Cogent, authoritative essays offer insights on eight fraught years.
Historians ring in on Barack Obama’s achievements, failures, and legacy.
CNN political analyst Zelizer (History and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.; The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, 2015, etc.) calls upon a distinguished roster of historians to evaluate Obama’s presidency. The words “frustration” and “fragility” recur in many essays that consider Obama’s actions regarding inequality, the environment, education, urban problems, immigration, race, terrorism, and foreign policy. Although all contributors agree that Obama is “an intellectual pragmatist” who embraced Democrats’ “fundamental liberal traditions,” many see a “defining paradox” in his leadership: “he turned out to be a very effective policymaker but not a tremendously successful party builder.” His programs “did little to strengthen the standing of Democrats as a whole,” which contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. Many essayists cite Republican opposition, especially by tea party conservatives, which led Obama to “start with a compromise, in the hope of sealing an early bipartisan deal.” That strategy frustrated liberals and, in the end, frustrated Obama, as well, since Republican recalcitrance proved insurmountable. In some areas—the environment, for example—Obama resorted to executive actions, which Princeton senior researcher Meg Jacobs asserts “will probably prove a thin reed upon which to build a lasting legacy.” In foreign policy, according to University of Texas historian Jeremi Suri, Obama “offered a liberal internationalist vision—emphasizing multilateralism, negotiation, and disarmament” that is likely to be undone by Donald Trump. In a disturbing essay on Obama’s policy on terrorism, University of California historian Kathryn Olmsted reveals the controversial use of targeted drones to assassinate alleged terrorists “rather than capture and interrogate them.” The targeted killing program, she adds, “produced profits for defense contractors” and won “fervent” Congressional support. Bigotry dogged Obama throughout his presidency, including “birthers” who challenged his “legitimacy to occupy the Oval Office,” accusing him of being African and Muslim; widely disseminated images showed him as a witch doctor and chimpanzee.
Cogent, authoritative essays offer insights on eight fraught years.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-691-16028-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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