That nebulous word, the "mainstream," is on the brink of being diverted into dozens of smaller brooks feeding a variety of specific interests. Blame the Internet or the so-called "niche marketing" of advertisers for this diversion as the trend now finds a welcome spot in American publishing.
So far, the target of "mainstream" publishers has focused on one group -- the entrenched right-wing believers who depend on Fox News for their daily ration of opinion. In fact, Fox provides a handful of authors for this specialized audience.
The result is a continuous loop of opinion uninterrupted by anything outside that loop. The orthodoxy remains unsullied. Readers whose interests diverge from that orthodoxy must pick and choose from the "mainstream" while publishers target conservative book clubs to sell their specialized wares.
Usually, I let the publishers take care of informing their right-wing book buyers about these specialty products, but then I grew curious when I received a book by Margaret Hoover, labeled a "Fox News contributor" and published by Crown Forum, a right-leaning imprint.
Curious because I have a daughter named Margaret and because the nonrelated Hoover wrote a chapter titled "Growing Up Hoover." My daughter and I also grew up Hoover and emerged relatively unscathed despite the obvious ribbing about J. Edgar and vacuum cleaners.
Author Hoover, however, claims to bear an even bigger burden because she is a great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover and said she became a conservative political thinker in order to defend great-granddad, one of the most vilified presidents of the past century.
Hence the title of her book taken from an essay Hoover wrote in 1922 before he was elected president and his reputation was destroyed by his tepid response to the start of the Great Depression.
Called "the great engineer" for his successful career in mining before World War I, Hoover was called into public service by President Wilson to organize massive food relief efforts in war-devastated Europe. He later led a similar effort in Russia.
Ms. Hoover is proud of her relative's work even though, as president, he barely lifted a finger to feed millions of American families impoverished by the economic collapse.
She also slides past his worst mistake as president -- the eviction of the "Bonus Army" from Washington, D.C., in 1932. These were jobless veterans, about 20,000, who marched to the Capitol to urge Congress to pay their war bonus early.
Ms. Hoover only says the president "secretly arranged for food, tents and water" for the protesters, forgetting that he also publicly ordered the U.S. Army to throw the marchers out of town.
Four people, including two infants, died in the charge ordered by Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the Army burned down the marchers' camp, in the process, bayoneting a 7-year-old boy in the leg who was trying to save his pet rabbit.
When the marchers returned after Franklin Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the election in 1932, FDR didn't send MacArthur to the camp, but his wife, Eleanor. Clearly, Roosevelt had a better understanding of public relations, if not human nature, than his predecessor.
Ms. Hoover's haphazard efforts to rewrite the sorry presidency of her ancestor reflect a current attempt to resurrect the Republican presidents of the 1920s -- well, two of them, since Warren Harding seems beyond saving. There's a new biography in the works of Calvin Coolidge by Amity Shales, whose revisionist fantasy, "The Forgotten Man," tried to turn Andrew Mellon into a saint.
But all we need to know about Silent Cal is what Will Rogers said about him:
"The American people elected Coolidge to do nothing, and that's exactly what he did."
Back to Ms. Hoover. She was encouraged to write this slight tome, as she admits in her acknowledgments, to put a kinder, gentler, tolerant face on the Republican Party as her subtitle shows: "How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party."
The author calls for the party to loosen up on its social issues in order to attract a younger segment of the population that is more accepting of abortion, gay rights, climate change action, education reform and the Islamic faith.
She even criticizes Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, for crying out loud! That's rugged individualism -- for a Fox News contributor.
Her pleas certainly sound reasonable, but there's no depth to her arguments, no specifics to her references and no imagination to her doctrinaire right-wing economics.
Faced with the logical comparison between how her ancestor handled a major economic collapse and the actions of FDR and President Obama, Ms. Hoover hardly bothers to draw one, except to offer conventional criticism of the two Democrats' actions.
"American Individualism" is a book for the faithful, however, devout in its espousal of conservative principles and moderate in its acceptance of social reality. The rest of us are merely eavesdroppers on a private dialogue among fellow believers.
First Published: July 24, 2011, 4:00 a.m.
