rarely if ever interviewed regular towns-
people about their jobs or asked what
they thought of their kids’ new Latino
classmates. They hung out in rejuve-
nated public libraries, high-tech incu-
bators, and craft breweries, not sports
bars, truck stops, or corner churches.
If they bumped into a pissed-off cattle
rancher in line at D&M Agricultural
Supply in Rapid City or asked some Rust
Belt survivors at a Trump rally in Erie
why they were wearing those big red
MAGA hats, they don’t share the experi-
ence with readers.
The Fallowses are a sophisticated,
elite Beltway couple. Jim went to Har-
vard and Oxford and in his 20s was Pres-
ident Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter.
Deborah has a Ph.D. from Harvard in
theoretical linguistics (and often writes
like it). Moderate Hillary Democrats to
their bones, they love all the correct lib-
eral things: public schools and libraries,
bike paths and public-private partner-
ships that redevelop dead downtowns
with river walks and public art. They
hate Walmart, of course.
Whether the town they’re visiting is
in a red state or a blue one, the authors
are pleased and a little surprised to
find a gang of progressive, creative,
brewpub-loving people like themselves
who have chosen to live in Smalltown
USA when they could just as easily be
in New York, D.C., or Los Angeles. They
also “discover” that the towns contain a
corps of “local patriots” who love their
hometowns, defend them from outside
critics, and try their hardest to make
them better places to live, work, raise
families, and die.
James Fallows says these “stalwart
groups,” which have existed in North
America since Jamestown was a fort,
invariably put aside their partisan dif-
ferences and do the right civic things.
For him that usually means the public
sector springs into action. Payroll taxes
are raised. School bonds are floated.
Tax-deferred financing schemes are
packaged. Or federal or state subsidiesare poured into slick projects like Coca-
Cola Park, a $50 million minor-league
baseball stadium in Allentown.
It was not out of character for the Fal-
lowses to gloss over Coca-Cola Park’s
obscene cost or the fallacious economic
arguments and straight-up political cor-
ruption used to get it built. Wherever the
duo landed, they walked the sunny lib-
eral side of Main Street. They didn’t give
government officials and politicians the
scrutiny or grief they probably deserved,
and they never brought up testy local
subjects like high taxes, eminent
domain abuse, or failing public schools.THE AUTHORS WERE smart not to waste
time polling baristas in Lewiston,
Idaho, to find out what they thought
the United States should do in Syria.
They avoided deliberately discussing
national politics and divisive issues like
fracking, gun control, policing, race
relations, and opioid abuse. They were
determined to keep their focus local,
local, local—to a fault. On the upside,
this allowed them to realize, as James
wrote in The Atlantic, that America’s
future is “full of possibilities that the
bleak trench warfare of national politics
inevitably obscures.” On the downside,
this meant they ignored a national
earthquake happening under their
wingtips: the election of Donald Trump.
The authors paid close attention to
the election, but for the book, which was
finished in early 2017, they skipped the
historic Trump-Clinton race entirely.
Trump’s name is mentioned in passing
two or three times, and that’s it. It’s a
huge, conspicuous, and ironic hole in
a project whose purpose was to explore
the ignored heartland of America.
The Fallowses’ aerial exploration was
a good idea gone bad. Their flyby jour-
nalism turns 29 unique American places
into a slow blur of progressive politi-
cians, reclaimed Main Streets, and dry
sagas of economic decline and renewal.
But it has its pluses. Individually,
many of its stories are informative. Theauthors’ optimism is refreshing. So is
the absence of any snooty contempt for
flyover country. And it probably wasn’t
intentional, but the book does make an
indirect case for federalism. It doesn’t
extol federalism’s virtues explicitly, and
it certainly doesn’t complain that the
$4.4 trillion federal government has
usurped too much power and money
from the states, but its upbeat civic
portraits clearly testify to the value of
what’s left of America’s decentralized
system of governance.
Our Towns is packed with examples
of the social and economic benefits of
leaving local people in local control; it
shows that even the smallest communi-
ties in Arizona and Alabama can govern
themselves with little if any supervision
or interference from the central govern-
ment. Whether or not they intended
it, two elite liberals from inside the
Beltway have made a strong case that
Washington should leave the rest of the
country alone.B I LL S TEIG ERWALD, a former newspaper
reporter from Pittsburgh, is the author of Dogging
Steinbeck (CreateSpace) and 30 D ays a B lack Man
(Lyons Press).Photo, top: Alden Cornell/Creative Commons. Photo, bottom: Ian Sane/Creative Commons REASON 67
O ur Towns: A 10 0,0 0 0- Mile J ourney into the
H ear t of Ame rica, by James and Deborah
Fallows , Pantheon, 432 page s , $28.95