The Obama Syndrome
Surrender at Home, War Abroad
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Written early in 2010 and initially published in September 2010, The Obama Syndrome predicted the Obama administration’s historic midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the “reform” president’s lack of firm resolve, Ali’s critique located the problem in Obama’s notion of reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and his economic team brought the architects of the financial crisis into the White House. Small wonder then that the “War on Terror”—torture in Bagram, occupation in Iraq, appeasement in Israel, and escalation in Pakistan—continues. And that Wall Street and the country’s biggest corporations have all profited at the expense of America’s working class and poor.
Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below—US politics is permanently mired in moderate Republicanism. Already called “a comprehensive account” of the problems with Obama (The Huffington Post), this new edition is sure to provide a more “powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this slim but provocative volume, leftist writer and filmmaker Ali takes President Barack Obama to task for his first 18 months in office, arguing that despite the president's rhetoric of change, little distinguishes his administration from the Bush-Cheney White House. Ali's condemnation of Obama is sweeping, extending from foreign policy and the war on terror to financial, health care, and education reform on the domestic front. In prose that is crisp and inflammatory, and at times laden with sarcasm, Ali effectively makes the case that Obama has thus far fallen short of many of his campaign promises. Where the author treads on thinner ice is his assertion that Obama's intent has never been to implement reform. Far from being a progressive, Ali alleges, Obama is a "skillful and gifted machine politician" who uses "sonorous banality" and "armor-plated hypocrisy" to achieve his "imperial" aims. Ali's incendiary language may be off-putting to some readers, and Obama supporters may find the book vexing, if not outright deflating, but there is no doubting Ali's gifts as a polemicist, or the book's potential to rouse controversy in the run-up to the midterm elections.
