By Thomas Richard Harry
iUniverse, $22.95, 320 pages
Thomas Richard Harry is a political commentator and essayist with a background in international banking and business. In 2000 he decided to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Missouri as a third-party candidate and lost. He has written multiple books on the problems facing the United States government, Boom! A Revolting Situation is the third. Boom! is both a short history of the political system and parties in the United States and Mr. Harry’s solution for breaking out of the “ideological duopoly” that has, in his mind, paralyzed the system. Mr. Harry’s history is not what I found fault with. An understanding of the history and context of America’s two major parties should be well known to all voting citizens. It is his ideas about “Independent” voters and his solutions to the problems the United States faces that left me cold.
“Only business and government? What about us, the People? Just where do we fit in here? Well as you would expect, very prominently. After all, in the end, it is all about us. And of course it’s people who fill the roles both in and behind business and government interests. But it’s more than just that. While it may sound like Government 101, the voting public is ultimately the key to the success of the system. We can make it or break it. While this is not always clearly evident, it is the truth.”
When it comes to “Independent” voters Mr. Harry’s views seem misguided and based more on what he wishes the situation to be rather than what studies have shown it to be, and his solutions for Washington D.C. ignore the realities of both our system of government and the people who are elected to participate in it. This might explain why his book’s title evokes images of explosions and violence…
Reviewed by Jonathon Howard
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