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Over the weekend, I finally finished Morton Keller's most recent book, Three Regimes: A New Political History. The book has several virtues, but I would recommend it because Professor Keller presents a novel look at our current political situation in America.

My friends on the right are frustrated because government power seems to grow no matter who is in control. My friends on the left are equally frustrated because government is not tackling the real issues that hamper social progress.

Professor Keller does not pretend to have solutions to those questions. He merely provides the tools to analyze the questions. And his approach is certainly unique.

Almost all historians pick an era and slap a label on it. We are thus left with a list of slogans -- and very little analysis to help us apply historical lessons: the Federalist era, the Republican era, the age of Jackson, the Jazz age, the era of good feeling.

Professor Keller tries something new. He divides the American epoch into three periods: (1) the post-colonial deferential-republican regime from 1789 through 1830, (2) the party-democratic regime that began in 1830 with the Jackson Administration and continued until the Great Depression in 1933, and (3) the populist-bureaucratic regime from 1933 through the present.

The constitution has set the pattern in each of the three regimes. The built-in tension between the three branches of government, between the states and the federal government, and government (in general) and the people gave each regime its own character.

Even though the founders claimed they did not support the formation of political parties, the electoral system in the constitution inevitably caused the creation of parties. The early years of the republic saw far more tension between the Supreme Court and the other branches of government because the court was the only institution that was not controlled by the Jeffersonian republicans.

Parties came into their own with the election of President Jackson and the inevitable Civil War following Lincoln's election. Up until the Great Depression, limited government was the general goal of both parties -- even though they each strove to reward their voters and friends. The only exception was the Wilson presidency when the federal government took on additional powers in World War One.

That model arose again in the depression when the limited government model was abandoned in favor of turning over many economic and civil liberties to the national government. That model, of course, carried through the Second World War, Korea, and the Cold War, until today. Populism became the basic political style.

Professor Keller devotes half of the book to the third regime: the one in which we now live. He begins by noting that prior to 1930, our political institutions focused primarily on constraining the power of government; during the 1930s, the public began asking the question that John Adams dreaded: How can the majority use the power of government to serve them and their friends -- at the expense of the minority? Congress became an institution to redistribute money and goods, rather than merely a body to protect individuals in pursuing their own dreams. Similarly, the court system went from telling the government what it cannot do to telling society what it must do.

The book provides a very interesting perspective. I had to to step back from our partisan populism and take a look at our current political situation within its historical context. My limited government Republican friends long for an era that has, most likely, disappeared. My liberal Democrat friends rail against loss of liberties that were eroded long ago. They both see the advantages of a mobilized government for their respective policies, but they both worry that the system cannot (or will not) be controlled.

The hope that Professor Keller offers is that the system itself is resilient. It has survived over 200 years of crises. It will stand.