I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism

by Charles R. Kesler

Overview

Is Barack Obama the last liberal president? In I Am the Change, Charles Kesler, a leading conservative scholar, educator, and journalist, offers a sophisticated analysis of the president’s political thought, based on Obama’s own words and writings, to demonstrate that he represents either a new birth of liberalism…or its demise. Kesler’s writing is a potent mixture of philosophy, journalism, psychology, and history—seasoned with a delightful, razor-sharp wit—as he takes a greatly underestimated chief executive seriously and explores American liberalism in crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062072962
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/11/2012
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Charles R. Kesler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and the editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, and the coeditor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought.

What People are Saying About This

Ramesh Ponnuru

“Kesler is the reader for whom Obama has long been asking, in the sense of ‘asking for it’, and this book is the examination of the One we’ve been waiting for.”

George Will

“Obama has earned what he now receives, the tribute of a serious intellectual exegesis by a distinguished political philosopher.”

Editorial Reviews

While recalling the wildly inflated expectations that greeted President Barack Obama’s 2008 election, conservative scholar Kesler argues that “fundamental political change”—through the building of a permanent Democratic majority and the “effective disappearance of conservatives”—is still the agenda of Obama’s self-aggrandizing and messianic mission. According to Kesler, liberalism is a big-government and antibusiness bogeyman with totalitarian bent and the antithesis to an American conservatism that resists “the European model of social democracy” and “Keynesian magic.” In dissecting liberalism’s misguidedness, Kesler returns to its modern roots, beginning with Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism. Obama, he suggests, is in a direct line with a “top down” radical reform agenda—never mind the rhetoric about the grassroots—Obamacare being a particularly glaring instance of “the modern liberal state” in action. But a century of liberalism has bred a philosophical and fiscal crisis that now dooms it to obsolesce or dangerous fascistic transformation. The author’s argument raises important red flags concerning state power generally (although such excesses can hardly be laid exclusively at the feet of liberals), yet loses urgency by being alternately alarmist and dismissive concerning the menace of liberalism. A familiar critique from the right. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Politically timely and of permanent importance to the study of the American mind. A serious but accessible study of the thinking underpinning the modern liberal project…This is a title - and an author - with a long shelf life and much to teach.” — Washington Times

“Drawing on his wide reading in philosophy and American political thought, Mr. Kesler argues that Mr. Obama has been shaped by the political tradition of Progressivism and that his 2008 triumph has helped, in turn, to reshape it.” — Wall Street Journal

“Obama has earned what he now receives, the tribute of a serious intellectual exegesis by a distinguished political philosopher.” — George Will, Washington Post

“Kesler is the reader for whom Obama has long been asking, in the sense of ‘asking for it’, and this book is the examination of the One we’ve been waiting for.” — Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review

From the Publisher

Politically timely and of permanent importance to the study of the American mind. A serious but accessible study of the thinking underpinning the modern liberal project…This is a title - and an author - with a long shelf life and much to teach.

Washington Times

Obama has earned what he now receives, the tribute of a serious intellectual exegesis by a distinguished political philosopher.

George Will

Drawing on his wide reading in philosophy and American political thought, Mr. Kesler argues that Mr. Obama has been shaped by the political tradition of Progressivism and that his 2008 triumph has helped, in turn, to reshape it.

Wall Street Journal

Kesler is the reader for whom Obama has long been asking, in the sense of ‘asking for it’, and this book is the examination of the One we’ve been waiting for.

Ramesh Ponnuru

Drawing on his wide reading in philosophy and American political thought, Mr. Kesler argues that Mr. Obama has been shaped by the political tradition of Progressivism and that his 2008 triumph has helped, in turn, to reshape it.

Wall Street Journal

A conservative scholar argues that Barack Obama's presidency represents the hidden decline of liberalism. Avoiding the vitriol of many right-wing critiques, Kesler (Government/Claremont McKenna Coll.) regards Obama as a figure who will transform liberalism terminally, by calling most of its assumptions into question. Much of his critique seems semantic in nature: referring to "the famous monosyllables, hope and change," he acidly asserts, "judging by his record as president they are likely to remain his most renowned utterances." However, much of the narrative looks away from the current political landscape and at the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson ("a genuine democrat who kept his leadership theory firmly grounded in Progressive democracy"), Franklin Roosevelt ("Never one to let an emergency go to waste"), and Lyndon Johnson ("The Great Society…ended with a bang, followed by the long whimper of white liberal guilt"). Kesler peruses their historical narratives and political philosophies for some clue as to how these ambitious individuals' idealism could lead to his nightmare vision of Obama as steward of a vast, grasping and nonfunctioning government. Regarding Obama himself, the author attempts nuance in his harsh assessment. "As Obama's grappling shows," he writes, "intelligent and morally sensitive liberals may try to suppress or internalize the problem of relativism but it cannot be ignored or forgotten." Kesler adeptly wields secondary sources as well as Obama's own books and speeches (and those of the earlier presidents), but his own key assertions can be less comprehensible: "Avant-garde liberalism used to be about progress; now it's about nothingness." The author is undoubtedly erudite, but he seems to subscribe, cynically, to the post-1960s conservative view of progressive accomplishments as merely a sort of incomprehensible outgrowth of white guilt and to see no value in the presence of the post-1930s social safety net. Will provide argumentative intellectual ammunition for conservative book-buyers dissatisfied with the last four years.

Kirkus Reviews