Do textbooks paint a realistic picture of the American federal goverment? Why or Why not?

No they do not. Loewen argues that federal governments of the moment largely dictate the propaganda/information that go into these textbooks. Ideology from government to government is not so radically different that a particular one would seek to re-write America's very sanitized sense of history.Loewen opens with portraits of Woodrow Wilson and Hellen Keller that strip them down to caricatures to suite government ideology than to actually portray who they were.