Jon Lauck: The challenge of writing a history of a Senate race in which he participated
How can someone write an objective account of one of the most important Senate elections of recent times if he also worked for the winning campaign? An unabashed conservative, Jon Lauck was not only a research and debate consultant for then-Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) in his 2004 bid against then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D); he also actively supported Thune’s unsuccessful Senate bid in 2002. He then joined Thune’s staff after the Senate victory before joining the history faculty at South Dakota State University.
Indeed, this author is hardly your typical political scribe. He compares himself to such eminent historians as Thucydides, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore H. White, and claims he has invented a new subset of historical analysis in his book. He also sees parallels in the Senate race he chronicles to the historic 1858 Lincoln-Douglas contest.
To do so must require an ego the size of Mount Rushmore, not to mention formidable reporting and literary skills.
Lauck is clearly willing to endure howls of outrage from fellow academics by purporting to write an unbiased book when he obviously favors one of the candidates. Lauck will not endear himself to historians by quoting conservative historian Leo Ribuffo that the “tendency toward glib moralizing from a left liberal or radical perspective has affected American historical writing for the worse.”
Nevertheless, Lauck pulls off his audacious task by producing a book that is generally even-handed, meticulously researched and historically illuminating.
For my part, I’m willing to let historians fight among themselves over Lauck’s book while I savor his engrossing account of the hard-fought Daschle-Thune face-off, which The New York Times called “the other big race of 2004” after the presidential election. ...
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Indeed, this author is hardly your typical political scribe. He compares himself to such eminent historians as Thucydides, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore H. White, and claims he has invented a new subset of historical analysis in his book. He also sees parallels in the Senate race he chronicles to the historic 1858 Lincoln-Douglas contest.
To do so must require an ego the size of Mount Rushmore, not to mention formidable reporting and literary skills.
Lauck is clearly willing to endure howls of outrage from fellow academics by purporting to write an unbiased book when he obviously favors one of the candidates. Lauck will not endear himself to historians by quoting conservative historian Leo Ribuffo that the “tendency toward glib moralizing from a left liberal or radical perspective has affected American historical writing for the worse.”
Nevertheless, Lauck pulls off his audacious task by producing a book that is generally even-handed, meticulously researched and historically illuminating.
For my part, I’m willing to let historians fight among themselves over Lauck’s book while I savor his engrossing account of the hard-fought Daschle-Thune face-off, which The New York Times called “the other big race of 2004” after the presidential election. ...