Chait offers a well-organized, clearly written case that will be valuable to future historians in their assessments. The...
A cogent argument that President Barack Obama has mostly succeeded in implementing his agenda.
As reflected in the book's title, New York political columnist Chait (The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics, 2007), a former senior editor at the New Republic, claims that Obama established audacious goals and never lost sight of how to implement them despite the opposition of the Republican majority within the U.S. Congress and ongoing racism throughout American society. Without tipping his hand about his long game, Chait maintains, Obama decided to absorb short-term setbacks, believing he would win a second term to accomplish what could not be implemented during the first. The author does not pretend to offer a scorecard on every vital initiative presented during Obama's two terms; rather, Chait focuses on the president’s approaches to economic policy, which was designed to alleviate the recession inherited from the Republicans; health care reform and the Affordable Care Act; combating environmental degradation; and navigating the wars being waged around the globe. Within each chapter, the author questions the perceptions of presidential success versus failure, not only among Obama's virulent detractors, but also among his leftist supporters. Chait attempts to unravel what he views as the mystery of how so many commentators put forth what became the conventional wisdom that Obama failed to achieve meaningful change during his presidency—despite the evidence to the contrary. The author predicts that after Obama leaves the presidency, this wrongheaded perception will dissipate. He also moves his argument beyond policy proposals to suggest that Obama's admirable character and steely mental makeup contributed significantly to policy successes.
Chait offers a well-organized, clearly written case that will be valuable to future historians in their assessments. The question is whether readers with different opinions about Obama's performance will alter those opinions.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-242697-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Custom House/Morrow
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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