Book Report - Best Biographies: UPDATED

This is my attempt to put together a list of the best biographies on important people (as it turns out, mostly American Presidents). I haven't read all of the books on here. The one's I haven't read are included based on reputation. (The books I have read are noted with an asterisk.

I expect this to be a work in progress, so I will update it as I get comments and as things change. So you know, my idea of a definitive book is contemporary, well written, and if possible not insanely long. In many cases, I will go with authors that have a good reputation.

You'll also find that most of the people listed here have biographies on PBS's American Experience where you can get a good idea of their life in just a few hours.

You might notice the lack of women and people of color on here. This can partly be explained by the diminished role women and African-Americans were allowed to play for much of our history. Even considering that, I still don't feel good about it. The best I can say is that we'll eagerly await the definitive treatments of Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir - and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X (see below), Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas among others.

George Washington
*His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
I don't know which of these is better. I read the Ellis biography and found it to be pretty good. I get the feeling though that Chernow's is more comprehensive.

John Adams
*John Adams by David McCullough
This is an amazing book.

Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson by RB Bernstein
American Sphinx by Joseph Ellis
Again, not sure which is the better book. Both are contemporary. Ellis is pretty popular and has written a lot on this time period. Also, The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed (professor at New York Law School) won the Pulitzer Prize. I haven't read it, but have it on my list.

Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
This book is very well regarded. I really want to read this, but it keeps falling behind other priorities.

Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
The First American by H.W. Brands
I don't know which is better, although I think I have seen Isaacson's book more often.

Andrew Jackson
American Lion* by John Meacham
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
I read Meacham's book because it was shorter. I regret that decision. The book spent more time on gossip than important policy and refused to engage in much criticism of the Indian Removal Policy or any analysis of the national bank decision. How this book won the Pulitzer is beyond me.

Abraham Lincoln
Team of Rivals* by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Great book. Can't wait for the movie. 

Ulyses S. Grant
Jean Edward Smith's Grant seems well regarded and contemporary.
John Waugh's U.S. Grant seems to provide a good analysis of Grant's changed reputation.
And now the very prolific H.W. Brands has a Grant biography: The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace. I don't know which I will read. I really like Brands' writing, but I might want to mix it up and give Smith a try.

Teddy Roosevelt
Edmund Morris has a three volume set (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt) that seems to the best available. The prolific H.W. Brands has a single volume biography titled T.R. The Last Romantic.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Traitor to His Class* by H.W. Brands
FDR by Jean Edward Smith
I am reading Traitor by Brands. It is really good and includes a good amount on Eleanor's life as well. And since I am liking it so much, I will probably read the Teddy Roosevelt and maybe the Jackson biographies by Brands.

Eleanor Roosevelt
It seems that Blanche Wiesen Cook's series is the best available. It currently stands at two volumes and goes through the first years of FDR's presidency and could easily run two more volumes. I wish there was something shorter.

Harry Truman
Truman by David McCullough
McCullough's biography is by far the most highly regarded and probably helped change opinions on his presidency.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen Ambrose
The one volume condensation or the full two volume work by Ambrose seems to be the best out there. There is also one by Jean Edward Smith - Eisenhower in War and Peace.

John F. Kennedy
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek

Malcolm X
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention* by Manning Marable
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley*
I have read both books and I think everyone should read both. The Autobiography gives Malcolm's view (with some editing by Alex Haley) whereas Manning Marable's biography should be considered more objective and also adds a lot of historical context and analysis.

Lyndon Johnson
Robert Caro's trilogy is the most comprehensive and contemporary. Caro is a great writer and is able to find all the good stories. However, the sheer size of it probably scares most people away. Other options include Robert Dallek's two volume set and Doris Kearns Goodwin's single volume.

Richard Nixon - Barack Obama
For the modern presidents (Nixon - Obama) it is probably too early for really good biographies. There are American Experience series for Nixon, Carter, Reagan and George HW Bush. Woodward wrote two books on Clinton covering his first couple years in office and his reelection. There is also a book called Dead Center on Clinton's presidency, but it is more of a study of leadership (I read it in an undergrad political science class). Woodward also wrote three or four books on Bush's presidency as well as one so far on Obama (focusing on his administration's foreign policy debates).

* books I have read

The 47 Percent

We are all very familiar with Romney's taped comments about how 47 percent of the country didn't pay income taxes and are therefore dependent on the system and don't take responsibility for their lives and think they are entitled to benefits. There has been a lot of discussion about this, some of it very good and smart. I want to add my thoughts here.

The first thing I should mention is how dishonest this comment is. A lot of others have pointed this out, but it bears repeating. First of all, that number is abnormally high due to the recession. It is usually 40% that don't pay income taxes. But of that 47 percent, 60 percent are working and paying taxes for social security and Medicare. Another 22 percent are retirees. About 8 percent are not paying any federal taxes because they are unemployed, students, or on disability.

So the 47 percent are not all unemployed people on welfare. Most are working or retired. But let's pretend that Romney had the right number - let's say he made the same comments about that 8 percent that are not paying any taxes and are not working. Or even better, let's say he had a number that included only those unemployed and ignored the students and people on disability. Romney's claim was that this small number of people can never be convinced to take responsibility for their lives.

If there is one thing that seems to be consistent for Romney over the years, it is disdain for the welfare. He claims he ran against Kennedy because he wanted to tell the world that Kennedy's policies created a permanent underclass - that by helping people with food stamps and cash assistance, we were actually hurting them.

There are so many things wrong with the statement and that outlook. Ezra Klein has a great post on how the poor actually are taking responsibility but are in fact drowning in responsibility. I completely agree with that post and couldn't have written it better. But I don't expect someone with Romney's history to know what Klein points out. But I do expect him to know how he lived his life.

Mitt Romney did not live his life, nor treat his children, in a way that suggests responsibility and success only comes through hardship and self-reliance. We know that Mitt Romney used his inheritance from his Dad to support himself through school. And good for him. He used free money to better himself and become self sufficient - free money that was way more than what people on welfare get.

Also, Mitt Romney isn't forcing his kids to become poor to teach them how to make it on their own. Instead, he has set up a family trust that has $100 million in it, and he made sure to avoid taxes as best he could. As David Brooks says in his great take down, middle - and upper I would add - class parents don't deny their kids to teach responsibility, they shower them with everything they can. The best schools, the best programs. They give them a comfortable life so that they are most likely to achieve success.

The point here is that there is a huge disconnect between how Romney found success and then how he treats his children, and how he thinks poor people should be treated to find success. He believes his kids will find success if they are showered with supports and provided with lots of money, and his Dad felt the same way. But he believes that the poor will only find success if they are starved of supports and money.

I don't think this disconnect is racism. I think it is forced on him by his conservative worldview. In order to believe that you care about people's success but also to believe that government is too generous, you need to believe that people need less support in order to succeed. And you believe this despite your own experience and behavior. In fact, this is the greatest trick conservatives play on the world: that the best way to help someone is to not help them at all. Then you can perceive yourself as generous and kind, but also feel like you should keep more of your money.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. The best way to help someone is to help them. Just like the best way to help your family is to help them. And you do that by providing them with lots of money.

QE3 (ie QEuntilitworks)

I have been meaning to write a quick post about this but haven't gotten the chance. I am really happy with the Federal Reserves decision to undertake QE3 - or what I am calling QEuntilitworks because of its open-ended asset purchases, which will continue until there is more progress in the economy. I am very glad the fed finally acted, and I am glad they are using some of their signaling power - basically saying they are willing to let inflation increase above what had previously been a 2% ceiling until things pick-up.

I want to say one more thing about this economic situation we are facing. In the more recent past, the debate among economists - between Friemdman's and Keynes's followers - was whether the best way to fight a recession was to use monetary (ie Federal Reserve) or fiscal (ie stimulus ie government spending) policy. And it seemed for a while that the monetarists were winning the argument (though even Republican presidents like George W. Bush implemented fiscal stimulus).

But during this crisis, Republicans have decided to go back in time and declare that we should do neither monetary nor fiscal policy - that we should let the recession play out. This puts them decades behind and much farther to the right of Milton Friedman.

But putting that aside, the debate over monetary versus fiscal policy has gotten really interesting during this recession. Although we have seen the bottom, we have also seen a slow recovery.

In other recessions, you might see Democrats push for fiscal stimulus while Republican push for monetary stimulus. And if Democrats can't get fiscal stimulus passed, at least monetary stimulus would be enacted by the Fed and the recovery would get going.

However, in this case (after Obama's large but not large enough stimulus failed to start a big recovery), the federal reserve felt it had run out of tools because they couldn't lower interest rates any further (the traditional tool to get growth going again). So Ben Bernake called on Congress to use fiscal stimulus - though in his vague I'm saying it, but not really, way.

So the Federal Reserve was stuck. They had two options. One: wait for Congress to agree to fiscal stimulus. Two: try riskier fed tools like more and more quantitative easing. They waited as long as they could and are now trying the risky option.

I do wish Bernake had been much more obvious in what he was calling for. The Federal Reserve is meant to be above politics so that it can act to help the economy even when politicians will not. But when they run out of tools, they should use their position as non-partisan actors and speak up clearly. He should have said, "The Federal Reserve is out of good, non-risky options. Therefore, we think Congress should pass and the president should sign a fiscal stimulus of X magnitude."

The fact is that we need the federal reserve to be above politics to help the overall economy. But there may be other times in the future when they are low on tools but where Congress has plenty of tools. In that case, they should make very clear and specific recommendations.

But since I don't see that happening here, I will say that I am at least glad that the Fed is willing to try the risky tools since Congress (ie Republicans) don't want to use their tools. 

What to Expect if Obama Wins a Second Term

I'll keep this brief. Basically, I think there are three things we'll definitely see if Obama is reelected. First, he'll implement the Affordable Care Act, which will show the public what all the really good provisions are and keep it from being repealed. Second, he'll definitely work on a longer-term budget deal, which will probably give away too much. And I don't think he'll do much in the short term to help the economy. Instead he'll let the Federal Reserve do as much as it is willing and hope that is enough to cause the sputtering growth to pick up steam. And third, I think he'll really focus on immigration reform. I don't think Republicans can afford to spend too many more elections taking the far right position on this issue. And so I think Obama will push on this.

I don't think we'll see any efforts around global warming (ie cap and trade) unless the Democrats do the unthinkable and take back the House.

GOP VP Selections

I want to comment on the past two GOP vice presidential candidates. I realized after hearing Romney's convention speech that in both cases, the GOP presidential candidates chose a VP that undermined their argument against President Obama.

In 2008, one of John McCain's main attacks against Obama was that he wasn’t experienced enough. However, he then went on to choose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate - someone who was objectively as inexperienced and far less ready to be president.

Now Mitt Romney says, in his convention speech and many other places, that Obama failed because he has never been in the private sector. But he selected a VP candidate with even less private experience.

In both cases, it suggests that the GOP candidates didn't really believe one of their main attacks. If overall experience was key, you would want the next in line to also be experienced. If private sector experience is important, again you would chose the potential next-in-line to be someone with private sector experience.

Polling - I Only Read Nate

Because of Nate Silver, I never read news articles about the latest polls. Instead, I check his blog (at least twice a day) for the overall projection and read his posts about the different polls and what they mean.

And Nate Silver’s blog at the NY Times is telling us President Obama has a really good chance (77.5%) of being re-elected. If this is accurate, then it looks like I was wrong. I thought he wouldn’t be re-elected because he hasn’t done enough or even tried hard enough on the economy. I wasn’t prepared for how bad Romney’s campaign would be (see birth certificate joke, consulate attack comments, Clint Eastwood, 47%, etc). And I hadn’t realized how strong the incumbent position is - which is probably the biggest reason Obama is so strong*.

And if Obama wins, I will be very relieved. Though I don’t think the Republicans can do much long-term damage, Romney has a radical agenda and will make it a really rough 4 years for the low income and unemployed and will really affect America's ability to compete and grow businesses (ie cuts to education, infrastructure, research, etc).


*By the way, I've been meaning to comment on this. The political science blogs I have been reading (really just Monkey Cage and 538) talk about the fundamentals, including incumbency and the economy. But really the incumbency factor is very strong.

I find it a little sad though because it says that voters aren't really evaluating the candidates very much and more often making quick and simple decisions. It's not as much about politics and policy. Instead, if the economy is getting better, might as well leave the incumbent in for another 4 years. This will likely give us Obama again, which is good, but this factor also gave us Bush again in 2004. It is hard to say though whether overall it is better. Is the country better with four more years of Bush and eight years of Obama than it would have been with 4 years of Kerry and 8 years of a Republican (or 8 years of Kerry)?

Tackling the Debt

I tried this new budget debt tool - it gives you options for cutting the federal deficit over a ten year period. It is pretty user-friendly, though there are a few options that I don't fully understand (even with the explanations).

First time through I ended up with a big surplus (almost $2 trillion). My choices were pretty liberal - almost $2.5 in revenue increases for every $1 in expense cuts. I think I let the Bush tax cuts expire and then added more tax brackets at the high end. Speaking of the Bush tax cuts, this debt tool makes it clear how expensive those (unfunded) tax cuts really are. Which again reminds me of the amazing hypocrisy of the GOP's focus on the deficits and debt since they passed the tax cuts.

I didn’t raise the Medicare or SS age. And I wasn't harsh on military spending at all. It almost felt too easy. Then again, the tax increases would never fly. Unfortunately.

When I ran through it a second time, the big decisions became clearer. One of course is the taxes. The Bush tax cuts cost $4.5 trillion. Preserving just the middle income costs $3.7 trillion. And the tax reform I selected generates $1.3 trillion.

The other is the overall government spending levels. If you let government grow with the economy as I prefer, which is a growth of 5.1%, it costs you an extra $2.4 trillion. If you let it expand with inflation, which is just under 2%, it only costs $0.8 trillion. 

The bottom line is that balancing the budget over the next 10 years mostly involves just a few big decisions - how much do we want to raise in taxes, and how much do we want to spend on discretionary programs.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama said that he would take a scalpel to the budget, not a sledge hammer. It was a great talking point, except that it was vapid and ridiculous. Obama was trying to say he could balance the budget with a lot of small cuts in programs that aren't working. Knowledge of the budget and this tool show that isn't possible.

In the end, you kind of need both the scalpel and the sledge hammer. Or rather, you need a blue print and set guidelines. Then you can use whatever metaphorical tool you want. Obama's talking point was a cute way of avoiding discussing his guidelines.

At risk of overwhelming this post, I do want so say that I think the discussions of budgets are more detailed this year than in 2008. Sure Romney and Ryan are light on details, and Obama is forced into more clarity due to his position as the incumbent president, but there is more substance overall. With Romney's plan, you can see what would have to happen to achieve his goals. Compare that to Obama's scalpel and McCain's call to balance the budget by eliminating Congressional discretionary spending (ie pork) which isn't even a drop in the bucket.

Romney's Convention Speech

I didn't watch Mitt Romney's convention speech (nor will I watch President Obama's speech), but I did read the coverage of it and one line stuck out. He said:

You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.

That's not untrue. A lot of us are disappointed by President Obama. He hasn't lived up to our expectations, which he created during his campaign. His promise of bipartisanship turned into rolling over in the face of a radical Republican party. His moderation meant working on the budget deficit - not a real concern right now - instead of dealing with unemployment. I can go on, and have in previous posts.

But just like other Romney criticisms of Obama, Romney isn't the solution. If we were disappointed by the lack of "Hope and Change", Romeny won't deliver that instead. If we want someone young, energetic and forward-looking, that isn't Mitt Romney. If we want someone who can be bipartisan and move us away from the bitter partisan debates of the baby-boomers, that isn't Mitt Romney (at least not the current version of Mitt Romney)*. All the things we wanted in Obama are definitely nowhere in Mitt Romney.

This is similar to Mitt Romney's criticisms over Obama's handling of the economy. He is right that Obama hasn't done enough to fix the economy. Granted, Romney's party has stood in the way much of the time, but I agree that Obama could have done more or at least tried harder. But either way, Romney isn't the solution. What this economy needs (fiscal and monetary stimulus) Romney isn't promising.

The question is whether voters will understand this. Will they only realize their disappointment and punish Obama? Or will they realize that Romney cannot deliver what we want. Will they realize that our best bet for "Hope and Change" is to re-elect President Obama and see if he can deliver on his promise in the second term. We might be disappointed again, but at least there is a chance. And with Mitt Romney, there is no chance. 


*At this point, I doubt whether we want that. And I very much doubt that it is possible. It seems like the country is very divided along partisan lines.

Election Update: August

There was a time when I thought Obama wouldn't be re-elected. I assumed the economy was so bad that he could only win if he could explain that Republicans blocked his great plans. And he can't really say that.

But we are at the point now where polls are much better at telling us what might happen than suppositions based on generalities. I check Nate Silver's blog every day, and so I am now pretty confident that Obama can and will win (his model says Obama is a 68.7% favorite).

There are only two things that worry me. One is still the economy. If it goes south, I think Obama loses. Two, I am a little worried about the debates. There is a chance that Romney shines and Obama doesn't, and in a close race, that might matter. I think Obama is a better debater and when he makes gaffes, they are less bad than Romney's (ie $10,000), but the worrier in me thinks it could be a problem.

But putting those two things aside, I feel pretty good about the presidency. And the Senate (thanks to Akin).

Bush: More Rethinking

I wrote a post about how I was rethinking Bush in light of the major right turn of the GOP. With Bush not even part of the Republican convention, I have more thoughts / questions.

My question is why the GOP is distancing themselves from him? Yes, he was and remains unpopular. Yet the things he is unpopular for are things the GOP still stands for. Bush is unpopular because of the recession and the Iraq War. But Mitt Romney's economic policies are more of the same from Bush and show he hasn't learned anything from the Great Recessions. And his foreign policy - specifically its belligerence towards Iran - shows he didn't learn any lessons from the Iraq War.

My best guess is that the GOP is distancing themselves from Bush because people might see the connection between the GOP platform and Bush (and might even realize the GOP is even more extreme than Bush was). But this is a party that seems to laugh in the face of unpopularity. I would have expected them to highlight Bush and try to say he was right about all of those things. That would be the honest thing to do. And the decent thing to do as well.

Instead, they are humiliating someone for having the audacity to implement policies the party still supports. 

Romney: What Will He Do?

I am finding it difficult to predict what Mitt Romney will do in office if he becomes president. In the past, I have assumed that he is acting very conservative because he fears his base, so he will act that way in office. However, he has refused to take any position that might be at all unpopular. O anything that could be unpopular he is vague or silent. So this really makes me wonder what he will do in office.

It is clear that his policies, if looked at what is implied to meet his promises, are extremely conservative. It is also clear that doing what is implied would be deeply unpopular. The best example of this is his budget and the cuts that would be required to allow him to balance the budget, cut taxes, increase defense spending, and keep medicare and social security whole. To meet these goals he would have to gut all other government programs.

So will he go through with his unpopular policies or will be back down and be much more moderate? Jonathan Chait points to noise from the campaign suggesting Romney wants so bad to institute real change, even if it is deeply unpopular and causes him to have only a one-term presidency.

President Obama said the same thing and he was clearly being disingenuous. (The Romney campaign makes it sound more credible by referencing James Polk, though misrepresenting the history a bit.) And I don’t see Romney as being the one who is more willing than Obama to be unpopular.

It’s not like these are positions Romney has held dear. He has become a staunch conservative to win the nomination but as we all know he was a moderate as governor of Massachusetts.

So I am stuck. Will he actually take very unpopular steps to institute deeply conservative policies? I think Chait is right that Conservatives want to, seeing as that it is their last chance considering where the demographics are going.

It's possible that Mitt Romney doesn't even knows what he will do. Maybe he doesn't realize these policies will be deeply unpopular. Either way, I am not too worried. If the demographics are right, I don't see such far right policies saying for long. As Douthat points out in the Polk piece, the things Romney et al want to do are far in the future and easily overturned. Except for the budget cuts: though they can be reversed in short time there will be some short term damage.

2012 as 2004

This race reminds me more and more of 2004, with the party roles reversed. A rich, awkward, uninspiring candidate running as the opposite of the incumbent president (ie making the race a referendum - though it seems Romney is moving away from this).

A younger, relatively untested, more base-inspiring running-mate. The challenger is more about his biography and has only vague or unformed plans (Kerry was a real war veteran who could fix Iraq and Romney is the businessman who can save the economy).

The main difference is that Kerry wasn’t proposing to implement a far-far-left government, as Romney is.

Anyway, some splendid similarities.

Romney's New Direction

Ezra Klien has a piece on how the Romney campaign has jettisoned its three premises for the campaign:

The first was to make this a referendum, not a choice. The second was to keep it focused on the economy. The third was to bow to Obama’s essential likability by treating him as a decent guy who is simply in over his head.

He then says they have made it a choice by having Paul Ryan as the runningmate and have moved away from the economy, talking about Medicare and Welfare (with what seems to be some race whistles by the Romney campaign). And they have attacked Obama's character.

The last point I think is defensible, to be honest. I imagine the Romney campaign has seen how harsh the Obama campaign has been, and seen how voters are perceiving it - taking some of the shine off of President Obama. If Obama is less likable, the Romney campaign should be penalized less for going after him. 

What Matters to Romney?

I can’t figure out what matters to Mitt Romney - what is the thing he has been consistent on from day one - starting back in his campaign for Senate against Ted Kennedy. Something he won't move to the right on to please the base. But I can't find anything. Everything seems open to him to move far right. There is nothing moderate or even sensible - not even on business and the economy.

What finally made me realize this was his is arguing against active monetary policy and allowing gold standard talk in the GOP platform.This seems to be against the advice of his economic advisers. And as a businessman, it must be against his own good judgement. If it isn't, then his business acumen is far, far less impressive than we allow. Going back to the gold standard would be a disaster and wouldn't even lead to stable money. And a less active monetary policy would have made the recession worse and goes against Milton Friedman's teachings. 

I would understand if he was a strong business leader and was willing to cede to the right all social policies. But this isn’t the case. He is espousing far right policies in every arena. And the least sensible ideas are the in the area he knows the most about (or should) and therefore are the ones you would most expect him to understand and reject.

I just don't get it. The only explanation is that Romney just wants to be President for purely ambitious reasons and doesn't care about policy at all. 

Baseball and PEDs

The positive drug test by another MLB star has everyone talking about performance enhancing drugs (PED) again. MLB says it shows that they system is working. I don't believe that for a minute. My sense, and what I have seen in print, is that these systems are easy to get around. But I have never seen information on how, until now. This piece at Huffington Post has the following quote from Victor Conte:

"They only test the players when they’re at the ballpark," Conte explained. "Therefore, after a game, you can apply a testosterone cream or a gel or a patch, and this will peak at about four hours after you take it and be all the way back down to baseline about eight hours after. … This helps with tissue repair and healing and recovery, so they just wait until after the game and apply it … and they get the benefit of having that testosterone circulate and accelerate healing."

This is the first concrete thing I have seen about how to actually beat the system. Now, when someone says that to fail a PED drug test means you have really failed two tests, the drug test and an IQ test, I know why. Smithsonian Magazine had a decent piece before the Olympics (though they punted on the "Test Me, I'm Clean" bracelet), but it didn't give anything this specific. 

All of the performance enhancing drug incidents over the last 15-20 years have left me very cynical. I now believe that anyone who is a leader in their sport is taking performance enhancing drugs. Seriously. Close your eyes and picture someone who is the leader (or near leader), and I am assuming they are on drugs. This may not be fair, but that is just where I am at right now. 

Book Report: Grand Pursuit

I finally finished Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit. I won't do a full book review, but instead give some thoughts.

Basically, the idea of the book was a good one - mini biographies of all of the great economists / economic thinkers. Unfortunately, the execution was imperfect - the structure just didn't work. I think the author's goal was a flowing book, showing the arc of economic thinking. In this way, the book was mostly chronological, so you jump back and forth between individuals. But the chronology wasn't consistent and sometimes would move forward then go back in order to stay with one person before moving to another.

I think I would have preferred a more traditional approach of a full bio of each person in individual chapters.  Sure, this might have been more boring, but I think more useful. With individual chapters, it would have been easier to follow the arc of the person and retain more about them. 

Also, the book gave more biographical detail than was necessary. It is hard to pinpoint exactly, but there are descriptions that could have been done in a couple paragraphs that took many pages instead. And in doing this, I think she spent a little less time on their theories. 

The book covered Keynes and Freeman, Hayek and Schumpeter, Marx and Engels, Marshall, Fisher, and Samuelson, and my favorite, Amartya Sen. But it also included Beatrice and Sydney Webb and Joan Robinson, two that I didn't find necessary.

Though I found the book too long on biography and too short on theory, I will reference it in the future, if only to then do more research on the individuals.

On Paul Ryan

So Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. I will discuss two aspects of this: what this means for the race, and what I think of the person of Paul Ryan.

First, I don't share the same glee that many Democrats do - though it doesn't make me nervous either. Instead, I feel this does nothing great and nothing bad for the election. Although I do think Ryan is extreme, I think that is hard to show to the average voter. Ryan seems reasonable enough, and the things he says, though disingenusous, also seem reasonable. He says he is for equality of opportunity. He wants to preserve Medicare while Obama will let it die. He wants to balance the budget.

Of course, any smart person can look at his actual plans and see something very different - that he is actually for large tax cuts for the rich, can't possibly balance the budget, and wants to save Medicare by making seniors pay more. But reaching and convincing large numbers of voters of this is difficult. It is much more difficult than showing them that Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, for some examples, are extreme and dangerous (which is why none of them were likely VP picks).

Having said all of that, I still think Democrats should try to convince voters that Ryan is extreme, because he is. But I don't think it will be easy and I don't think it will make the election. It might help turnout among informed liberals, but won't make much difference among independents.

On the flip side, I don't think it does a lot for Romney on the electoral college front. I generally trust / believe Nate Silver, who says that there were better picks from an electoral college perspective. But Ryan will help Romney with conservatives, help he needs, just like John McCain needed help. And like I said, I don't think it will hurt him much with independents.

Now, what do I think of Paul Ryan as a politician? I think he is more brave and more policy focused than many others, but less so than the press gives him credit for. And though he does propose policy, he is very often political and very often disingenuous.

Take his most recent budget for example. He says he can balance the budget and cut taxes (popular) without being specific at all about where the cuts (unpopular) will come from and he makes it sound like the cuts will be easy and painless instead of acknowledging honestly how large the cuts will have to be in order to meet his targets. 

Mitt Romney's plan, which Ryan has now signed onto, is even worse on this front and specifically so on tax breaks. It proposes cutting taxes while also cutting deductions, in theory leaving the overall share of taxes across incomes the same. However, it doesn't say which deductions will be cut. Nor does the math add up.

So overall, Ryan isn't adding much substance or honesty to Romney. They both are making budget claims that are extreme, vague, and hard to believe. 

On the political side, he is willing to give a speech accusing Obama of believing in equality of outcome, which is completely untrue. A man as smart and unpolitical as the press thinks he is would not say such a thing.

To conclude, Romney added someone to the ticket that will help him turnout conservatives and might also help turnout some liberals, but otherwise doesn't change much. And it is a person that I find far less wonkish and honest than many in the press - someone with an extreme and unpopular vision who is vague on all the unpopular parts of his plans.

Both Right and Both Wrong

Both candidates gave speeches on the economy a few weeks back, and I think they were both right, which is unfortunate for the country.

Romney is right that Obama’s policies haven’t improved the economy enough. Granted, Republicans have stood in the way of the few things Obama has proposed. But what he proposed was relatively modest and he has barely made the case that unemployment is our biggest problem and that his proposals are big enough to handle it. 

On the flip side, Obama is right that Romney’s policies won’t help the short term problem of high unemployment. More importantly, his policies are a return to those of George W. Bush. And remember, even without considering the crash (which was the result of ultra-free market policies of Clinton and Bush), Bush's economic record is one of very slow growth.

In other words, if Obama is elected and Republicans control at least one chamber, we are looking at the status quo - Obama paying limited attention to unemployment and having his small proposals blocked. But if Romney is elected, he'll let loose the free market, which won't improve short term growth or put us on a path to high medium term growth, but will lead to more risk and possibly more bail outs.

This is why we need Bernake and the Fed to act like the grownups and get us out of this. Unfortunately, they don't see an urgency or any serious problems.

Romney and Bain: More Thoughts

This is a post I drafted a month or so ago. Ezra Klein has written much better posts on this topic, but I still want to post my thoughts for posterity. 

The debate around Mitt Romney's time at Bain and how it qualifies him for president continues and I have some more thoughts.

First, his time at Bain is definitely fair game since that seems to be the only thing he talks about that qualifies him for president. Romney is saying that because of his time at Bain Capital, he knows how businesses work and he knows what it will take to get the economy going again.

To be clear, I don't actually think that is true. The economy is a huge complicated system and especially during a major recession the focus should be on macroeconomics instead of microeconomics. So if we wanted the best person for the economy, we would elect a macro-economist instead of a businessman.

I understand many people might not agree with that though. So let's think about what knowing about businesses would help Romney do? I agree with President Obama that by knowing only about businesses, Romney will miss all of the other important constituencies that a president needs to think about.

For example, Romney might have learned that regulations get in the way of business. In fact, that does seem to be something he believes strongly. But by only seeing things from the business's perspective means he wouldn't understand why the regulations are necessary. Lots of businesses would rather there weren't anti-pollution regulations or safe workplace regulations, but they protect lots of people and compensate for major and known negative externalities.

Also, Romney might have learned that taxes are bad for businesses. Again, this is something Romney has said. But only thinking about the business would mean he doesn't understand why taxes are necessary - he might be blind to all of the necessary services that tax revenues support from education and transportation to health and security.

My point is that Romney's experience at Bain isn't particularly helpful for a president because of how limiting it is. Better experience would be if Romney had been a state governor. If he had been, he might have seen how important things like healthcare are and might have proposed legislation that could extend coverage and might be a national model. And if he had done that, he could talk about it and show how he cares about helping everyone.

But based on the way Romney is campaigning, it seems like he hasn't done that and it seems that his only experience is at Bain Capital.

American Lion or Lamb?

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by John Meacham

When I was on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, I saw a pair of paintings of presidents playing cards. One is of Republican presidents and the other Democratic presidents, and both feature the ostensible founder of the party - back to the painting - playing with the modern presidents in that party. So the Republican painting has Abraham Lincoln playing with Teddy Roosevelt, Nixon, Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. The Democrat painting has Andrew Jackson playing with Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton.

On first look, it poses what might be an interesting question: what would it be like if the modern presidents were able to talk with the founder of their party? But on thinking a little more, the real question is whether the current presidents have anything in common with their founder?


Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic party, initiated the Native American removal policy - forcibly sending Native Americans west of the Mississippi - ended the Second Bank of the United States, prevented state nullification of federal laws but supported slavery and states rights generally. And he was ostensibly a war hero, having fought the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

He was also a populist - the first frontiersman elected president - and very popular among the general population. He greatly expanded the presidency, exercising the veto much more often and setting an agenda independent of Congress.

John Meacham's book, American Lion, focuses on Jackson's White House years, and therefore only gives us the briefest overview of his early life and elections. We learn a little about his fights and duels, the battle of New Orleans, his wife and her passing, the failed election where John Quincy Adams won in the House of Representatives, and his election in 1828 and the creation of the Democratic Party.

Then we are taken through his presidency in some more detail. Meacham shows us the controversy over his Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, which divides his supporters. And in fact, this one of the great weaknesses of this book (which inexplicably won the Pulitzer Prize). Meacham spends far more time on the gossip and familial / staff battles over Secretary Eaton than he does on other far more important topics. Having said that, he does seem to cover the issue fairly; neither side looks very good. Eaton's wife does come off as unpleasant but the others look uptight and elitist.

Meacham covers all of the major issues of the presidency: nullification and the tariff, Native American Removal, the ending of the Second Bank's charter, the dispute between America and France over war debt.  But in some cases he is too brief (Native American Removal and the tariff) but in all cases he spends less time on them than he does the Eaton affair.

But worse than that is the lack of objectivity in this book. Meacham spends countless paragraphs telling the reader that Jackson was a great leader and his men and the public generally loved him and trusted him to save them. The author would have benefited from more show and less tell.

And on the other side, he glosses over major areas of concern. He doesn't talk at all about the impact of the closing of the Second Bank of the United States. Once it is ended, it is of no importance to the author. There is only a quick sentence at the end of the book that some think its closing caused a major recession. The reader would have benefited from a discussion and analysis of the impact.

The same is true of Native American removal. He talks about why Jackson did it but is too fair. And then barely talks about the mass suffering and deaths from the actual implementation. He quickly blames it on Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren who was president when it actually happened. Is it fair to blame it on Van Buren? Did Jackson have a safer plan that Van Buren didn't implement? Again, the reader would have benefited from more discussion of this.

The author might argue that the book is only about the White House years. But both of these things happened in the White House years and their longer-term impacts should be discussed.

Overall, the book is a pretty fast read. It might be fine for someone who just wants a quick overview of Jackson's presidency (which is what I was looking for). However, if you have a little more time, reading one of the other bios is probably worth it. I plan to read HW Brand's book sometime in the future to get a much better understanding of Andrew Jackson. 


So what would the 20th Century Democratic presidents think of their party's founder? Or what should liberals and progressives think of Andrew Jackson? Native American removal is a stain on our history. And Jackson was very wrong on the issue of slavery at a time when the abolition movement was growing. There isn't enough information to make any decision about the Second Bank of the US.

And yet he handled nullification in a way that avoided - or as we know only delayed - secession and civil war. And he expanded the president's powers in a way that makes perfect sense by making it co-equal with Congress. I think we can recognize the scale of his impact but say his policies were not progressive and therefore not positive. I think the modern Democratic presidents would agree. That doesn't mean it would be an unpleasant card game though.