Politics & Power Quote by Michael Beschloss

Beschloss is doing something historians do best: taking a messy cultural mood and pinning it to an institutional stress fracture. The “last half of the 20th century” isn’t just a date range here; it’s a shorthand for a series of credibility collapses - Vietnam’s body counts on the evening news, Watergate’s procedural rot made cinematic, the Church and the CIA losing their mystique, the economy lurching through stagflation. “Skeptical” functions as an understated verdict. He could say “disillusioned” or “furious,” but skepticism is more corrosive: it doesn’t protest; it withdraws trust.

The subtext is that political parties once relied on a kind of civic theater to manufacture legitimacy. Conventions were not merely meetings; they were rituals that told voters, “the adults are in charge.” When Beschloss notes that parties and conventions are “affected,” he’s pointing to how distrust migrates. If people stop believing in the referee, they also stop believing in the game. The nomination process shifts from smoke-filled rooms to primary battles and TV-ready performances not purely out of democratic idealism, but because legitimacy has to be crowdsourced when institutions can’t command it.

There’s also a quiet warning embedded in the line: when skepticism becomes the default posture, parties don’t just adapt; they hollow out. Conventions turn from decision-making arenas into branded content, and leaders are selected less for governing competence than for their ability to survive suspicion. Beschloss frames this as historical consequence, not moral decline - but the implication is hard to miss.