Arrogant capital : Washington, Wall Street, and the frustration of American politics / Kevin Phillips.

Includes index.

I. The End of Self-Renewal in Washington and in American Politics. 1. Washington and the Late-Twentieth-Century Failure of American Politics. 2. Imperial Washington: The Power and the Glory - And the Betrayal of the Grass Roots -- II. The Critical Shortcomings of U.S. Politics, Parties, and Government. 3. The Crisis No One Can Discuss: U.S. Economic and Cultural Decline - And What It Means. 4. The Financialization of America: Electronic Speculation and Washington's Loss of Control over the "Real Economy" 5. The Principal Weaknesses of American Politics and Government. 6. The Fading of Anglo-American Institutions and World Supremacy -- III. The Revolutionary 1990s and the Restoration of Popular Rule in America. 7. The 1990s: Converging Revolutionary Traditions and Post-Cold War Jitters. 8. Renewing America for the Twenty-first Century: The Blueprint for a Political Revolution.

Everyone knows that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Now Kevin Phillips, whose bestselling books have prophesied the major watersheds of American party politics, tells us why.

Washington - mired in bureaucracy, captured by the money power of Wall Street, and dominated by 90,000 lobbyists, 60,000 lawyers, and the largest concentration of special interests the world has ever seen - has become the albatross that Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers feared: a swollen capital city feeding off the country it should be governing.

Throughout most of our history, the genius of American politics was that ballot revolutions every generation swept out failed establishments and created new ones. Now that can no longer happen. Feared and even hated by a majority of the citizenry, "Permanent Washington" has dug inches Using history as a chilling warning, Kevin Phillips parallels the present atrophy to that of formerly mighty and arrogant capitals like Rome, Madrid, and Amsterdam.

Unchecked, Washington will - like other great powers before it - lead the country to its inevitable decline and fall. To work again, Washington must be purged and revitalized. In his unique blueprint for a political upheaval, Kevin Phillips puts Washington on notice by sounding a cry for immediate action, offering us a wide variety of remedies - some quasi-revolutionary, others more moderate, but all sure to be controversial.