Our country probably prospered as much as it’s ever going to prosper, right there in that era. They had cheap energy, they had oil in the ground, they had working farms.
-- Dean Price (Chapter 1 paragraph p. 12)

Importance: The quote is important because it captures a kind of wistfulness about the past typical of people who feel their present is intolerable.

Gingrich’s memos included vocabulary lessons: if you discussed your opponent with words like betray, bizarre, bosses, bureaucracy, cheat, corrupt, crisis, cynicism, decay, sick, stagnation…you had him on the defensive.
-- Author (Chapter 2 paragraph p. 23)

Importance: This observation by the author shows the rhetorical mechanisms used to degrade or demean one's political opponent that have become too familiar in modern politics.

As a southerner, Connaughton believed that whenever an investment banker from New York came down saying, ‘We can save you money,’ there needed to be someone in the room saying, ‘Bulll-shit.
-- Author (Chapter 3 paragraph p. 33)

Importance: This insight into the behavior of Jeff Connaughton...