Donald F. Kettl's "The Right-Wing Idea Factory"

Donald F. Kettl is Professor Emeritus and former Dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He is also a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Kettl is the author or editor of 25 books, including Experts in Government: The Deep State from Caligula to Trump and Beyond (2023) and Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems (with William D. Eggers, 2023). He has received six lifetime achievement awards, and three of his books have received national best book awards.

Kettl applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism, and reported the following:

If you want to truly understand how the right-wing movement permanently changed American politics, page 99 of my book is the ideal place to start. It’s a huge mistake to think of MAGA as a federal government, Trump-generated strategy. It bubbled up from the states.

Some states were leaders in building the factory [that produced right-wing ideas]. Other states fought to stop the movement, while others rocked between the extremes. (p. 99)

The right-wing idea factory leaders were Florida and Texas, along with 18 others. Other states have fought back, led by California and Illinois, along with 11 others. The rest—17 in all—have wobbled back and forth in the difficult world of polarizing politics.

Moreover, the factory generating right-wing ideas didn’t focus on just one product.

To truly understand the workings of the right-wing idea factory, it is a mistake to track individual policy areas, like abortion or DEI; to presume that the states run similar policy production lines, because each state is in fact very different.... The state political cultures and power systems have fallen into different clusters, just as their policies have. (p. 99)

That’s where the action is—and will continue to be. The idea factories in MAGA states have shifted from original issues, like claims of abuse of governmental power during COVID, to new products, like wringing Woke courses from public universities and promoting Christian nationalism in local schools. Trump’s great talent had been to sense where this parade was heading and jump to the front to claim leadership. The new issues in MAGA states guarantee that the movement will thrive long after Trump is gone from the scene.

Learn more about The Right-Wing Idea Factory at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue