A must-read for politics junkies, with plenty of lessons on how not to run a campaign.
A probing history of the 2020 presidential race.
Building on Shattered, their excellent account of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, Allen and Parnes attribute much of the success of the Biden campaign to a combination of fortuitous events. In some ways, Biden was a weaker candidate than Clinton, as his age, demeanor, and tendency to make faux pas statements weighed against him. Though the race was tighter than any Democratic campaigner would have liked, Biden’s opponent was Donald Trump, whose character flaws and scandal-plagued administration far surpassed any of Biden’s shortcomings. For instance, though Trump was advised countless times to attempt to show empathy for the victims of the pandemic, which he repeatedly called a hoax, he refused to do so for fear of appearing weak. Trump also believed that “there were millions of Trumpsters out there who just hadn’t voted for him yet.” He may have had a point, but Biden still beat him by 7 million votes. Biden’s good fortune also owed to the failings of those who faced him in the primary, and, as the authors clearly show, it was the result of significant effort on the parts of Black organizers and voters, particularly Stacey Abrams, who emerges here as a superbly effective political savant who withheld her endorsement of Biden until it was clear that he would be the candidate. Other news in these pages: Though Barack Obama proclaimed Biden as his brother, the authors write that he “had worried that his friend would embarrass himself on the campaign trail” and didn’t call to congratulate him until the networks finally declared the election on Nov. 7. In the end, in 2020, Biden “caught every imaginable break.” As one staffer noted, “if President Trump had just acknowledged there was a virus, even midway in August or September, acknowledged this is a fucked-up situation, and pivoted, we would have gotten crushed.”
A must-read for politics junkies, with plenty of lessons on how not to run a campaign.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-57422-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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