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Confidence Men LP: Wall Street, Washington, And The Education Of A President (2011)

by Ron Suskind(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0062088734 (ISBN13: 9780062088734)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

HarperLuxe

review 1: I read this book because I happened to meet the author up in Cambridge and he impressed me. So did this book. I usually don’t read books like this, and certainly not ones this long, but Suskind gave me a great education in the first couple years of the first Obama administration, with a focus on the financial crisis, financial reform, and health care (which became health insurance) reform.The writing is excellent in a breezy sort of way, although occasionally there is language that is a bit purple. The breeziness and character sketches make this massive book read easily and the technical material easy to swallow. And Suskind pulls off a structure out of an hour-long drama series: keeping three or more stories up in the air at the same time, and going back and forth amon... moreg them.It’s not too late to read this book (the ramifications of what occurred then, and what did not, are all around us). I highly recommend it.
review 2: More like a 2.5.I have a weakness for current event tick-tocks. In domestic affairs the pickings here are pretty slim, meaning you are often choosing between Suskind and Woodward. Finding Suskind's breathlessness (dude rolls out two unreal metaphors per chapter on average) less offensive than Woodward's conventional wisdom pornography, I opt for the former.And he is not without his strengths. Though, as per usual with these things the folks who give access generally receive the best treatment, there is some interesting reporting here. Not hugely groundbreaking but I now feel more firmly grounded in, for example, a) my belief that Larry Summers is a huge asshole (please do not make him Treasury Secretary in 2017, Hillary!) and b) understanding the banking's industry's successes in fending off regulation.Though less egregious about it than Woodward, Suskind also struggles to give oxygen to anything but his perspective. While I would unlikely be swayed by it, Geithner's reluctance to really come down on the bank out of concerns relating to instability is not so patently implausible to merit Suskind's total unexamined dismissal. Similarly, (and an interesting artifact from 2011 CW thinking) though it is doubtless true that a smoother running White House would have better managed health care, financial regulation, etc., making that the central explanation for the ensuing political gridlock, with only lip service paid to Republicans unprecedented intransigence, is plain empirically wrong. And then there are even more puzzling moments where Suskind presents evidence ostensibly to support his CW conclusion that does nothing of the sort. Parroting David Brooks's contemporaneous "he's trying to do too much at once" hand-wringing, Suskind argues Tom Daschle's presence in the White House could have led to a more appropriately narrow focus (it is implicit that this would have involved abandoning or severely narrowing health care reform). He then (pg. 269-70) presents an interview with Daschle, wherein Daschle argues for the imperative of health care reform. Huh? Though there is kernel of truth here (Obama losing Daschle undoubtedly hurt the health care reform effort), Daschle explicitly undermines Suskind's second-hand Brooks "focus only on the economy." You think an editor would at least see to the author having his CW ducks in a row but I guess not.On the other hand, I read it in a week so clearly it moves. less

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Reviews (see all)

CINDYYYYY

I like history and I like economics and I really like looking inside how systems breakdown. All that being said – this was really boring. I gave up on the audiobook about 5 hours in. While the narrative is detailed, there seemed to be a lack of focus sometimes so the point got a little lost in the detail. Just wasn’t my book. After 5 hours, I still wasn’t really sure what the book was supposed to be telling me, other than a blow-by-blow recap of the first 2 years of Obama’s presidency.

swati

sam11

Loses focus at times but overall an insightful look into the Obama presidency.

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