Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Richard Parker on Obama's Challenge
Richard Parker is the author of John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. He is an Oxford-trained economist and senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he also teaches a course on religion and public policy. A cofounder of the magazine Mother Jones, he writes extensively on economics and public policy.
This is a vitally important book--one which should be read whether you support Barack Obama or not.
It's a concisely reasoned and elegantly written essay on how a truly courageous president could lead us forward. A slender volume, it very usefully sweeps us past the often-overwrought speculation about whether this will or won't be a "transformative" election--akin to Lincoln's, Roosevelt's, JFK's, and even Ronald Reagan's--and on to the real questions of what such an election might accomplish, how, and why.
Obama's Challenge assumes Obama will be elected, but its author is hardly a captive partisan. As a highly regarded journalist and deft policy analyst, Robert Kuttner has been covering presidential elections--as well the politics of governance in the four years between them--for more than three decades. Experience has convinced him that the size and complexity of the problems America and the world are facing today requires an extraordinarily gifted leader--and he is willing here to affirm that Barack Obama might well be that person.
The book's unique contribution, however, is to shows us that the sheer magnitude of those problems will require a President Obama to use his gifts for specific ends--and what those ends should be. We must repair, Kuttner persuades us, the enormous damage that's been done over the past 40 years by heedless business deregulation, careless globalization, massive deficits, environmental neglect, arrogantly unilateral use of military power, increasingly regressive tax system, and most important, by a relentless denigration of the clear value of government itself by those in the highest public offices--even though democratic government has always been and is now, the precondition, not the enemy, of America's past achievement and future hope. In doing so, he cogently explains how derelict conservative ideology, combined with a deformed bipartisanship, led to this situation, how presidents of great potential have in the past became transformative leaders--and how President Obama could take up the promise he offers now, and shape it into the world we need.
Kuttner is refreshingly realistic nonetheless about the roadblocks and pitfalls ahead. Hardly utopian himself, he urges Obama--and his supporters--to grasp the full requirements for transformative change in terms of leadership and values.
In the past, Kuttner has shown himself to be highly adept at parsing complex policy alternatives, but he somberly cautions the new president away from such a path by quoting Lincoln's dictum, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed." What he elegantly demonstrates instead is that Obama must mobilize the country by helping us take the imaginative steps forward that will allow us together to remake--and redeem--the nation. And if Obama takes time to read this essay before November, it will significantly enhance his prospects of first reaching the White House.
No one can possibly know what lies in store for an Obama presidency--or whether he will in fact reach the White House. This is the only book, however, to cogently explain why and how we must tackle now the great problems that have been so so carelessly created, and by reflecting on earlier transformative presidencies, offers us the map by which President Obama (and we) might chart a truly tranformative presidency.
From Publishers Weekly
In the latest from Kuttner (The Squandering of America), the liberal author and commentator correctly anticipates the economic failures only recently unfolding, and proposes a bold, transformative plan he believes can only be carried out by presidential candidate Barack Obama. Following the dubious tradition of pre-election expectation-raising, Kuttner proposes a veritable wish list for liberal economists-like permanent investment in public infrastructure, energy independence, active labor market policy (good jobs at good wages), professionalization of human services work like elder- and child-care, housing subsidies, universal health insurance-and why they'll pay off in jobs, health and wealth. Estimating the cost of all these programs at $600 billion until 2010, Kuttner finds convincing reasons to hope for these changes. Comparing Obama's role to FDR and Lincoln's, Kuttner believes the Illinois senator has the ability to inspire the public, and Congress, to carry out this agenda; as timely and apt as it is, left-leaning readers may be energized, or they may be in for quite a bit of disappointment.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Library Journal Xpress Reviews-
Customer Reviews
Obama's Challenge
Robert Kuttner goes into some detail regarding the economy and how progressive programs could be a great help. He recognizes the political problems involved in getting these programs started and recommends some strategies that Barak Obama could pursue. His presentation is very insightful - maybe he should be an advisor to the president elect.
Very interesting: He wrote this book and submitted it to publication well before the election and at least a half year before it became obvious to most people as to how wide and deep the present depression (my word) is. Is this guy a prophet?
How Obama Can Be Great
No one can deny Robert Kuttner's premise - our next President really has his work cut out for him. But Kuttner goes further; he makes a strong case for the notion that the next President will have to be a great president. His examples of greatness, in a transformative sense, are Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
In Kuttner's view, each of these Presidents entered office without an agenda of dramatic change, but the circumstances they found, once in office, forced each of them to transcend politics to become the kind of leaders the nation desperately needed.
The Republican, Abraham Lincoln, had no plans to abolish slavery when he ran for office in 1860, but grew in his realization that slavery was immoral - and must be addressed. His eloquence and his political gifts, along with the Civil War itself, allowed him to end that blight on the nation's conscience.
Franklin Roosevelt was committed to budget balancing and budget cutting when he campaigned in 1932. What he found upon assuming office was a deepening economic depression and a nation demoralized. He used his gifts of optimism and communication in a dramatic search for practical - not ideological - solutions.
Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency after John Kennedy's assassination, and found a highly segregated nation. His awakening to the plight of African-Americans was nothing short of remarkable for a Texas politician. His compassion and tenacity - with the passage of the Voting Rights Act - finally made possible the fulfillment of the promise of Lincoln.
Kuttner believes that the current crisis gives Obama this opportunity to grow into this kind of transformative leader we need to move forward in economic equity, health care reform and education. Obama is not there yet. His health care plan, for example, is not transformative to the degree we need. But of the two choices, Obama has the intellect, the character and the temperament to become a great leader.
Leaders, after all, do compromise and collaborate and understand politics; however, they also take us to places we have not imagined previously. They aspire us to rise above our old ways. They lead us to a new vision.
Not every President has the talent to lead us in this transformative way. George W. Bush, for example, when faced with a growing concern about global warming - decided to ignore the evidence. Entering office to decades long stagnation of middle class wages - he cut taxes on the wealthy and boosted deregulation. Following the tragedy of 9-11, he pushed for the invasion of a weak country and promoted the torture of prisoners. His leadership didn't call out our better selves - it exacerbated our weaknesses.
Kuttner promotes a number of transformative ideas for consideration. One that deserves consideration is the professionalization of the service employees of the nation's social service sector. We can all agree that the nation's children and elderly deserve high quality care, but current policies and regulations push the service equation towards lower prices, not higher quality.
The front line staff of America's nursing homes, residential treatment programs and day care centers are largely poorly trained, poorly educated, short-term employees. Private children's homes in KY face frighteningly high turnover rates every year. Higher governmental standards could force the hiring of better educated and more intrinsically motivated workers. In turn, as higher skilled workers demand higher wages, these good jobs could become a decent wage option for workers displaced by globalization and the decline of manufacturing.
Our vulnerable children and aging population would receive better care, and these newly enhanced jobs could not be outsourced to other nations.
Kuttner leaves us where Obama entered the race - with the possibilities of hope. Heaven knows we need it.
Can Obama rescue America from the brink?
Robert Kuttner's advices to Obama in overcoming the crisis that has brought America to the edge are not something new as many US foreign policy experts have done so in the recent past. But such advices were not heeded by the Bush administration until they have landed America into a real crisis situation.
Kuttner may be right in deriding unbridled free trade and the increasing obeisity of the federal government but does not his suggestion for more government intervention in economic spheres lead to the very road that Kuttner so vehemently opposes? The problem with American leaders is that American ideals and values that I'd termed as 'American Cavalcade' in my book, 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit' were framed within and for an America closetted between the two oceans but the vision of the founding fathers regarding a non-interventionist and a non committed America from a global perspective had been repeatedly violated by successive presidents starting with TR.
So what worked for an isolationist United States under Lincoln or Roosevelt may not work in the third millennium. The role of charisma and leadership works well within a country but international relations are complex issues where it is the American values that are viewed with suspicion. To make matters worse, America of the new century needs the outside world more than vice-versa and hence the need to be more understanding of others.
Obama is an innovative leader and he is well aware of the international scenario and how to lead America through the intricacies of diverse interests of the community of nations. Obama, I think, should align more with its Western allies to stave off a second isolation.
Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies since Independence.'
Related Links : Product by Amazon or shopping-lifestyle-20 Store
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น