SocraticGadfly: Ryan Cooper reads Dear Leader's dreck so you don't have to

November 24, 2020

Ryan Cooper reads Dear Leader's dreck so you don't have to

Looking for good takedown reviews, rather than NY Review of Books or New York Times book reviews pages, of Dear Leader Obama's volume 1 of dreck? Ryan Cooper is a good starting point

Here's a couple of the nut grafs, early on, or sections from them:

Obama attempts to grapple with the massive failures of his presidency in A Promised Land, his new memoir describing his rise to power and early presidency, but ultimately the book is slippery and unconvincing. America is circling the political toilet in part because Obama had the chance to fix many longstanding problems and did not rise to the occasion, a fact the former president is still stubbornly unwilling or unable to see. 
Obama elsewhere evinces a political naivete and passivity that borders on the incomprehensible. For the sake of brevity, let me address just the three most important policy decisions of his presidency: the 2008 bank bailout, the 2009 Recovery Act stimulus, and his foreclosure policy.

Couldn't have said it much better myself.

Well, actually .... one caveat. 

Passivity, probably. Naivete? No.

Rather, as I tweeted to Cooper:

No other way to say it.

Cooper himself, in noting comments like Austan Goolsbee's about Hank Paulson, leaves the door open that subconsciously, he accepts this explanation.

Nathan J. Robinson hasn't come out with his takedown yet, but I'm waiting.

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