Ron Suskind, Confidence Men
Featured Book
A fly-on-the-wall look at Obama’s first two years
The title of Pulitzer-winning journalist Ron Suskind’s look at the first two years of the Obama White House doesn’t bode well for his judgment of the president. After all, as Suskind himself writes, “Gaining the trust without earning it is the age old work of confidence men.” That’s a damning reference to the confidence Obama inspired in millions of voters during his presidential campaign — confidence that many would now say was ill-gotten — but there’s much more to Confidence Men than its title might indicate. Suskind has written a very even-handed book, one that doesn’t indict Obama for his policies so much as deliver a very detailed, blow-by-blow account of how the politics got done.
Be forewarned, this isn’t a policy book; it’s more along the lines of “palace intrigue,” a novelistic story of the clash of personalities created out of countless interviews with the main players. Suskind is very good at capturing the essence of key figures, like the legendarily arrogant Larry Summers (who sings about himself, “for he’s an unpleasant fellow”). Suskind also creates a robust background, delivering a wealth of quotes from the over 200 people he spoke with while writing the book. (Perhaps the best is Paul Volcker’s “the trouble with the United States recently is we spent several decades not producing many civil engineers and producing a huge number of financial engineers. And the result is fucked bridges and a fucked financial system!”)
Confidence Men has caused a lot of controversy for its factual errors, as well as the pushback from many quoted in the book, and while it’s true that the errors are regrettable, it would be difficult to not expect the establishment to criticize such an inflammatory book. That’s best seen as a measurement of the riskiness of Suskind’s thesis: that Obama’s political inexperience led to a poorly guided, poorly executed economic policy. It’s a question that will be argued over for years, and Suskind gives us a rare, important look at how one of the most promise-laden presidencies greatly under-delivered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
