Looking to beat up on George W. Bush some more? There’s plenty of ammunition in this chronicle of the collapse of federal fiscal discipline during the previous administration.
The federal government is no stranger to debt, writes former Houston mayor and Texas gubernatorial candidate White. But by virtue of “informal but well-understood rules, an unwritten constitution,” the government, from the end of the Revolutionary War through 9/11, borrowed during severe downturns to make up for lost revenue and then promptly balanced the budget. It also borrowed to expand national borders, as with the Louisiana Purchase, and in times of war—though it also financed war with new and expanded taxes. That ended in 2001, when, for the first time in American history, the Bush administration took the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq off the books and financed them strictly by debt, which flies in the face of all fiscal wisdom. Moreover, the Bush administration even pressed to lower taxes; only John McCain and two other Republicans, White notes, “opposed cutting taxes during war” by voting against a Bush-fomented bill that did just that. Writing in vigorous, plain English, the author turns a few falsehoods on their heads while making his argument—e.g., Franklin Roosevelt did not sink the nation into debt through federal spending in the Depression; the Social Security trust is sound; it would not harm the economy to balance the budget. White’s battle is certainly uphill, given that both parties have become accustomed to staggering levels of debt that he warns are unsustainable. However, rather than merely argue in the abstract, the author undergirds his case by recommending specific steps to alleviate the crisis, including, among others, establishing solely tax-financed budgets and putting bonds up for national election.
Reading between the lines, White is recommending much more—and therein lies controversy, especially when it comes to military spending. A book that deserves much attention.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-343-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Not an easy read but an essential one.
10
GET IT
Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke.
In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it—e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.
Not an easy read but an essential one.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The chief White House and Washington correspondent for ABC provides a ringside seat to a disaster-ridden Oval Office.
It is Karl to whom we owe the current popularity of a learned Latin term. Questioning chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, he followed up a perhaps inadvertently honest response on the matter of Ukrainian intervention in the electoral campaign by saying, “What you just described is a quid pro quo.” Mulvaney’s reply: “Get over it.” Karl, who has been covering Trump for decades and knows which buttons to push and which to avoid, is not inclined to get over it: He rightly points out that a reporter today “faces a president who seems to have no appreciation or understanding of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in American democracy.” Yet even against a bellicose, untruthful leader, he adds, the press “is not the opposition party.” The author, who keeps his eye on the subject and not in the mirror, writes of Trump’s ability to stage situations, as when he once called Trump out, at an event, for misrepresenting poll results and Trump waited until the camera was off before exploding, “Fucking nasty guy!”—then finished up the interview as if nothing had happened. Trump and his inner circle are also, by Karl’s account, masters of timing, matching negative news such as the revelation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with distractions away from Trump—in this case, by pushing hard on the WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic campaign, news of which arrived at the same time. That isn’t to say that they manage people or the nation well; one of the more damning stories in a book full of them concerns former Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, cut off at the knees even while trying to do Trump’s bidding.
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4562-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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