Books : Obama's Challenge (Large Print): America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9781603580885
Format: Large Print
ISBN: 1603580883
Label: Chelsea Green Publishing
Manufacturer: Chelsea Green Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: September 15, 2008
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Release Date: September 05, 2008
Sales Rank: 1284070
Studio: Chelsea Green Publishing
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Product Description:
Barack Obama approaches the Presidency at a critical moment in American history, facing simultaneous crises of war, the environment, health care, but most especially in the economy. If he is able to rise to the moment, he could join the ranks of a small handful of previous presidents who have been truly transformative, succeeding in fundamentally changing our economy, society, and democracy for the better.
But this will require imaginative and decisive action as Obama takes office, action bolder than he has promised during his campaign, and will be all the more difficult given the undertow of conventional wisdom in Washington and on Wall Street that resists fundamental change. Decades of regressive politics and political gridlock have left America in its most precarious situation since the onset of the Great Depression. The collapse of the housing bubble continues, as does the financial meltdown it triggered; a revival of 1970s style stagflation threatens; incomes continue to lag behind inflation; our household and international debts pile higher; disastrous climate change looms; energy and food prices continue their escalation; and the ranks of un- and under-insured Americans grow, the clearest, and most heartless, example of America’s destructive inequalities.
Solutions to our multiple challenges do exist, but they won’t be found in overly cautious or expedient quick fixes. With his exceptional skill at appealing to our better angels, Barack Obama could be the right leader at the right time to re-awaken America to the renewed promise of shared prosperity coupled with responsibility towards future generations and the international community with whom we share the Earth. Invoking America’s greatest leaders, Robert Kuttner explains how Obama must be a transformative president—or a failed one.
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.
Average Rating: 
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Don't waste your time or money. I have heard better analysis about national politics from high school extemp speakers than what is contained in this book.
Hopefully Obama has better advisers than this writer.
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This is an especially interesting book as it was published BEFORE the Wall Street crash and before the election. It compares the situation and Obama to the situations and other presidents who rose to meet and create new pathways for the future. I just hope the author is correct about how this could all (positively) turn out.
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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?
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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 ... Read More
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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 ... Read More
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