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This book is the compelling story of President Obama’s domestic policy decisions made between September 2008 and his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Barack Obama determined the fate of his presidency before he took office. His momentous decisions led to Donald Trump, for Obama the worst person imaginable, taking his place eight years later.
This book describes these decisions and discusses how the results could have been different. Based on dozens of interviews with actors in the Obama transition, as well as the author’s personal observations, this book provides unique commentary of those defining decisions of winter 2008–2009.
A decade later, the ramifications of the Great Recession and the role of government in addressing the crisis animate the ideological battle between progressivism and neoliberalism in the Democratic Party and the radical direction of the Republican Party. As many seek the presidency in the November 2020 election, all candidates and of course the eventual winner will face decisions that may be as critical and difficult as those confronted by Barack Obama. This book aims to provide the guidance of history.
“A powerfully lucid, compelling and surprising achievement . . . makes a subtle but irresistible argument that, given the conservative undertow of American politics, liberals and progressives who are serious about change can’t just wing it but must prepare detailed economic policy analyses and prescriptions long in advance of taking power.” —Congressman Jamie Raskin, Representative from Maryland’s 8th District
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 1, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780795352218
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780795352218
- File size: 10806 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 15, 2018
A study of how Barack Obama's handling of the 2008 economic crisis undermined his presidency.As a member of the transition team for the Clinton and Obama presidencies and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Hundt (In China's Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship, 2006, etc.) was a knowledgeable observer of and participant in Obama's economic decisions in the months before his inauguration. With no lack of histories, memoirs, and anatomies of the Great Recession, Hundt's hard-hitting critique is distinguished by the voices of many key players--e.g., Lawrence Summers, Al Gore, Henry Paulson, Robert Reich, Peter Orszag, and David Axelrod--drawn from dozens of interviews. The author's brisk, tense, and discomfiting history supports his contention that Obama's policies inevitably culminated in the election of Donald Trump by an angry, disaffected populace. Hundt was an early supporter of Obama and remains a staunch admirer. Obama, he writes, "always stood for inclusion, tolerance, and unity. He worked hard, acted with integrity, stood for high-minded principles." He was ill-served, however, by the neoliberals and Clinton advisers he chose for his transition team and powerful posts in his administration. They diverted his attention from the dramatic changes in health care, infrastructure, innovations in clean energy, and education reform that he promised during his campaign and convinced him to prop up Wall Street. They advocated bank bailouts to prevent bank runs, budget-balancing, and trust in markets to stanch a worsening economic crisis. Comparing Obama's economic decisions with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Hundt points to "premature announcements, mistaken assumptions, misplaced fear of deficits, untoward concern for big banks, self-serving assessments, and constraints imposed by non-stimulus considerations" among reasons he deems Obama's leadership problematic. Hundt's proposal for infrastructure overhaul involving clean energy generation and new transmission networks was summarily rejected by Summers, Geithner, and Orszag. Obama, however, "could have achieved a robust recovery" by spurring private-sector investment in such proposals. Instead of instituting bold changes, he allowed the rich to get richer, while the economically oppressed voted for Trump.A cautionary analysis for future leaders.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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