If you follow the health care debate and watch the sausage-making machine called the United States Senate, you would despair about whether our political system can actually cope with any dire domestic policy issue,let alone reform anything. The reactions of right and left have gotten beyond hysterical suggesting we are in for long times of political conflict as nothing seems to move. Our system is intended to be reactionary and the U.S. Senate was created to slow political action and temper the public's mood. The Guardian recently wrote that this may all be well and good but the system has stalled out. Thomas Friedman says that we can only produce sub-optimal solutions anymore from our political system.
This all worries me since the public trust in all our institutions is falling to the level we saw in the late 1960s without the violence. It's probably the unconscious reason that the right has consciously adopted as their "heroes" such old left mainstays as Saul Alinsky as the model for organization. If you think about it, the private sector is all but discredited for its failure to create jobs over the past eight years, the banks by their incredible indulgence and giving themselves bonuses that are several times the production of the American GDP last quarter, and the political parties--first the Republicans by their colossal failure over eight years and the Democrats for their fratricidal antics of late. Only the military retains some trust among the public and it is getting hollowed out by over-extension. There are no recognized Ameican moral leaders. the fact that Barack Obama has to go back and quote Reinhold Neibhur testifies to the paucity of real public philosophers in American life.
While conservatives continue to play the victim while having built up an arsenal of think tanks and media outlets, it is sobering to realize that evangelical movement with its separate ayatollahs boasts over 6500 radio stations and mega-churches that are now complete with shopping centers. A whole generation of Americans now have grown up in fundamentalist schools and churches and are removed from any of the diversity of normal American life. The re-segregation of America started innocently enough with the development of the suburbs and such quaint innovations like Levittown but has expanded into cultural-religious enclaves that have formed the backbone of the modern Republican Party. The splits between urban and suburban continue to grow and the rural pastoral ideal is now used to identity the "real Americans" in the words of Sarah Palin.
With this deepening gulf between Americans, it is now hard to see a consensus build around the common good or the idea of general welfare. The key demographic for Republicans now are seniors, people 60 or over, who tend to vote heavily in mid-term elections. From my conversations with so-called economic Republicans there are as hysterical as social conservatives during this uncertain period. A former banker wants to liquidate his bank shares because he is convinced the capital gains tax is going to go to 40% and he will not answer the census because he is convinced Barack Obama will know how much he is worth and confiscate it. Others have fed into the Rupert Murdoch-Glenn Beck Gold Fever and will not even keep significant funds in banks. They maintain that a Weimar Republic period of hyperinflation is upon us. Their own views do ot differ by much from tea-baggers. But it is a type of "I got Mine, You get yours" mentality. Even though most I have talked to have Medicare, Social Security and the benefits of pension plans, they are against further government social programs to assist those hurting during this time. Usually a sober group during normal times, these people share the same beliefs as birthers and the view that Barack Obama is really a Muslim. There is no split between them and the religious right in terms of a critique of modern America except they don't use religious language.
This hysteria has generated a type of reality-free politics that simply can not be reasoned with. Even more worrisome to me is that this sector of the Republican Party had always supported innovation and scientific change but now are routine global climate deniers and also have turned against many of their past beliefs that America must continue to invest in research and development. These people are part of the national malaise, a phrase President Carter popularized but never said. This is not the bouyant optimism of Ronald Reagan who proclaimed," The Best years of America are before us." It is a hyper-pessimism that is not even congruent with normal conservative sentiments.
The euphoria on the Left expressed right after Barack Obama's victory has dissipated and turned rancid. The bitterness that dominated the Left in the late 1970s and early 1980s has returned because they oppose the escalation in the war in Afghanistan, a position held by Obama during the campaign, and they are bitterly disappointed by the failure of the Democrats to pass a health care reform that would have a strong public option or, in their view, be a single-payer system, which never was in the cards. They have soured on President Obama because they feel he is too much a tool of Wall Street and big corporate interests. The tone and quality of such internet sites as Daily Kos and HuffingtonPost has turned dramatically in the last month to a bitter litany of disappointment with President Obama. There is no sense of realism in their arguments and Arianna Huffington herself, once a darling of the Right, now has become resident scold of the Left. Even one of my favorites The Young Turks has taken a gloomy and almost pedantic turn of late.
We have been here in history. It is the disillusion of intellectual elites with democracy itself that generates the rise of worse political solutions. If there is no trust in the political and judicial institutions of a country, there is a tendency to search out "radical" solutions, which will inevitably provoke conflict and societal collapse. We have remarkably escaped any economic violence that we saw at the turn of the 20th century when big financial interests physically battled workers and there was the phenomenon of American anarchists. The desparate plight of millions of Americans really raises the question why this isn't so now. And let's hope it stays that way.
Meanwhile, our system keeps creaking along. Significant financial reforms have passed the House and will be debated in the Senate early next year. The much-criticized TARP plan has actually been a success. And the health care bill looks like it will be passed. Imperfect, of course, but changes in the way medical insurance companies operate are very significant and meaningful. And, given the lag time of any initiative, what makes anyone think the stimulus would be the magic bullet that produces millions of jobs overnight?
America is moving between two economies--the process is gut-wrenching for millions and the cause of deep anxiety for both the right and the left. If we make the transition, we all will be in a better place. But the question remains is America now so atomized, so polarized that it can not manage to make that transition?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Nobel Year of Hope
Barely escaping financial ruin this year, while millions of my fellow Americans have not,I have resolved this year to be optimistic about the state of our union.
Thousands of people standing in the bitter cold of an Oslo night cheered an American President as he stood at the window of the Grand Hotel. Previously that day, President Obama channeled the thoughts of my grandfather's friend and colleague Reinhold Neibuhr, the theologian and philosopher who influenced George Kennen and Arthur Schlesinger,Jr. among others. Gone was the pre-emptive war doctrine of the Bush Administration, which broke all American tradition and back came the Just War Doctrine, much to the dismay of the Left. Conservatives paid grudging respect to the President's speech with the exception of people like Liz Cheney, who felt the President slandered the CIA by mentioning torture and his decision to close Gitmo.
Like everything with the Cheneys' irony is rich. Dick Cheney spent alot of the last Administration slandering the CIA for its intelligence on Iraq and Al Qaeda, even standing over the Inspector General as he wrote the torture report.
But the Nobel day was a singular triumph for the man of color who won the Presidency in a land historically plagued by racism. The Nobel Prize Committee was too polite to mention this as a reason for the award but it hovered in their comments on Martin Luther King,Jr. prize in 1964. The President remarked that those struggling for human rights and democracy had history and justice on their side but most importantly he changed the text to read "have us on their side." Americans should take pride that the world does want and need a vibrant America committed to its ideals. Unfortunately for conservatives, President Obama gave a full-throated defense of our history and what we have meant to the history and security of the world.
A couple weeks in Africa obviously didn't tame the Crazy Town of American politics. I won my bet that I would receive anti-Obama e-mail on Thanskgiving--not 1 but 3 on a holiday. The distemper seems to be spreading from the Right to the Left as now progressives claim the President has sold out. What exactly isn't clear? He campaigned on escalating in Afghanistan and his health care reform closely follows where the bill is ending up. Despite the conservative smears against him, Obama has never been a pacifist, in fact campaigning on a tougher policy against terrorism than the Bush-Cheney Administration and has never been for a single-payer system for health care. He did promise reform of our financial system, which the House has passed and the Senate, if it overcomes its current strange interlude of morphing into the Senate that blocked civil rights reform, will deliberate early next year. As I wrote before Health Care Reform,Immigration Reform and Financial Reform are about all Obama is going to get in the first term. We have seen how well-funded the entrenched financial interests in the country are in preventing any reform whatsoever.
American corporations are now sitting on $7 trillion in cash, which is waiting to be invested. To their shame, GOP Senators are telling corporations to wait up until Republicans come back into power on the Hill. Frankly, I think the pressures of the economy are going to force the companies to break before then. In the next week, President Obama will lean on the banks to lend to small businesses who have been crushed by the drought in credit. His additional tax credits for small businesses who hire at welcomed but we've seen that tax cuts at this late stage of diminishing effect on the economy.
Republicans are raving that their policy of obstruction will pay off big-time in the 2010 mid-term elections. Since any out-party is supposed to pick up between 15-20 House seats and 3 Senate seats, some of this cheerleading might be to rally the troops. But there is some reason to feel that Republicans--if they were the party they once were--would do well. Mid-term elections have about a 37 percent turnout and the only demographic where republicans have a plurality--those 60 or over--tend to vote at 65% levels. Young people and minorities barely vote in a non-presidential year, which is what Republicans are banking on--the manufactured outrage of white senior citizens to fuel their comeback.
Republicans point to the Pew poll, which shows that 40% of Americans classify themselves as conservatives. But there is nothing conservative about teabaggers or people who liken the President to Adolf Hitler. I wonder whether these antics might turn off traditional Republican voters, who may be worried about the deficit but haven't seen any deficit cutters in Republican ranks for decades and don't think helping people out during a very severe recession is a sin. Ultimately, politics is very social. In some ways, it's about who you would like to hang out with. Can you imagine spending the night out with Senators Grassly, Coburn or the teabaggers Hoffman or even the Tan Man Bohner? To many that make one's skin crawl.
With Copenhagen upon us, the global climate change deniers are at full throttle. Even if man has little to do with the dramatic change in climate, it seems rather prudent to take all measures to lessen its damage on the planet. Conservatives claiming that these are natural historical changes miss the point that such dramatic changes in the past occurred when Planet Earth was inhabited by bllions of people less than today. Unless you want the entire American budget to be devoted to FEMA over the next decade, it seems sensible to cut back on CO2 emissions and adopt the new technologies of solar, wind, thermal and electrical energy generation. In the past, when protestant were rather dull and mainstream and didn't dream of Rapture, the religious duty was to be a good steward over Planet Earth and creation. Climate change is already putting pressure on water and food supplies as well as generating human migration which taxes the resources of host countries. At a smaller scale,these disruptions provoke local wars and conficts. Just from the point of view of national security, this phenomenon deserves political attention.
While people point to Oslo as one of President Obama's major speeches, I still bank on his MIT speech and the Brookings Institute's speech on the Economy and Jobs. Buried in the stimulus package was the largest financial commitment to scientific research and technology in the history of the world. From the current economic ruins, the seeds are being put in place for the development of a new economy. The Administration unfortunately calls it the Green Economy, which makes it sound all soft and ecologically political correct.
It is that but more importantly it is about unleashing again America's inventiveness--the Benjamin Franklin line of American ingenuity. No one likes to create gadgets and gizmos more than Americans and the various lines of research today indicate inventions that will re-grow the American manufacturing base. The squawks you hear are those who are clinging desparately to the old economy--which is dead at the moment and will only revive a little in the near-term. What is so peculiar is how Republicans who once embraced small business and entrepeneurs are so wedded to economic dinosaurs and entities, which never had or would act in the national interest. The Reagan years generated the burst of creation in Silicon Valley. It's strange to see how far the GOP has turned its back on that legacy.
The Obama Administration has hid major changes in our political economy in plain view. The emphasis on education in the stimulus bill,while preserving teachers' jobs, also complimented the significant investment in science and technology. Here is the tough road to hoe. Over 30% of Americans students drop out from high school and Washington Monthly reports that the young generation of Americans are the first to be less educated than their parents. While President Obama speaks like Americans will have to become like the South Koreans in their commitment to learning, it's doubtful that such a day will come to pass or that it is even desireable. What is most important is the expansion of the American imagination and rekindling the nation's commitment to science like the time just after the Sputnik launch triggered a national panic about America lagging behind the Soviet Union.
Obama's synthetic comprehension of the need for America to become grounded on a firmer foundation for progress may not lend itself to our current political system. The Senate's behavior on Health Care Reform shows how reactionary our system is and how America's owners--the large corporate entitles simply buy and sell politicians. However,we may be considered blessed by our nearest competitors. The Chinese, who have captured the globe's attention, suffer from serious problems of political stability and an authoritarian political structure, which conservatives have written about in envy, but which will be a major stumbling-block to solidifying their advance. Unfortunately for us, we're still the last best hope for Earth. We remain the only country capable of thinking and acting globally. And that is a burden we will have to bear--like it or not.
I expect support for Obama will flag during the first part of 2010 like it did for Reagan, who dropped to 35% at the height of the recession in the early 1980s. However, I expect the rest of the stimulus package to kick in over the next nine months and job generation to start again. However, the rate of job generation may not catch up with the number of jobs that need to be created. Even if unemployment remains high, it is hard for me personally to take the Republicans seriously when they claim their policies could create jobs. We have had the largest middle-class tax cut in history with the stimulus package, more tax cuts for small businesses are on the way, the FED has exhausted all its tools for stemming the decline in the economy and corporate tax cuts don't mean anything because only 26% of all American corporations pay any taxes at all. And maintaining the estate tax cuts would only cost the America taxpayer $250 billion, hardly an advertisement for deficit reduction. What I expect is that the economy will actually stabilize in the next six months and appear to improve the rest of the year. The real innovations in Obama's programs will start to flourish at the end of his first term and into a second.
The major political obstacle up ahead is the Obama plan to reduce the national deficit. Here he will be miles ahead of the Republicans since he started on this the first month of his Presidency. The problem lies in the reduction in the deficits caused by entitlement spending such as Medicare and Social Security. During the Reagan years, a bipartisan team with Bill Bradley reformulated Social Security to put it on firm footing for the next thirty years. But the Obama people need mature adults as co-partners in developing a bipartisan plan for reducing the deficits caused by the entitlement programs. My fear is that they will end up bargaining with themselves to appease the Republicans, who this time want to end the plans once and for all. The weight of these decisions will fall on the younger generation because there will be attampts to gut the social welfare net but preserve it for those 55 years and higher, who would revolt at any such reductions. It would be the ultimate in generation warfare.
But my New Year's Resolution is to enjoy our President since he's given me more pleasure than any President since Ronald Reagan. And I hope he succeeds because if he does, we all will.
Thousands of people standing in the bitter cold of an Oslo night cheered an American President as he stood at the window of the Grand Hotel. Previously that day, President Obama channeled the thoughts of my grandfather's friend and colleague Reinhold Neibuhr, the theologian and philosopher who influenced George Kennen and Arthur Schlesinger,Jr. among others. Gone was the pre-emptive war doctrine of the Bush Administration, which broke all American tradition and back came the Just War Doctrine, much to the dismay of the Left. Conservatives paid grudging respect to the President's speech with the exception of people like Liz Cheney, who felt the President slandered the CIA by mentioning torture and his decision to close Gitmo.
Like everything with the Cheneys' irony is rich. Dick Cheney spent alot of the last Administration slandering the CIA for its intelligence on Iraq and Al Qaeda, even standing over the Inspector General as he wrote the torture report.
But the Nobel day was a singular triumph for the man of color who won the Presidency in a land historically plagued by racism. The Nobel Prize Committee was too polite to mention this as a reason for the award but it hovered in their comments on Martin Luther King,Jr. prize in 1964. The President remarked that those struggling for human rights and democracy had history and justice on their side but most importantly he changed the text to read "have us on their side." Americans should take pride that the world does want and need a vibrant America committed to its ideals. Unfortunately for conservatives, President Obama gave a full-throated defense of our history and what we have meant to the history and security of the world.
A couple weeks in Africa obviously didn't tame the Crazy Town of American politics. I won my bet that I would receive anti-Obama e-mail on Thanskgiving--not 1 but 3 on a holiday. The distemper seems to be spreading from the Right to the Left as now progressives claim the President has sold out. What exactly isn't clear? He campaigned on escalating in Afghanistan and his health care reform closely follows where the bill is ending up. Despite the conservative smears against him, Obama has never been a pacifist, in fact campaigning on a tougher policy against terrorism than the Bush-Cheney Administration and has never been for a single-payer system for health care. He did promise reform of our financial system, which the House has passed and the Senate, if it overcomes its current strange interlude of morphing into the Senate that blocked civil rights reform, will deliberate early next year. As I wrote before Health Care Reform,Immigration Reform and Financial Reform are about all Obama is going to get in the first term. We have seen how well-funded the entrenched financial interests in the country are in preventing any reform whatsoever.
American corporations are now sitting on $7 trillion in cash, which is waiting to be invested. To their shame, GOP Senators are telling corporations to wait up until Republicans come back into power on the Hill. Frankly, I think the pressures of the economy are going to force the companies to break before then. In the next week, President Obama will lean on the banks to lend to small businesses who have been crushed by the drought in credit. His additional tax credits for small businesses who hire at welcomed but we've seen that tax cuts at this late stage of diminishing effect on the economy.
Republicans are raving that their policy of obstruction will pay off big-time in the 2010 mid-term elections. Since any out-party is supposed to pick up between 15-20 House seats and 3 Senate seats, some of this cheerleading might be to rally the troops. But there is some reason to feel that Republicans--if they were the party they once were--would do well. Mid-term elections have about a 37 percent turnout and the only demographic where republicans have a plurality--those 60 or over--tend to vote at 65% levels. Young people and minorities barely vote in a non-presidential year, which is what Republicans are banking on--the manufactured outrage of white senior citizens to fuel their comeback.
Republicans point to the Pew poll, which shows that 40% of Americans classify themselves as conservatives. But there is nothing conservative about teabaggers or people who liken the President to Adolf Hitler. I wonder whether these antics might turn off traditional Republican voters, who may be worried about the deficit but haven't seen any deficit cutters in Republican ranks for decades and don't think helping people out during a very severe recession is a sin. Ultimately, politics is very social. In some ways, it's about who you would like to hang out with. Can you imagine spending the night out with Senators Grassly, Coburn or the teabaggers Hoffman or even the Tan Man Bohner? To many that make one's skin crawl.
With Copenhagen upon us, the global climate change deniers are at full throttle. Even if man has little to do with the dramatic change in climate, it seems rather prudent to take all measures to lessen its damage on the planet. Conservatives claiming that these are natural historical changes miss the point that such dramatic changes in the past occurred when Planet Earth was inhabited by bllions of people less than today. Unless you want the entire American budget to be devoted to FEMA over the next decade, it seems sensible to cut back on CO2 emissions and adopt the new technologies of solar, wind, thermal and electrical energy generation. In the past, when protestant were rather dull and mainstream and didn't dream of Rapture, the religious duty was to be a good steward over Planet Earth and creation. Climate change is already putting pressure on water and food supplies as well as generating human migration which taxes the resources of host countries. At a smaller scale,these disruptions provoke local wars and conficts. Just from the point of view of national security, this phenomenon deserves political attention.
While people point to Oslo as one of President Obama's major speeches, I still bank on his MIT speech and the Brookings Institute's speech on the Economy and Jobs. Buried in the stimulus package was the largest financial commitment to scientific research and technology in the history of the world. From the current economic ruins, the seeds are being put in place for the development of a new economy. The Administration unfortunately calls it the Green Economy, which makes it sound all soft and ecologically political correct.
It is that but more importantly it is about unleashing again America's inventiveness--the Benjamin Franklin line of American ingenuity. No one likes to create gadgets and gizmos more than Americans and the various lines of research today indicate inventions that will re-grow the American manufacturing base. The squawks you hear are those who are clinging desparately to the old economy--which is dead at the moment and will only revive a little in the near-term. What is so peculiar is how Republicans who once embraced small business and entrepeneurs are so wedded to economic dinosaurs and entities, which never had or would act in the national interest. The Reagan years generated the burst of creation in Silicon Valley. It's strange to see how far the GOP has turned its back on that legacy.
The Obama Administration has hid major changes in our political economy in plain view. The emphasis on education in the stimulus bill,while preserving teachers' jobs, also complimented the significant investment in science and technology. Here is the tough road to hoe. Over 30% of Americans students drop out from high school and Washington Monthly reports that the young generation of Americans are the first to be less educated than their parents. While President Obama speaks like Americans will have to become like the South Koreans in their commitment to learning, it's doubtful that such a day will come to pass or that it is even desireable. What is most important is the expansion of the American imagination and rekindling the nation's commitment to science like the time just after the Sputnik launch triggered a national panic about America lagging behind the Soviet Union.
Obama's synthetic comprehension of the need for America to become grounded on a firmer foundation for progress may not lend itself to our current political system. The Senate's behavior on Health Care Reform shows how reactionary our system is and how America's owners--the large corporate entitles simply buy and sell politicians. However,we may be considered blessed by our nearest competitors. The Chinese, who have captured the globe's attention, suffer from serious problems of political stability and an authoritarian political structure, which conservatives have written about in envy, but which will be a major stumbling-block to solidifying their advance. Unfortunately for us, we're still the last best hope for Earth. We remain the only country capable of thinking and acting globally. And that is a burden we will have to bear--like it or not.
I expect support for Obama will flag during the first part of 2010 like it did for Reagan, who dropped to 35% at the height of the recession in the early 1980s. However, I expect the rest of the stimulus package to kick in over the next nine months and job generation to start again. However, the rate of job generation may not catch up with the number of jobs that need to be created. Even if unemployment remains high, it is hard for me personally to take the Republicans seriously when they claim their policies could create jobs. We have had the largest middle-class tax cut in history with the stimulus package, more tax cuts for small businesses are on the way, the FED has exhausted all its tools for stemming the decline in the economy and corporate tax cuts don't mean anything because only 26% of all American corporations pay any taxes at all. And maintaining the estate tax cuts would only cost the America taxpayer $250 billion, hardly an advertisement for deficit reduction. What I expect is that the economy will actually stabilize in the next six months and appear to improve the rest of the year. The real innovations in Obama's programs will start to flourish at the end of his first term and into a second.
The major political obstacle up ahead is the Obama plan to reduce the national deficit. Here he will be miles ahead of the Republicans since he started on this the first month of his Presidency. The problem lies in the reduction in the deficits caused by entitlement spending such as Medicare and Social Security. During the Reagan years, a bipartisan team with Bill Bradley reformulated Social Security to put it on firm footing for the next thirty years. But the Obama people need mature adults as co-partners in developing a bipartisan plan for reducing the deficits caused by the entitlement programs. My fear is that they will end up bargaining with themselves to appease the Republicans, who this time want to end the plans once and for all. The weight of these decisions will fall on the younger generation because there will be attampts to gut the social welfare net but preserve it for those 55 years and higher, who would revolt at any such reductions. It would be the ultimate in generation warfare.
But my New Year's Resolution is to enjoy our President since he's given me more pleasure than any President since Ronald Reagan. And I hope he succeeds because if he does, we all will.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Best Books of 2009 and 2010--Additions
Another entry for next year is Don DeLillo's Point Omega due out in February. My favs are Underworld, Libra, Mao II. Hopefully he'll score with his new one.
Neglected from yesterday's List were:
Paul Auster's Invisible, which opens in New York in 1967 when aspiring poet Adam Walker meets Frenchman Rudolf Born and his girlfriend Margot. Three different narrators tells this story that travels to 2007 from Morningside heights to the Left Bank. While one can't expect another New York Trilogy, his fifteen novel is very satisfying.
Rick Bass' The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana. Bass describes a full-year of life living in Montana's Yaak Valley.
Before the Republican Party was captured by the religious right, neo-cons and corporate interests alone, it had moderates, liberals and even progressives. Glenn Beck was against John McCain because McCain's hero was Theodore Roosevelt, one of those progressives. Douglas Brinkley, who has made a career of chronicling America, brings us a nearly 1,000 page account of Theodore Roosevelt's efforts on behalf of conservation and the environment--The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Roosevelt's new nationalism did not foreclose the preservation of wilderness for future generations and cultivating the civic virtue of environmentalism.
Emerging as one of my favorite writers is Timothy Egan, author of The Worst Hard Times and Breaking Blue. If you can't wade through Brinkley, Egan will get you to the point faster with The Big Burn--Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America. This is the story of the Big Burn or The Great Fire of 1910, which engulfed Montana and Idaho and the heroic efforts of the forest rangers to battle it and the financial interests aimed at destroying the forest service.
Neglected from yesterday's List were:
Paul Auster's Invisible, which opens in New York in 1967 when aspiring poet Adam Walker meets Frenchman Rudolf Born and his girlfriend Margot. Three different narrators tells this story that travels to 2007 from Morningside heights to the Left Bank. While one can't expect another New York Trilogy, his fifteen novel is very satisfying.
Rick Bass' The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana. Bass describes a full-year of life living in Montana's Yaak Valley.
Before the Republican Party was captured by the religious right, neo-cons and corporate interests alone, it had moderates, liberals and even progressives. Glenn Beck was against John McCain because McCain's hero was Theodore Roosevelt, one of those progressives. Douglas Brinkley, who has made a career of chronicling America, brings us a nearly 1,000 page account of Theodore Roosevelt's efforts on behalf of conservation and the environment--The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Roosevelt's new nationalism did not foreclose the preservation of wilderness for future generations and cultivating the civic virtue of environmentalism.
Emerging as one of my favorite writers is Timothy Egan, author of The Worst Hard Times and Breaking Blue. If you can't wade through Brinkley, Egan will get you to the point faster with The Big Burn--Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America. This is the story of the Big Burn or The Great Fire of 1910, which engulfed Montana and Idaho and the heroic efforts of the forest rangers to battle it and the financial interests aimed at destroying the forest service.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Best Books of 2009--And there were
2009 saw the death of eternally great J.G. Ballard, who left us a one page short story in the New Yorker as his last gift to us. We also lost James Carroll, punk rocker and writer of the Basketball Diaries. The year saw new works by Paul Auster,Iain Banks, James Ellroy, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pyncheon and Andrew Vachss.
Here's my first cut for the top of the pops.
Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: the Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. The author of the magisterial work Thomas Eakins Revealed explores the lengthy and overlooked relationship between Benton and Pollock and restores it to its proper importance in art history.
John Ashbery, Planisphere--New Poems. I first saw John Ashbery read at Williams College in 1971 and have bought everything he's written since--one of the few poets whom I've followed throughout his career. His collected poems are now being published by Library of America and are worth having in one volume--soon to be more. But at 82 years old, how can he continue his quality and quantity? Does he even know who good he is? This new volume will not disappoint.
Iain Banks, Transition. When Banks gets his grove on, his style is one of the most innovative around. Transition is about parallel worlds suspended between the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers and the financial collapse of the West.
Max Blumenthal,Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. Blumenthals documents how the religious right hijacked the once great party with amusing and horrifying tales for all. A great read and an important book.
Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Former colleague of the Clintons from the McGovern campaign, Branch is persuaded by Bill Clinton to tape and record the President during his Administration. In the hands of an acclaimed historian such as Taylor Branch this works out as a marvelous view of the opinions and attitudes of Bill Clinton and a reminder of why people said he was a 100% political animal. Glimmers of this were seen this year at the Netroots Convention where Clinton gave a bravura performance.
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley. An old favorite, Doctorow tells the story of America through the story and point of view of the Collyer brothers, whom a younger generation would never get the reference. Sometimes works, sometimes not but always worth reading.
James Ellroy, Blood's Rover. The King of modern noir completes his political trilogy in his amped style. He takes us past the 1968 Convention and Watergate with his cast of characters. Ellroy also posits an interesting fate of J.Edgar Hoover's secret files, which were never found on his death.
John Farmer The Ground Truth:the Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission lets us know all of Washington didn't have a clue about what happened during the whole day. He likens the government's systemic breakdown to the future Hurrican Katrina disaster. For policy wonks.
Elizabeth Hawes, Camus, A Romance. A woman's lifelong intellectual romance with Albert Camus yields a biography that provides more personal details than more authoritative accounts of the author's life. She is particularly good at reconstructing Albert Camus, the Algerian.
Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City. When he's good, he's very good and here he's terrific. A fabulous almost science fiction reconstruction of Manhattan--which works at every level.
David Plouffe, The Audacity to Win:the Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory. The young architect of America's Velvet Revolution provides a glimpse into how the Obama movement was created and ultimately won.
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice. Pynchon revisits some of his old counter-cultural haunts with private eye Doc Sportello. Set in L.A. during the time of the Manson murders and the FBI's cointelpro program, Pynchon reveals he knows lots about dope, old surf music and the zeitgeist.
Frank Schaeffer, Patience with God: Faith for people who don't like Religion (or Atheism. Known now as a blogger at Huffington Post and a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow Show, as one of the founders of the religious right he knows where the bodies are buried. This book goes after the New Atheism but also the fundamentalist Christians. For the relevant material read Chapter 8 "Spaceship Jesus Will Come and Whisk Us Away", his analysis of the bloodthirsty apocalyptic visions of today's fundamentalists and why they could care less about the United States, let alone sound policies. A convert to Orthodoxy, Frank Schaeffer reminds us that Christianity has a long and distinguished intellectual tradition that transcends the idolatry of the Bible held by American fundamentalists, who would not be recognized by the early Church fathers.
David Reynolds, America, Empire of Liberty. The Cambridge professor writes a new history of America.
Edmind White, City Boy: My Life in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. This is a wonderful book on the New York scene at the time, the travails of being a free-lance writer and a young gay man present at the Stonewall uprising in 1969. It takes place in some of my old haunts in the 1970s.
Andrew Vachss, Haiku. After his acclaimed Burke series, Vachss returns to introduce his new characters.
Leonard Zeskind,Blood and Politics: the History of the White Nationalist Movement from the margins to the Mainstream. An invaluable study for understanding the orgins and gyrations of some of the political rhetroic emerging on the right today. A sobering book.
Here's my first cut for the top of the pops.
Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: the Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. The author of the magisterial work Thomas Eakins Revealed explores the lengthy and overlooked relationship between Benton and Pollock and restores it to its proper importance in art history.
John Ashbery, Planisphere--New Poems. I first saw John Ashbery read at Williams College in 1971 and have bought everything he's written since--one of the few poets whom I've followed throughout his career. His collected poems are now being published by Library of America and are worth having in one volume--soon to be more. But at 82 years old, how can he continue his quality and quantity? Does he even know who good he is? This new volume will not disappoint.
Iain Banks, Transition. When Banks gets his grove on, his style is one of the most innovative around. Transition is about parallel worlds suspended between the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers and the financial collapse of the West.
Max Blumenthal,Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. Blumenthals documents how the religious right hijacked the once great party with amusing and horrifying tales for all. A great read and an important book.
Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Former colleague of the Clintons from the McGovern campaign, Branch is persuaded by Bill Clinton to tape and record the President during his Administration. In the hands of an acclaimed historian such as Taylor Branch this works out as a marvelous view of the opinions and attitudes of Bill Clinton and a reminder of why people said he was a 100% political animal. Glimmers of this were seen this year at the Netroots Convention where Clinton gave a bravura performance.
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley. An old favorite, Doctorow tells the story of America through the story and point of view of the Collyer brothers, whom a younger generation would never get the reference. Sometimes works, sometimes not but always worth reading.
James Ellroy, Blood's Rover. The King of modern noir completes his political trilogy in his amped style. He takes us past the 1968 Convention and Watergate with his cast of characters. Ellroy also posits an interesting fate of J.Edgar Hoover's secret files, which were never found on his death.
John Farmer The Ground Truth:the Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission lets us know all of Washington didn't have a clue about what happened during the whole day. He likens the government's systemic breakdown to the future Hurrican Katrina disaster. For policy wonks.
Elizabeth Hawes, Camus, A Romance. A woman's lifelong intellectual romance with Albert Camus yields a biography that provides more personal details than more authoritative accounts of the author's life. She is particularly good at reconstructing Albert Camus, the Algerian.
Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City. When he's good, he's very good and here he's terrific. A fabulous almost science fiction reconstruction of Manhattan--which works at every level.
David Plouffe, The Audacity to Win:the Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory. The young architect of America's Velvet Revolution provides a glimpse into how the Obama movement was created and ultimately won.
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice. Pynchon revisits some of his old counter-cultural haunts with private eye Doc Sportello. Set in L.A. during the time of the Manson murders and the FBI's cointelpro program, Pynchon reveals he knows lots about dope, old surf music and the zeitgeist.
Frank Schaeffer, Patience with God: Faith for people who don't like Religion (or Atheism. Known now as a blogger at Huffington Post and a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow Show, as one of the founders of the religious right he knows where the bodies are buried. This book goes after the New Atheism but also the fundamentalist Christians. For the relevant material read Chapter 8 "Spaceship Jesus Will Come and Whisk Us Away", his analysis of the bloodthirsty apocalyptic visions of today's fundamentalists and why they could care less about the United States, let alone sound policies. A convert to Orthodoxy, Frank Schaeffer reminds us that Christianity has a long and distinguished intellectual tradition that transcends the idolatry of the Bible held by American fundamentalists, who would not be recognized by the early Church fathers.
David Reynolds, America, Empire of Liberty. The Cambridge professor writes a new history of America.
Edmind White, City Boy: My Life in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. This is a wonderful book on the New York scene at the time, the travails of being a free-lance writer and a young gay man present at the Stonewall uprising in 1969. It takes place in some of my old haunts in the 1970s.
Andrew Vachss, Haiku. After his acclaimed Burke series, Vachss returns to introduce his new characters.
Leonard Zeskind,Blood and Politics: the History of the White Nationalist Movement from the margins to the Mainstream. An invaluable study for understanding the orgins and gyrations of some of the political rhetroic emerging on the right today. A sobering book.
Best Books of 2010--That's Right
January will start the year off great with the publication of Ralph Ellison's lost masterpiece (some even thought it didn't exist) Three Days before the Shooting. Edited and reconstructed from lost computer files and discs by John Callahan and Adam Bradley, we know this will be great from the earlier book-length fragment Juneteenth. The story of a U.S. Senator who "passes" as white. Filled with some of the most marvelous reconstructions of black religious language and rhetoric, this one will not disappoint. Modern Library plans for the rollout on January 26. It weighs in at a hefty price tag of $50. It will join my first edition of the Invisible Man.
And in August, we are finally promised Evil River by William S. Burroughs, a book I have had on order for three consecutive years. The manuscript found among Burroughs' archive after his death.
And in August, we are finally promised Evil River by William S. Burroughs, a book I have had on order for three consecutive years. The manuscript found among Burroughs' archive after his death.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Back to Africa--You all are too Crazy
Recovering from a retina operation, I dreamed Elizabeth Warren was kidnapped by Chinese pirates. So no more criticism of Rush Limbaugh about oxycontin abuse.
The whole Glenn Beck thing reminds me of the Ghost Dances of the Plains Indians in the late 19th century. Inspired by visions, the Indians believed the white men would leave and the great Bison herds would return. If Beck keeps dancing, I guess he believes all the rest of us will leave and the teabaggers will be the only ones left.
Some brilliant conservative now likens Obama to Idi Amin, who will legalize 30 million illegal aliens so he will remain president for life. How does Idi Amin factor into this?
The RNC is passing a purity test where candidates will have to pledge to uphold ten basic statements. Now Republicans are against deficits and for small government. Has never happened in my lifetime.
Teabaggers are training candidates to take control of local elections so they can control the budgets of local government. Small government means no government to these guys.
Little Joey Lieberman has threatened again to filibuster the public option. Democrats are thinking about throwing him out of the Knesset.
Both Senator Levin and David Obey are calling for a war tax to pay for any escalation in Afghanistan.
Glenn Beck is penning The Plan, which will be his 100-yr plan for America. It's mirrored after the Chinese Communist Party's recent 100-year plan. Maybe it will have better luck than Karl Rove's 40-year control of government by Republicans. Or the 1,000-year Reich by Adolf Hitler.
If Obama goes all-in in Afghanistan, that will leave 10,500 available troops for any other emergencies. You make the call.
Lou Dobbs is thinking of running for President in 2012. Tom Tancredo is being discussed as his running-mate.
I share Andrew Sullivan's annoyance with Republicans, who act as if they had nothing to do with the current massive deficits of the United States. Iraq and Medicare B were totally unfunded. George W would be thrown out as a Republican according to the new purity tests. $10trillion in deficits not counting Medicare and Social Security makes him the Babe Ruth of big spenders.
If you need to de-program yourself from the Bush days, watch Will Ferrell's "You're welcome , America" where he plays with W with uncanny accuracy. I thought I was watching a documentary.
David Frum and Andrew Bacevich debated the Freedom Agenda and what should be done with Afghanistan on one of those internet split-screen affairs. A very interesting 60 minute discussion. As a side note--which was peripheral to the main topic--Bacevich said the Freedom Agenda completely failed, while Frum said that Bush oversold it. Bacevich did say that at least the Bush Administration tried to come up with a basic strategy to counter jihadists. He claimed any Obama escalation will be left with the problem of lacking any strategic point. In future blogs, I will return to the Freedom Agenda and the recent backlash against the whole Long War thesis. You will see and hear fragments of this in the coming months as Washington pundits debate Afghanistan.
Ralph Peters was on his meds again when he wrote a column which lambasted the Pentagon for not really providing President Obama with real options and said that we can not adopt the strategy Joe Biden has argued--going after Al Qaeda on the border--because the Pakistan government aids and abets Al Qaeda and plays this as a game to secure our aid funds. Without Al Qaeda, Pakistan would not receive the amount of financial and military assistance they do.
President Obama did his bit today to focus on Science Education. Finally, a political leader who remembers one way we can get out of problems--invent and apply scientific solutions.
I feel sorry for aged Bill Graham for having to meet with Sarah Palin to discuss Iraq and Afghanistan. Palin also continued talking about the second return to Israel of the Jewish diaspora. That's why there is a need for expansion of the settlements so that the returning Jews will have a home at the time of the Rapture. I am sooo glad real Christian churches do not preach the Book of Revelations. It really belongs to Ingmar Bergman movies.
The new Strategic Arms Treaty will probably not be ready on time but will slip beyond the December date. So far, this has gotten little attention from the Beltway pundits because frankly no one is interested. What will be a major accomplishment will generate very little bounce for President Obama.
After the commotion at the Sarah Palin book signings, where her fans jeer her for quitting before everyone had their book signed, I'm not sure Palin has the discipline necessary to run for higher office. In all of many strange happenings, an anti-abortion group protested that she was soft on the issue--Oh, really?
God love David Brooks. he's talking up John Tune as a Republican star. Brooks still believes the party is rational and not the "degenerate Republican party" as Andrew Sullivan thinks.
Homeland Security has buried its report on rightwing terrorism. Conservatives have political correctness to thank for this.
"Going Rogue" has the Brits laughing. It means having unprotected anal sex. Speaking of which "Bruno" is now out on DVD.
With the budget being busted and no one really talking about real tax hikes, maybe it's time for the issue of the VAT to be discussed. The VAT could be used to fund our social welfare programs without alot of political interference. Republicans should like it because it's a tax on the poorer among us. I happen to think we have to ween ourselves--me especially--away from the consumer mentality.
The great geniuses in our media have called Obama's Asia trip a dud and a failure. This has been disputed by the Dalai Lama and our own Ambassador in Beijing, who have reported significant agreements. Who knows?
The whole Glenn Beck thing reminds me of the Ghost Dances of the Plains Indians in the late 19th century. Inspired by visions, the Indians believed the white men would leave and the great Bison herds would return. If Beck keeps dancing, I guess he believes all the rest of us will leave and the teabaggers will be the only ones left.
Some brilliant conservative now likens Obama to Idi Amin, who will legalize 30 million illegal aliens so he will remain president for life. How does Idi Amin factor into this?
The RNC is passing a purity test where candidates will have to pledge to uphold ten basic statements. Now Republicans are against deficits and for small government. Has never happened in my lifetime.
Teabaggers are training candidates to take control of local elections so they can control the budgets of local government. Small government means no government to these guys.
Little Joey Lieberman has threatened again to filibuster the public option. Democrats are thinking about throwing him out of the Knesset.
Both Senator Levin and David Obey are calling for a war tax to pay for any escalation in Afghanistan.
Glenn Beck is penning The Plan, which will be his 100-yr plan for America. It's mirrored after the Chinese Communist Party's recent 100-year plan. Maybe it will have better luck than Karl Rove's 40-year control of government by Republicans. Or the 1,000-year Reich by Adolf Hitler.
If Obama goes all-in in Afghanistan, that will leave 10,500 available troops for any other emergencies. You make the call.
Lou Dobbs is thinking of running for President in 2012. Tom Tancredo is being discussed as his running-mate.
I share Andrew Sullivan's annoyance with Republicans, who act as if they had nothing to do with the current massive deficits of the United States. Iraq and Medicare B were totally unfunded. George W would be thrown out as a Republican according to the new purity tests. $10trillion in deficits not counting Medicare and Social Security makes him the Babe Ruth of big spenders.
If you need to de-program yourself from the Bush days, watch Will Ferrell's "You're welcome , America" where he plays with W with uncanny accuracy. I thought I was watching a documentary.
David Frum and Andrew Bacevich debated the Freedom Agenda and what should be done with Afghanistan on one of those internet split-screen affairs. A very interesting 60 minute discussion. As a side note--which was peripheral to the main topic--Bacevich said the Freedom Agenda completely failed, while Frum said that Bush oversold it. Bacevich did say that at least the Bush Administration tried to come up with a basic strategy to counter jihadists. He claimed any Obama escalation will be left with the problem of lacking any strategic point. In future blogs, I will return to the Freedom Agenda and the recent backlash against the whole Long War thesis. You will see and hear fragments of this in the coming months as Washington pundits debate Afghanistan.
Ralph Peters was on his meds again when he wrote a column which lambasted the Pentagon for not really providing President Obama with real options and said that we can not adopt the strategy Joe Biden has argued--going after Al Qaeda on the border--because the Pakistan government aids and abets Al Qaeda and plays this as a game to secure our aid funds. Without Al Qaeda, Pakistan would not receive the amount of financial and military assistance they do.
President Obama did his bit today to focus on Science Education. Finally, a political leader who remembers one way we can get out of problems--invent and apply scientific solutions.
I feel sorry for aged Bill Graham for having to meet with Sarah Palin to discuss Iraq and Afghanistan. Palin also continued talking about the second return to Israel of the Jewish diaspora. That's why there is a need for expansion of the settlements so that the returning Jews will have a home at the time of the Rapture. I am sooo glad real Christian churches do not preach the Book of Revelations. It really belongs to Ingmar Bergman movies.
The new Strategic Arms Treaty will probably not be ready on time but will slip beyond the December date. So far, this has gotten little attention from the Beltway pundits because frankly no one is interested. What will be a major accomplishment will generate very little bounce for President Obama.
After the commotion at the Sarah Palin book signings, where her fans jeer her for quitting before everyone had their book signed, I'm not sure Palin has the discipline necessary to run for higher office. In all of many strange happenings, an anti-abortion group protested that she was soft on the issue--Oh, really?
God love David Brooks. he's talking up John Tune as a Republican star. Brooks still believes the party is rational and not the "degenerate Republican party" as Andrew Sullivan thinks.
Homeland Security has buried its report on rightwing terrorism. Conservatives have political correctness to thank for this.
"Going Rogue" has the Brits laughing. It means having unprotected anal sex. Speaking of which "Bruno" is now out on DVD.
With the budget being busted and no one really talking about real tax hikes, maybe it's time for the issue of the VAT to be discussed. The VAT could be used to fund our social welfare programs without alot of political interference. Republicans should like it because it's a tax on the poorer among us. I happen to think we have to ween ourselves--me especially--away from the consumer mentality.
The great geniuses in our media have called Obama's Asia trip a dud and a failure. This has been disputed by the Dalai Lama and our own Ambassador in Beijing, who have reported significant agreements. Who knows?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The Audacity of Help
Benito Beck is quite right--President Obama does want to transform the United States with his policies. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times laments that a political system such as ours with so much special interest money blocking up the works may actually thwart our ability to solve large global issues. Unlike Beck who seems to believe in a libertarian utopia devoted to Jesus Christ, Friedman is extolling the current Chinese system with its authoritarian capitalism. We' ve been here before, folks, when people get all weak in the knees about democracy. That's why I support Eric Holder's decision to try the 9/11 perpetrators in New York City. He matter-of-factly defended the strength of our constitutional system and our ability to deal with terrorists using our own laws.
John Wasik has written an eye-opening book about Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America called The Audacity of Help. ( 2009, Bloomberg Press) Anyone watching the health care debate might sympathize with Tom Friedman's remarks since the financial forces aligned against making any reforms have been awesome. In his book Wasik outlines the basic assumptions of Obama's economic plan and analyzes what has been promised and what Congress has or has not delivered. His previous work The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream gives you some idea where he comes from. He has a keen eye of what Obama was and is trying to do with the Stimulus Plan and notes the pitfalls in stimulating a bottom-up financial recovery but sees there are not alot of alternatives.The most rewarding sections of his book concern the making of a Green, Digital Economy and the initial seed money the Administration has allotted for the development of alternative fuels and technology.
For my money, the most important speech given by President Obama was his MIT address where he outlined the transformation he envisions for the American economy. I would rank it up there with JFK's Moon speech. But that may be the problem--Obama takes a long view of our problems which he should but the short term hurt of the recession may slow if not stall the long term objectives entirely. Like Bruce Bartlett in another entry of mine, Wasik also is keen on a single-payer solution to health care, something that is off the table now. But as Wasik notes, Obama has taken on some of the most divisive issues in our political economy and contrary to his critics of the Left have stepped on alot of toes of entrenched interests. To make it to the Green Deal, Obama has to show that his stimulus package does heal the economy and help the unemployed and has made an impact on starting the transition to a more Green economy.
In a way, the whole healthcare issue is not only essential to resolve but also to build momentum for the other initiatives outlined in the book. As Wasik points out President Obama has vowed to cut the national deficit in half by the end of his term in office. While plans have been started from the first days in office to tackle this issue, President Obama will have to use his ability to explain complex problems to address frontally and fully the nature of our national debt. This will lead him into the territory of the third-rail of American politics--entitlement reform.
Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare all need funding overhauls and no recent administration has even come close to addressing this urgent issue. In addition, there is no consensus solution. Not only will the tax code have to be reformed but also the Administration must develop new revenue sources to maintain these programs at the present level just as the Baby Boomers are about to swamp them. This is the Administration's Herculean task if the American dream is going to be revived at all.
The Audacity of Help is an excellent primer on the Obama Economic Plan as well as its emphasis on the needs of people in an economic system. The format of the book lends itself well to following the different aspects of the plan and what needs to be done. The Economic Plan is ambitious and unfortunately it appears to be necessary in all its aspects. For those who want the President to fail, it is a challenge to them to present an alternative view of how to maintain and sustain the American dream.
John Wasik has written an eye-opening book about Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America called The Audacity of Help. ( 2009, Bloomberg Press) Anyone watching the health care debate might sympathize with Tom Friedman's remarks since the financial forces aligned against making any reforms have been awesome. In his book Wasik outlines the basic assumptions of Obama's economic plan and analyzes what has been promised and what Congress has or has not delivered. His previous work The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream gives you some idea where he comes from. He has a keen eye of what Obama was and is trying to do with the Stimulus Plan and notes the pitfalls in stimulating a bottom-up financial recovery but sees there are not alot of alternatives.The most rewarding sections of his book concern the making of a Green, Digital Economy and the initial seed money the Administration has allotted for the development of alternative fuels and technology.
For my money, the most important speech given by President Obama was his MIT address where he outlined the transformation he envisions for the American economy. I would rank it up there with JFK's Moon speech. But that may be the problem--Obama takes a long view of our problems which he should but the short term hurt of the recession may slow if not stall the long term objectives entirely. Like Bruce Bartlett in another entry of mine, Wasik also is keen on a single-payer solution to health care, something that is off the table now. But as Wasik notes, Obama has taken on some of the most divisive issues in our political economy and contrary to his critics of the Left have stepped on alot of toes of entrenched interests. To make it to the Green Deal, Obama has to show that his stimulus package does heal the economy and help the unemployed and has made an impact on starting the transition to a more Green economy.
In a way, the whole healthcare issue is not only essential to resolve but also to build momentum for the other initiatives outlined in the book. As Wasik points out President Obama has vowed to cut the national deficit in half by the end of his term in office. While plans have been started from the first days in office to tackle this issue, President Obama will have to use his ability to explain complex problems to address frontally and fully the nature of our national debt. This will lead him into the territory of the third-rail of American politics--entitlement reform.
Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare all need funding overhauls and no recent administration has even come close to addressing this urgent issue. In addition, there is no consensus solution. Not only will the tax code have to be reformed but also the Administration must develop new revenue sources to maintain these programs at the present level just as the Baby Boomers are about to swamp them. This is the Administration's Herculean task if the American dream is going to be revived at all.
The Audacity of Help is an excellent primer on the Obama Economic Plan as well as its emphasis on the needs of people in an economic system. The format of the book lends itself well to following the different aspects of the plan and what needs to be done. The Economic Plan is ambitious and unfortunately it appears to be necessary in all its aspects. For those who want the President to fail, it is a challenge to them to present an alternative view of how to maintain and sustain the American dream.
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