Hofstadter later complained that this remark in a hastily written preface requested by the editor had been the reason for "lumping him" unfairly into the category of "consensus historians" like Boorstin, who celebrated this kind of ideological consensus as an achievement, whereas Hofstadter deplored it. Hofstadter expressed his dislike of the term "consensus historian" several times, and criticized Boorstin for overusing the consensus and ignoring the essential conflicts in history. In an earlier draft of the preface he wrote:American politics has always been an arena in which conflicts of interests have been fought out, compromised, adjusted. Once these interests were sectional; now they tend more clearly to follow class lines; but from the beginning American political parties, instead of representing single sections or classes clearly and forcefully, have been intersectional and interclass parties, embracing a jumble of interests which often have reasons for contesting among themselves.