Crossing the Aisle
In this 2018 follow-up to Coup, The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, author Keel Hunt narrates stories of shifting politics in his home state of Tennessee in the 1980s and 1990s and the ability of senior politicians in both parties to work together on important policy questions to prepare their state for the future.
The latter third of the twentieth century was a time of fundamental political transition across the South as increasing numbers of voters began to choose Republican candidates over Democrats. Yet in the 80s and '90s, reform-focused policymaking—from better schools to improved highways to health care—flourished in Tennessee. This was the work of moderate leaders from both parties who had a capacity to work together "across the aisle."
As the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jon Meacham observes in his foreword to this book, Tennessee offers striking examples of bipartisan cooperation on many policy fronts—and a mode of governing that provides lessons for America now in this angry era of partisan stalemate.
After this book’s publication, the former Senate Majority Leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle sent a copy to every U.S. Senator.
“How the Tennessee of today—a prosperous and congenial island of civility in a nation of division—came to be...is the subject of the following pages.”
–Jon Meacham, presidential historian and scholar at Vanderbilt University
“Want to know modern Tennessee? Order Keel Hunt’s engrossing new book about the continuity politics that has defined the state for 40 years. Engrossing stuff on the Blanton scandal, Lamar, Ned Ray, Bredesen, the Memphis and Nashville jockeying for the NFL, etc.”
–Jonathan Martin, national political reporter for The New York Times
“This is journalistic history at its best, and makes for engaging and informative reading.”
–John R. Vile, Middle Tennessee State University and Dean of the Honors College
"Hunt calls the period covered in “Crossing the Aisle” the “In-Between Time”, by which he means the quarter-century of Tennessee history between 1978 and 2002 marked by genuine two-party competition–and, even more important, across-the-aisle cooperation between the mostly center-right leaders of both parties.”
–Michael Nelson, Fulmer Professor of political science at Rhodes College, columnist for the Daily Memphian, and political analyst for WMC-TV in Memphis
Click here to read Professor Nelson’s full review
Photos from Crossing the Aisle
