The Road From Here; Liberalism and Realities in the 1980s

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. First Edition [stated[. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/good. xvi, 280, [8] pages. Occasional footnotes. Appendix. DJ worn and soiled. Presentation copy signed by the author on fep. Paul Efthemios Tsongas (February 14, 1941 - January 18, 1997) was an American politician and a United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1979 to 1985, who had served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts's 5th congressional district (1975-1979) and in local political office. He won seven states as a candidate in the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries, losing the nomination to Bill Clinton. In 1974 he ran for United States House of Representatives from a district anchored by Lowell. The district had elected only three Democrats in its entire existence. In the massive Democratic wave of the post-Watergate election of 1974, he defeated Republican Paul W. Cronin by a 21-point margin. He was reelected in 1976, becoming the first Democrat to hold the district for more than one term. In 1978 he was elected to the Senate, defeating incumbent Edward Brooke by a 10-point margin. In 1983, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and in 1984 announced his retirement from the Senate. After undergoing a bone marrow transplant to treat the disease in 1986 and receiving a clean bill of health from doctors in 1991, he returned to politics, running for his party's nomination for President in 1992. He was the first former Peace Corps volunteer elected to the U.S. Senate (1978). (In 1974, he and Christopher Dodd were the first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.) The author was a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. He offers a pragmatic approach directing liberalism toward the resolution of crucial issues including energy, the Cold War, the economy, the Third World, international trade, the environment, and inflation. Derived from a Kirkus review: Written before the 1980 election for his party and his liberal colleagues, this is Massachusetts' junior senator Tsongas' appeal for a realistic and pragmatic liberalism. What's "realistic" about this liberalism is: 1) acceptance that energy is the number one problem, and that there is no way we can free ourselves from foreign domination without some use of nuclear power; 2) his acknowledgment that social programs--like CETA--proved to be corruptible; and 3) his embrace of "the business community" in order to make life better for us all. Tsongas had seen the results of capital flight out of the old industrial areas, and his solution, which has brought him the support of business in his election campaigns, was to provide tax breaks and other incentives to draw industry back. This had to be coupled with tax breaks for investment and savings, and a new attitude by the American workforce that management is their ally and foreign workers are the enemy. It was the collapse of Chrysler that convinced him of all this; and he teamed up with the conservative Luger of Indiana to write the bill that bailed out the company by imposing a wage freeze on the UAW. A wage freeze was better than the loss of work, he argued.