About book The New New Deal: The Hidden Story Of Change In The Obama Era (2012)
Michael Grunwald's “The New New Deal” belongs filed on the “Barack Obama: The Man, The Myth, The Legend” shelf. Look, I’m gonna say good things about this book and I’m gonna say bad things about this book, then I’ll give it three stars and leave it up to you to figure out just what the hell those stars mean. Let me start with the good stuff first:Grunwald does an excellent job of taking the reader behind the scenes of the Obama Administration’s remarkably competent response to the 2008 financial meltdown and making comprehensible exactly what the President and his team were trying to accomplish through his stimulus program. From the day Obama was elected until the day he actually took office the U.S. economy slipped into freefall, with each monthly job report looking more horrific than the one from the month before. Basically, the Bush Administration handed Obama a thermonuclear time bomb….a kind of GOP “So long, and thanks for all the fish” farewell as W. hauled-ass in his hydrocarbon-fueled space ship to Universes unknown. The team Obama assembled worked with amazing speed, precision and efficiency (the massive $ 800 billion bill was passed within the first 30 days of his Presidency) to pull together an effective stimulus plan that 1) pumped money into the consumer economy to forestall a jobs collapse and 2) laid the groundwork for many of the initiatives (particularly in the areas of Infrastructure, Energy and Education) that Obama had promised in his campaign. For their part the Republican leadership, determined to make sure that Obama’s fingerprints and his fingerprints alone were all over the disastrous economy that they, themselves, had created, resolved to thwart Obama at every turn. Grunwald’s thesis is that the stimulus bill essentially saved the country from sinking into a Depression while at the same time providing the funding necessary to launch infrastructure and technology spending that will pay important dividends to the country over the next 20 years. Yet unlike FDR, who took office fully three years after the onset of the Great Depression, Obama took office right as the economy was coming off the rails…..with the result that American’s only saw how bad things got, but never had to experience a period of living through how bad “really bad” could be. This left Obama with an unattractive yet unavoidable “things could have been a lot worse” messaging dilemma that the GOP exploited to the hilt. For all of the stimulus plan’s undeniable, economy-saving benefits, the GOP has been largely successful in spinning the counter-narrative that the stimulus was a megalithic failure and that Obama was exactly the kind of tax and spend liberal that your mama always warned you about. In presenting all of this, Grunwald is both accurate and compelling.However, as Grunwald is an unashamed Obama fan his enthusiasm for the President dilutes the power of his work. While he acknowledges some of the Obama plan's misques (e.g. Solyndra or the infamous “8% unemployment forecast”) he rationalizes these (rightly, I believe) as evidence of just how "right" Obama was. He does not, however, challenge many of the fundamental choices that Obama made as a backdrop both to the establishment of his administration and to the final stimulus product. For example, in the so-called “Battle of the Bob’s” – the selection of the administration's philosophical heart and soul between heavily Keynesian Robert Reich vs. heavily pro Wall Street Robert Rubin - Obama chose (much to the dismay of liberals) Rubin protégées to lead his economic team. Likewise, in choosing as Secretary of Education between pro-public school Linda Darling Hammond and pro-accountability / free market advocate Arne Duncan, Obama chose Duncan and wound up using the stimulus bill to double down on the Bush era No Child Left Behind programs that are so reviled by the left. These are areas for which Obama should be exposed to legitimate criticism, and yet, about which Grunwald is largely silent. Overall, a good book and worth the read for anyone interested in separating fact from fiction in their evaluation of the Obama Presidency. Just be prepared to go elsewhere for an incisive critique of Obama from the left. I admit I am a policy geek. Having said that I am not an economist by ant stretch of the imagination. This was a fascinating book and I learned something on almost every page. Grunwald did a masterful job researching, describing & analyzing the stimulus package. He covers both sides of the political aisle fairly. after reading this book, I feel much better informed & able to clearly understand current fiscal debates regarding continuing resolutions & debt ceilings.
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Being considered for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
—GuardianGurl
Great information, could have used a less repetitive structure.
—Elb
