Failed progressivism? Perhaps, but surely political energy lost to inertia. A stinging but not unreasonable j’accuse.
“It was almost as if he were trying to channel Richard Nixon.” California-based journalist and activist Press (The Obama Hate Machine, 2012, etc.) examines the failed promise of the Obama White House and its abandoned progressive pledges.
Is Barack Obama a secret Republican? No, writes the author; it is just that in his ardent desire to achieve bipartisan compromise, Obama has willingly done such things as cut care for military retirees, cut welfare, cut Medicare, and cut Social Security. The claim that fiscal crises necessitated these reductions in social insurance and public service spending, Press and other progressives have long insisted, is simply untrue. Obama has shown little inclination to curb his tendency to strike self-defeating Faustian bargains, even if that tendency has also been coupled with “indifference toward Congress and the gritty business of politics.” This has come at the cost of many key planks in what was to have been a presidential legacy: instead of closing Guantánamo, the military prison system has grown; instead of encouraging transparency, the president has shifted war-making to the classified drone program of the CIA; instead of effecting comprehensive immigration reform, he “talked the talk, but never walked the walk.” Yet, Press notes, all is not lost: President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union and other public pronouncements of the second term, perhaps inspired by the successes of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and other progressives, have taken a leftward tack, with such priorities as raising the minimum wage, raising taxes on the very wealthy, and normalizing relations with Cuba becoming realities. Even so, writes the author, Obama “doesn’t seem to regret not accomplishing more” and has been quicker to lay blame at the doors of Congress and Republicans than with himself. Of particular interest, looking to the future, are the author’s admonitions to the next president.
Failed progressivism? Perhaps, but surely political energy lost to inertia. A stinging but not unreasonable j’accuse.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-9261-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2016
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.
Remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Smith (Rethinking America, 1995, etc.).
“Over the past three decades,” writes the author, “we have become Two Americas.” We have arrived at a new Gilded Age, where “gross inequality of income and wealth” have become endemic. Such inequality is not simply the result of “impersonal and irresistible market forces,” but of quite deliberate corporate strategies and the public policies that enabled them. Smith sets out on a mission to trace the history of these strategies and policies, which transformed America from a roughly fair society to its current status as a plutocracy. He leaves few stones unturned. CEO culture has moved since the 1970s from a concern for the general well-being of society, including employees, to the single-minded pursuit of personal enrichment and short-term increases in stock prices. During much of the ’70s, CEO pay was roughly 40 times a worker’s pay; today that number is 367. Whether it be through outsourcing and factory closings, corporate reneging on once-promised contributions to employee health and retirement funds, the deregulation of Wall Street and the financial markets, a tax code which favors overwhelmingly the interests of corporate heads and the superrich—all of which Smith examines in fascinating detail—the American middle class has been left floundering. For its part, government has simply become an enabler and partner of the rich, as the rich have turned wealth into political influence and rigid conservative opposition has created the politics of gridlock. What, then, is to be done? Here, Smith’s brilliant analyses turn tepid, as he advocates for “a peaceful political revolution at the grassroots” to realign the priorities of government and the economy but offers only the vaguest of clues as to how this might occur.
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6966-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.
The nameless resister inside the White House speaks.
“The character of one man has widened the chasms of American political division,” writes Anonymous. Indeed. The Trump years will not be remembered well—not by voters, not by history since the man in charge “couldn’t focus on governing, and he was prone to abuses of power, from ill-conceived schemes to punish his political rivals to a propensity for undermining vital American institutions.” Given all that, writes the author, and given Trump’s bizarre behavior and well-known grudges—e.g., he ordered that federal flags be raised to full staff only a day after John McCain died, an act that insiders warned him would be construed as petty—it was only patriotic to try to save the country from the man even as the resistance movement within the West Wing simultaneously tried to save Trump’s presidency. However, that they tried did not mean they succeeded: The warning of the title consists in large part of an extended observation that Trump has removed the very people most capable of guiding him to correct action, and the “reasonable professionals” are becoming ever fewer in the absence of John Kelly and others. So unwilling are those professionals to taint their reputations by serving Trump, in fact, that many critical government posts are filled by “acting” secretaries, directors, and so forth. And those insiders abetting Trump are shrinking in number even as Trump stumbles from point to point, declaring victory over the Islamic State group (“People are going to fucking die because of this,” said one top aide) and denouncing the legitimacy of the process that is now grinding toward impeachment. However, writes the author, removal from office is not the answer, not least because Trump may not leave without trying to stir up a civil war. Voting him out is the only solution, writes Anonymous; meanwhile, we’re stuck with a president whose acts, by the resisters’ reckoning, are equal parts stupid, illegal, or impossible to enact.
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1846-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
