A Consequential President: The Legacy of Barack Obama

by Michael D'Antonio

Overview

In response to criticism and disappointment from the Left, A Consequential President offers a bold assessment of the lasting successes and major achievements of President Obama.

Had he only saved the U.S. economy with his economic recovery act and his program to restore the auto industry, President Obama would have been considered a successful president. He achieved so much more, however, that he can be counted as one of our most consequential presidents.

With The Affordable Care Act, he ended the long-running crisis of escalating costs and inadequate access of treatment that had long-threatened the well-being of 50 million Americans. His energy policies drove down the cost of power generated by the sun, the wind, and even fossil fuels. His efforts on climate change produced the Paris Agreement, the first treaty to address global warming in a meaningful way, and his diplomacy produced a dramatic reduction in the nuclear threat posed by Iran. Add the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and his “pivot” toward Asia, and President Obama's triumphs abroad match those at home.

Most importantly, as the first African-American president, he navigated race relations and a rising tide of bigotry, including some who challenged his citizenship, while also fighting a Republican Party determined to make him one-term president. As a result, Obama's greatest achievement was restoring dignity and ethics to the office of the president, proof that he delivered his campaign promise of hope and change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250081391
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

As part of a team of journalists from Newsday, MICHAEL D'ANTONIO won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting before going on to write many acclaimed books, including The Truth About Trump. He has also written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Ending the Great Recession: It Was the Economy, Stupid 25

2 Auto Industry Rescue; "The Doomsayers Were Wrong" 59

3 Health Care Reform: Saving Spike Dolomite 82

4 Energy: Sun, Wind, and Market Forces 104

5 Environment: Saving the Planet 123

6 Foreign Policy: Obama's World 144

7 Education; Racing to the Top 172

8 Financial Reform: Boring Is Better 188

9 Equality: Expectations, Limits, Progress 209

10 Unfinished Business (and Failures) 230

Postscript: The Benefits of Cool 247

Addendum: Antagonism and False Alarms 259

Acknowledgments 267

Selected Chapter Notes 269

Bibliography 297

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

10/10/2016
D’Antonio (Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success), a Pulitzer-winning journalist, turns his attention here to President Obama’s “policy achievements, moral successes, and historical significance,” addressing multiple areas of accomplishment, among them the rescue of the automobile industry and the nuclear-arms agreement with Iran. Focusing on the challenge of a Congress profoundly hostile to the president, D’Antonio guides the reader through the complex process of passing landmark legislation such as the Affordable Care Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. D’Antonio is partisan in that he admires Obama, but as befits a distinguished reporter, his assessments, while not neutral, are certainly balanced. Obama’s controversies and the failures are faced as well: the fights over the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Solyndra debacle, the unfinished dismantling of Guantanamo. Nearly 50 graphs and charts, on subjects such as the growth of alternate energy sources, troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, and generational views of homosexuality further illuminate the subject, and occasional achievement lists serve as shorthand reminders. D’Antonio’s work is further enriched by accounts from people and communities quite outside the Washington Beltway. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Consequential President
“[A] broad, generous look at the entire Obama administration and finds many solid arguments that he indeed delivered the 'change' that he promised in 2008." —Kirkus Reviews

“D’Antonio is partisan in that he admires Obama, but as befits a distinguished reporter, his assessments, while not neutral, are certainly balanced.” —Publishers Weekly

Praise for Michael D’Antonio
“A brisk and entertaining read, drawing on interviews and documents and distilling decades’ worth of news coverage to tell the story of Trump’s childhood, family, business deals, and political forays.” —The Washington Post on The Truth About Trump

“An admirably straight­forward, evenhanded but nonetheless damning account of Trump’s life.” —The New York Times Book Review on The Truth About Trump

“A brisk and entertaining read, drawing on interviews and documents and distilling decades’ worth of news coverage to tell the story of Trump’s childhood, family, business deals and political forays.” —The Washington Post on The Truth About Trump

“A carefully reported and fair-minded account. … [D’Antonio] has pulled together Trump's story, subjected it to some fact-checking and dissected a string of business deals that display his drive to win, his thirst for money, his willingness to push boundaries and his apparently endless quest for publicity.” —USA Today on The Truth About Trump

"Balanced, well-sourced and perfectly timed."—The Financial Times on The Truth About Trump

"D'Antonio has delivered an intriguing portrait of an American individualist and his time." —Los Angeles Times Book Review on Hershey

“Stunning . . . a vivid, careful, and ultimately momentous piece of journalism.” —The Boston Globe on The State Boys Rebellion

“A captivating book.” —The Wall Street Journal on A Full Cup

“This landmark work of recent history remains gripping and affecting to the last word.” —Booklist (starred review) on Mortal Sins

From the Publisher

02/15/2017
As an answer to critics on both the left and right, journalist D'Antonio (The Truth About Trump) shows that despite determined opposition from Republicans in Congress while facing national and international financial and military crises, Barack Obama managed to be the transformative U.S. president that many hoped for when he took office in 2009. There is extensive coverage of the legislative struggle to obtain passage of the Affordable Care Act with examples of the misleading campaigns opponents in Congress and the media devised to attempt to defeat the legislation. D'Antonio explains how Obama's foreign policy breakthroughs in the Iran nuclear treaty and restoring relations with Cuba raised America's standing in the world, and he includes education reform and energy and environmental policy advancement as important accomplishments of the Obama administration. The author acknowledges that the president did not deliver on several promises, including closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and creating meaningful legislation limiting access to firearms. VERDICT Readers who enjoy learning about government and politics and want to know how Obama and his advisers addressed the challenges they faced will appreciate D'Antonio's thorough coverage. [See Prepub Alert, 7/11/16.]—Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs.

Library Journal

2016-10-05
An overview of President Barack Obama’s two-term presidency: his successes, failures, and incompletions. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist D’Antonio (Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, 2015 etc.) takes a broad, generous look at the entire Obama administration and finds many solid arguments that he indeed delivered the “change” that he promised in 2008. Amazingly, Obama did not allow the GOP obstructionism to wreck his presidency, as planned by Mitch McConnell, who vowed that Obama’s presidency would be “divisive and controversial.” For example, the new president was able to pass the much-needed economic Recovery Act as one of his first acts, thanks to the still-Democratic majority in Congress. His bailout of the auto industry was much criticized at the time, and its startling success prompted the Economist, which argued that “GM deserved extinction,” to apologize in its pages one year later. While many had voted Obama in to wage a “revolution” and then were disappointed at the slow pace, D’Antonio shows how, over the course of the eight years of Obama’s presidency, the accumulation of accomplishments proved to be revolutionary—e.g., his ability to pass health care reform when previous leaders could not manage it, galvanize the alternative-energy fields of wind and solar power “after decades of promise” by previous presidents to wean the country off oil, and draw back the troops in the Middle East. The recognition of the causes of global warming and the science behind it proved liberating for the environmental movement (e.g., at the climate conference in Paris in 2015), while the execution of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden galled the Republicans to no end. The author also looks at Obama’s mixed results in education and financial reform, gun control, and the long-promised closure of Guantánamo Bay prison. On the other hand, the president evolved courageously in human rights such as LGBT equality and equal pay for women. Sometimes overly gushing and perhaps premature but bolstered with enough evidence.

Kirkus Reviews