About this item
Highlights
- Is Barack Obama the last liberal president?
- Author(s): Charles R Kesler
- 304 Pages
- Political Science, Political Ideologies
Description
About the Book
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.Book Synopsis
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.From the Back Cover
Who is Barack Obama? Even after his reelection, many Americans wonder what he really believes. Charles R. Kesler argues that both liberals and conservatives underestimate the scope of Obama's political ambition and the long-term stakes for which he is playing.
I Am the Change tries to understand Obama as he understands himself, based largely on his own writings, speeches, and interviews. Kesler, a leading conservative scholar, educator, and journalist, takes Obama seriously as an intelligent and thoughtful progressive who is intent on reinvigorating the liberal faith and leading it to a new political preeminence--but who fails to understand the contradictions and crises, both fiscal and philosophical, toward which he is rushing.
Will Obama save liberalism and become its fourth great incarnation, following Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson? Or will the movement be derailed by his very successes? These are the questions at the heart of Kesler's indispensable guide to the past, and the future, of American liberalism.
Review Quotes
"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