their actions are linked to race and racialized institutions—the Department of War during Reconstruction, the FBI during the Nixon years, and elections today—and looks at what happens after impeachment, describing how the rush to establish a new order perpetuates many of the same problems as the old.
Challenging the conventional wisdom about the role of norms in American democracy, Backlash Presidents reveals how normal presidential politics upholds unsustainable racial hierarchy that in turn gives rise to intense periods of instability.
Julia R. Azari is professor of political science at Marquette University. She is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate and the editor (with Lara M. Brown and Zim G. Nwokora) of The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including The New York Times, MSNBC, Politico, and FiveThirtyEight.
“In Backlash Presidents, Julia Azari provides a rich historical account of the relationship between presidential transformations of the racial order and presidential impeachment. This book offers a deeper understanding of the complex relationship of formal institutions, backlash politics, and accountability—and is a must-read for anyone interested in crises of democracy.”—Didi Kuo, author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t
“This impressive and important book offers a new and convincing interpretation of presidential history, showing a recurrent pattern of racial transformation and backlash in presidential politics. In revealing the connections among presidential power, race, norms, and impeachment, Julia Azari has made one of the most essential contributions to explaining the roots of the Trump era.”—John A. Dearborn, Vanderbilt University
“Backlash Presidents brings together an impressive array of themes and literatures: race, the presidency, populism, political orders. With impeachment as its fulcrum, this sweeping reinterpretation convincingly demonstrates just how the tools of American political development can illuminate past and present together.”—Daniel Schlozman, coauthor of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Political Parties
“An innovative, interesting, and important historical analysis of the heretofore unappreciated significance of racial politics in presidential impeachments. On top of the book’s creative and fresh take on impeachment, it’s beautifully written and easily accessible to audiences beyond academia.”—Michael Tesler, University of California, Irvine
