To Our Readers

By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

Over the past quarter-century, Kevin Phillips has built a reputation as a peerless predictor of major political trends. His first book, The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, correctly forecast that the postwar Democratic dominance of presidential politics was over. Two decades and five books later, 1990's The Politics of Rich and Poor announced that the Republicans, in turn, would be turned out in a wave of neopopulism -- and, thanks to Ross Perot and Bill Clinton, out they went.

So when TIME was offered the chance to print an excerpt from Phillips' eighth tome, Arrogant Capital, to be published next week by Little, Brown, we naturally jumped at it. The result appears in this issue, and it is classic Phillips: in-depth analysis, grounded in American political history and leading to provocative conclusions. Says Phillips, 54: "The American people are saying we have to change the current political system. The whole thrust of the book is that they're right."

The problem, he asserts, is that Washington's special interests -- lobbyists, think tanks, congressional staffs, departmental bureaucracies -- have grown so powerful that even a shift from Republican to Democratic dominance cannot change the nation's direction. A less confident commentator might stop there, but not Phillips. He lays out a program for change that could restore power to the people -- if Washington insiders would let it happen. "That, of course," he says, "is the crucial question."

Tracking political trends has been Phillips' obsession since he was in his teens. "I was already a voting-patterns nut in high school," he recalls. His senior thesis at Colgate in 1961 documented the shift in Republican support away from the Northeast and into the Sunbelt (which term he coined). Phillips went on to Harvard Law School and then onto the staff of Paul Fino, a Republican Congressman. From there, he joined the Nixon presidential campaign and, after Nixon's victory, the staff of Attorney General John Mitchell. "Because of my book, though," he says, "I was too controversial. I had to resign -- luckily for me, since I would have been asked to work on the 1972 campaign."

Instead, Phillips began writing a newspaper column, founded American Political Report, the newsletter he still publishes and edits, and started work on his series of highly influential books. The latest one may prove to be prescient, but at the very least, as you will see from the excerpt inside, it is profoundly thought provoking.