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Liberal ascendancy
By Alan Brinkley |
January 25, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FOR most of the past eight years, and much of the past three decades, American liberals have been on the defensive - so much so that many have renamed themselves "progressives" as if to ward off the taint of their beleaguered past. Political books from the left have flourished since 2001, but almost all have been critiques of the Bush administration, interrupted briefly and halfheartedly by the Kerry campaign of 2004. But with astonishing speed during the 2008 campaign, and largely in response to the rise of Barack Obama, the liberal-progressives have begun to mount a full-throated revival.
Hopeful liberals have focused on the extraordinary success of Obama's campaign and on a highly optimistic interpretation of his rhetoric. Three of the books discussed here were written and published (with great speed) before or just after the election, and the other is a recently republished agenda for liberals that first appeared shortly after the 2006 Congressional elections. Together, they offer a portrait of how liberals have come prospectively to envision the Obama presidency as a transformative moment in American history.
A Long Time Coming: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama
By Evan Thomas.
Illustrated. 220 pp. PublicAffairs. US$22.95
The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America
By Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed.
201 pp. PublicAffairs. Paper, US$13.95
Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics
By John R. Talbott.
218 pp. Seven Stories Press. Paper, US$16.95
Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency
By Robert Kuttner.
213 pp. Chelsea Green Publishing. Paper, US$14.95.
For sheer speed and competence, the most impressive of these recent books is Evan Thomas's "A Long Time Coming," compiled from the reporting of Newsweek magazine's political writers. A perceptive, smoothly written and generally fair-minded account of both presidential campaigns, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to the creation of the superhero image that has surrounded Obama over the last six months. In describing his important speech on race in March 2008, for example, the Newsweek writers describe a "tour de force," the "sort of speech that only Barack Obama could give." Afterward, "he found everyone in tears - his wife, his friends, hardened campaign aides. Only Obama seemed cool and detached."
Reporters following McCain, most of whom appear to like and admire the candidate, focus nevertheless on the lurching, ad hoc and often self-destructive quality of the Republican campaign. They write with slightly disguised scorn of the reckless choice of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate, and about McCain's own seemingly desperate efforts to find an issue, any issue, that might work. The Democrats had enormous advantages entering the 2008 campaign, and almost any candidate they might have chosen would probably have defeated the Republicans. But Newsweek makes a persuasive case both for the exceptional quality of the Obama campaign and the skills it displayed that will be of value in the White House.
In many respects, "The Plan," by Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, a blueprint for a revived progressive agenda, is the most interesting of the recent policy books, largely because one of its authors has become the White House chief of staff. In other ways, it has a dated, almost quaint, quality - a book written in 2005, first published in 2006 and quickly republished in 2008 without revision and thus without reference to the epochal financial crisis that will undoubtedly dominate the first years of the Obama presidency. It includes a de rigueur critique of the Bush administration's policies and an intelligent, if predictable, laundry list of policies that a Democratic presidency might make possible. The authors strongly support the controversial Clinton welfare reform of 1996, which they call "the most successful social policy experiment in a generation."
The importance of a "bottom-up" economy is the central argument of John R. Talbot, a former investment banker turned writer and commentator. His faith in Obama's commitment to Talbot's own economic beliefs is almost without limit. The book weaves excerpts from Obama's speeches and writings into an implausibly specific and coherent set of policies that Talbot insists are the core of the new president's agenda. It includes many of the same proposals that liberals and progressives have been promoting for years, but at its heart is Talbot's belief that Obama will fundamentally transform economic life to serve the needs of the less affluent.
Robert Kuttner, an accomplished economics writer and a founding editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, is more skeptical. Obama, he argues, is a "work in progress," at times an embodiment of the most expansive progressive hopes, at other points a moderate centrist moving cautiously and politically through the thickets of his time.
Kuttner sees great potential in Obama's leadership and rhetorical skills, but he worries that he will not act boldly enough to attack a financial crisis that has grown considerably more serious since his book went to press.
The progressives who have hitched their wagons to Barack Obama's star want many things from him. But undoing the forces that have created a generation of mounting inequality will not easily give way to incremental solutions. One of the great triumphs of Obama's election is that he has made it possible to believe that such accomplishments are within a nation's reach.
One of the great dangers is that it may have created expectations far beyond what any one man, or even any one nation, can realistically hope to achieve.
Hopeful liberals have focused on the extraordinary success of Obama's campaign and on a highly optimistic interpretation of his rhetoric. Three of the books discussed here were written and published (with great speed) before or just after the election, and the other is a recently republished agenda for liberals that first appeared shortly after the 2006 Congressional elections. Together, they offer a portrait of how liberals have come prospectively to envision the Obama presidency as a transformative moment in American history.
A Long Time Coming: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama
By Evan Thomas.
Illustrated. 220 pp. PublicAffairs. US$22.95
The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America
By Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed.
201 pp. PublicAffairs. Paper, US$13.95
Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics
By John R. Talbott.
218 pp. Seven Stories Press. Paper, US$16.95
Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency
By Robert Kuttner.
213 pp. Chelsea Green Publishing. Paper, US$14.95.
For sheer speed and competence, the most impressive of these recent books is Evan Thomas's "A Long Time Coming," compiled from the reporting of Newsweek magazine's political writers. A perceptive, smoothly written and generally fair-minded account of both presidential campaigns, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to the creation of the superhero image that has surrounded Obama over the last six months. In describing his important speech on race in March 2008, for example, the Newsweek writers describe a "tour de force," the "sort of speech that only Barack Obama could give." Afterward, "he found everyone in tears - his wife, his friends, hardened campaign aides. Only Obama seemed cool and detached."
Reporters following McCain, most of whom appear to like and admire the candidate, focus nevertheless on the lurching, ad hoc and often self-destructive quality of the Republican campaign. They write with slightly disguised scorn of the reckless choice of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate, and about McCain's own seemingly desperate efforts to find an issue, any issue, that might work. The Democrats had enormous advantages entering the 2008 campaign, and almost any candidate they might have chosen would probably have defeated the Republicans. But Newsweek makes a persuasive case both for the exceptional quality of the Obama campaign and the skills it displayed that will be of value in the White House.
In many respects, "The Plan," by Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, a blueprint for a revived progressive agenda, is the most interesting of the recent policy books, largely because one of its authors has become the White House chief of staff. In other ways, it has a dated, almost quaint, quality - a book written in 2005, first published in 2006 and quickly republished in 2008 without revision and thus without reference to the epochal financial crisis that will undoubtedly dominate the first years of the Obama presidency. It includes a de rigueur critique of the Bush administration's policies and an intelligent, if predictable, laundry list of policies that a Democratic presidency might make possible. The authors strongly support the controversial Clinton welfare reform of 1996, which they call "the most successful social policy experiment in a generation."
The importance of a "bottom-up" economy is the central argument of John R. Talbot, a former investment banker turned writer and commentator. His faith in Obama's commitment to Talbot's own economic beliefs is almost without limit. The book weaves excerpts from Obama's speeches and writings into an implausibly specific and coherent set of policies that Talbot insists are the core of the new president's agenda. It includes many of the same proposals that liberals and progressives have been promoting for years, but at its heart is Talbot's belief that Obama will fundamentally transform economic life to serve the needs of the less affluent.
Robert Kuttner, an accomplished economics writer and a founding editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, is more skeptical. Obama, he argues, is a "work in progress," at times an embodiment of the most expansive progressive hopes, at other points a moderate centrist moving cautiously and politically through the thickets of his time.
Kuttner sees great potential in Obama's leadership and rhetorical skills, but he worries that he will not act boldly enough to attack a financial crisis that has grown considerably more serious since his book went to press.
The progressives who have hitched their wagons to Barack Obama's star want many things from him. But undoing the forces that have created a generation of mounting inequality will not easily give way to incremental solutions. One of the great triumphs of Obama's election is that he has made it possible to believe that such accomplishments are within a nation's reach.
One of the great dangers is that it may have created expectations far beyond what any one man, or even any one nation, can realistically hope to achieve.
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