With less than a week before Election Day, it’s unclear whether the “Obama Era” will be anything more than a short interlude between the Bush and Romney Eras. I suspect that if Pres. Obama is re-elected there’s a good chance that later generations will look back on the “Obama Era” as a significant turning point in American politics. If they do, Michael Grunwald’s new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story Of Change In The Obama Era, will likely prove to be one of the first and most important book-length sources for understanding the impact of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The New New Deal is about the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by Pres. Obama less than a month after taking office. Grunwald writes about how it came to be, the legislative battle to pass it, the challenges of implementing it, and why the “liberal mainstream media” missed the real story of what was happening.
- “In constant dollars, it was more than 50 percent bigger than the entire New Deal, twice as big as the Louisiana Purchase and Marshall Plan combined.“
- “It was the biggest and most transformative energy bill in U. S. history….“
- “The stimulus was also the biggest and most transformative education reform bill since the Great Society.“
- “It was a big and transformative health care bill, too, laying the foundation for Obama’s even bigger and more transformative reforms a year later.“
- “It included America’s biggest foray into industrial policy since FDR, biggest expansion of antipoverty initiatives since Lyndon Johnson, biggest middle-class tax cut since Ronald Reagan, and biggest infusion of research money ever.“
- “It authorized a high-speed passenger rail network, the biggest new transportation initiative since the interstate highways, and extended our existing high-speed Internet network to underserved communities….“
- “It updated the New Deal-era unemployment insurance system and launched new approaches to preventing homelessness, financing infrastructure projects, and managing stormwater in eco-friendly ways.“
- And it did so “with unprecedented transparency and oversight“.
All of that’s in addition to its pivotal role in breaking the back of the Great Recession, ending the fearsome 700,000/month job losses Obama inherited and slowly starting the nation’s economy on the road to recovery despite the united and unprecedented opposition of Republicans in Congress.
Barack Obama regularly gets criticized by liberals for being too cautious and too willing to compromise with his opponents. What often gets missed—and what Grunwald argues convincingly got missed about the Recovery Act—is that the calm, even-tempered “no drama” Obama has successfully created more change than even his allies often recognize.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/