About the Author
Mark Green is the author or coauthor of 20 other books, including New York Times bestsellers Who Runs Congress? (#1, 1972, 4 editions) and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads
America (2004). He has written over 250 articles for newspapers and magazines like the New
York Times, the Washington Post, Newsday, The Nation and The New Republic. He has appeared
over 200 times as a regular host on CNN’s Crossfire and as the “Examiner” on PBS’s Firing
Line with William F. Buckley Jr.
Green was elected New York City’s first Public Advocate, a position he held from 1994 to
2001, and he was the city’s 2001 Democratic nominee for mayor. He currently teaches at New
York University and is president of the New Democracy Project, which sponsored this book. He
is also seeking the office of New York State Attorney General.
Praise for the Author
"For those of us who understand that America’s greatest progress is achieved not by cheering
on things as they are but by demanding change, Mark Green’s Losing Our Democracy is a
must-read book."
—Senator John Kerry
"A brightly written [and] handy one-volume summary to keep near the dining room table for arguments with your neocon neighbor. His catalogue of Bush and company’s misdeeds adds up to an impressive indictment, but it is his diagnosis of the underlying causes for them that resonates..."
—Kirkus
"While many critics of the Bush administration have exposed conservative extremists posing as ‘patriots,’ now Mark Green has stitched their individual assaults into an alarming pattern of wholesale war on the Constitution—and on democracy itself. Losing Our Democracy calmly builds a chilling but convincing case for Bush’s disregard of the rule of law. Green combines an empirical eye with a savvy roadmap for putting America back on track."
—Representative John Conyers Jr.
"Mark Green’s Losing Our Democracy describes with compelling evidence how the Bush administration and the Far Right have, in the wake of 9/11, compromised our civil liberties and our national security policy."
—Senator Russ Feingold
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About the book
After November 2, 2004, there were several theories to explain why Bush won the presidential election. It was about terrorism, or about Iraq, about the economy or about “moral values.” But in terms of affecting future policy and direction, the tumultuous Bush-Kerryelection
shouldhave been about the quality of our democracy itself.
In Losing Our Democracy: How Bush, the Far Right and Big Business Are Betraying Americans
for Power and Profit (August 7), Mark Green (New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Book on Bush) connects the dots that add up to the most clear and present danger to 217 years of democratic progress and constitutional law in our country. We aremoving away from, rather than toward, the horizon of a better democracy.Green gives concrete examples as to how this happening, as well as what we can do about it.
"Bush & Co. are hypocrites who wave the flag as they trample on the democratic values that
it stands for—and they talk about exporting democracy while daily undermining it at home,"
says Green, who uniquely combines the eye of a prolific author with the deep experience of
having run for and held high public office.
"If democracy means involving people in the decisions that affect their lives, America is
now being governed by ' New Authoritarians'—in the Executive Branch, Congress, the courts and
corporations—who believe instead in secrecy, lawlessness and top-down decision-making. We
are losing our democracy. That’s not alarmist, merely descriptive."
Green describes in colorful detail how the "New Authoritarians" operate:
- In the White House, where Bush and Cheney regularly abuse the law and facts to
impose decisions based on secrecy and ideology—all in the name of fighting terrorism, of
course.
- In Congress, where lobbyists now have more influence than Democrats as the
Republican majority is more dictatorial than any in our history.
- In campaigns, which are more dominated by checks than balances.
- In our courts, where it’s becoming harder and harder for average Americans to
“redress their grievances” through legal action.
- In major corporations, where there’s a new aristocracy of super-wealth that is
dividing America by class lines as much as in the Gilded Age.
Losing Our Democracy explains that Bush & Co. are largely getting away with this quiet
assault by three methods: first, they routinely engage in falsehoods and lies that
successfully mislead many Americans who believe what they hear; second, they excuse all
their unlawful attacks on civil liberties and constitutional law because "we’re at war", and
third, with some notable exceptions, the major media largely ignore this crisis of democracy
because of political manipulation and a focus on he-said/she-said journalism.
Reviews
"While many see through the current administration’s failures and falsehoods, Mark Green shows us just how close Bush has come to subverting our grand democratic experiment. Because Green uniquely combines a scholar’s eye with deep experience in public office, Losing Our Democracy is sharp, convincing and alarming."
—Robert B. Reich, Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, author of 12 books
"Mark Green eloquently makes the case that Bush & Co. are waging an all-out effort to undo
217 years of democratic progress, taking us step-by-step through the strip-mining of our
civil liberties. Losing Our Democracy is a must-read for anyone who cares about America
finding its true self again."
—Arianna Huffington
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