From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House
Robert Reich’s book Coming Up Short may not call your name like a thriller or a romance would but it’s very readable. The book is a sort of a memoir, but it is also an insider’s view of American politics, law, economics, and personalities over the past 60 years.
Robert Reich recently turned 80, making him a contemporary of many famous politicians. He knew Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham before they married. He went to school with Clarence Thomas who he describes as rather aloof and unfriendly, or at least self-contained. He served as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is intimately familiar with the complexities of our government, the wheeling and dealing, the policy switches as one party gains or loses power and a party with a different ideology takes over, the extent to which our government is awash in money and it’s influences, and how the Supreme Court has allowed money to have even greater influence.
Robert Reich believes that democracy is the best form of government, that the economy works better when there is greater equality, and that governments should care about the “common good.” Even if you are a conservative and you don’t agree with Reich, it’s important that you hear what this insider has to say. He was there. What he lacks in stature he makes up for in intelligence.
Today Robert Reich is better known as Professor Reich, although he just recently retired. He learned many things about how our government works and has many thoughts about how it should work, but what also comes across is his love of teaching and his hopes for higher education, that it be more accessible, rather than less accessible.
Since I am the same age (and the same height, although not as difficult for a female) I lived through these same events as a government outsider. I did not attend an Ivy League school, but SUNY Potsdam offered great courses and professors. I did not know any important people personally but the names and key words in the index are all familiar to me. I eventually became an assistant professor at SUNY, and I understand why Professor Reich loved teaching and why retiring is so difficult. His book resonates.
Secretary Reich/Professor Reich leaves us with these remarks:
“[I] think I and my generation–including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W Bush, Donald Trump, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich and Clarence Thomas–did not make a better world. We failed to stop the bullies. Some of us contributed to the brutality. Others I’ve known and mentioned in these pages have played the long game admirably, but compared to what needed to be done, compared to what could and should have been done, they have also failed.” (pg. 349)
“But the stark reality–as I have traced it in these pages and lived it over the past seventy-eight years–is that the richest and most powerful nation in modern history, the America that emerged victorious from World War II and whose democracy was a beacon for much of the rest of the world, is now coming up short. Trump and Trumpism are consequences, not causes. As I hope I’ve made clear, the causes have been growing for more than forty years. We could have addressed them. We did not.” (pg. 349)
I will say that I don’t place quite as much blame on our past leaders as Professor Reich. I believe many politicians believed that the presence of two opposing political ideologies that had to compromise to govern was a positive force in our democracy. Until recently, perhaps with the advent of the Tea Party, I’m not sure anyone realized how angry conservatives, evangelicals, Catholics, and billionaires were at liberals. I’m not sure we believed in our wildest dreams that Republicans would plan and execute a coup to grab the steering wheel and takeover the government. My reading suggests that many believe that whether the coup succeeds or not depends on the results of the midterm elections in 2026. We fear that whether the election is free and fair or not, the outcome will not reflect the actual votes.
In the end Professor Reich says:
“The responsibility to remedy this–to restore genuine opportunity, strengthen democracy and contain the bullies–now falls to those who come after us.” (pg. 350)
Read the book. It could be existential.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 