Review by sarahahp -- The Right to Nominate

[sarahahp]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Right to Nominate" by Thomas E Peterson.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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The Right to Nominate, written by Thomas Peterson, is an interesting approach and perspective to why politics today have gotten so complicated and corrupt. The author brings many references to the Federalists to point out that the type of political system existing today was actually viewed very negatively by our founding fathers. For example, the Federalist papers use the words "infect", "sedition", and "party rage". He specifically writes about the infamous feud between Jackson and Hamilton and links them to the beginning of the factious party system of our days.

The author quotes a problem that the partisan government of today is "a government by the parties for the parties, and of the parties" (page 96). This means that the average voting citizen is a puppet and forced to choose between two party candidates, neither of which may be his ideal choice for presidency. I found it mind-blowing that the party system is the root of many political struggles we face. He advocates for a system in which individual, nonpartisan candidates are selected by those who know them, which can keep elections in a state of checks and balances. This occurs by allowing the public to vote for a completely nonpartisan candidate, thereby weakening the parties.

Overall, I would rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars because of the content and well-backed historical statements.

However, the solution that the author presents seems to be very complicated and unlikely to work because it relies too much on the trust of various people. It also specifies that celebrities can not be selected as an individual candidate, but does not clarify well enough who is considered a celebrity.

This book is geared to a typical frustrated American who feels that the political system is not very democratic sometimes.

As for the grammar, he used the word 'insure' instead of ensure multiple times (pages 26, 28, 149). Instead of writing "Magna Carta", he wrote "Magna Charta" on page 147. Additionally, on page 79 and page 81, there is a photo missing. Pages 211-213 are a repeat of the chapter before. I also found the titles a little weird. For example, Chapter 24 is titled "But" and Chapter 25 is titled "Summing Up".

Overall, despite some of the flaws I see in the author's solution, there is definitely a lot of great historical information in the book, and I therefore recommend it to anyone who is looking for an interesting and historical look-back into American politics.

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The Right to Nominate
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[Juliet+1]

Thanks for a great review! This looks like a book I would want to read.

[Erin Painter Baker]

This is an interesting book. As a former history major who took a lot of American history classes, I don't agree with all of his arguments, but that's okay. I agree with your assessment that his plan is quite complicated and not actually as well defined as it would need to be to be implemented.