Table of Contents

Preface


Introduction


Chapter One - Obama

1. The Content of His Character

2. The Orbit of His Presidency


Chapter Two - Governance: The Obama Administration

1. The Obama Style

2. President and Congress

3. Cabinet and Staff

4. The Bureaucracy

5. Politics and Principle


Chapter Three - Governance: the American State

1. The Regulatory State

2. The Judicial Battleground

3. Federalism


Chapter Four - Rough Waters: Finance and the Economy
1. The Economy and the Polity

2. Fixing Finance: TARP and Dodd-Frank

3. The Trial of Jobs

4. Debt and Taxes
Chapter Five: Home Fires Burning: Social Policy

1. Obamacare: A Noble Experiment

2. Climate, Energy, and Transportation

3. Muffled Fire Bells: Education and Immigration


Chapter Six - Living in the World

1. Foreign Affairs

2. The US and the EC: Comparative Perspectives


Chapter Seven - The 2012 Overture

1. Setting the Stage: The Political Culture

2. Advocacy, Money, and the Media

3. Ideology


Chapter Eight - 2012

1. The Contest

2. Examining the Entrails


Chapter Nine - Looking Ahead

1. Into the Second Term: Governing

2. Into the Second Term: Politics

3. Status and State

4. History's Lessons

About the Author

Morton Keller is Spector Professor of History emeritus at Brandeis. He has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Oxford. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. Among his books are Affairs of State and America's Three Regimes.

Reviews

"Morton Keller is one of the most accomplished historians of our time...A historian true to his discipline, he argues, possesses the tools to check partisan impulses and provide a measure of impartiality. The book's subtitle, A History, is intended to convey more than one might think."

--laremont Review of Books
"Writing the first draft of history would be a challenging task for any scholar, but there is probably no living historian better equipped to rise to the occasion than Morton Keller. In Obama's Time: A History, Dr. Keller meticulously sorts through the wildly divergent opinions surrounding the Obama presidency and synthesizes them with broader political and cultural trends to create a coherent narrative... Partisans on both sides will grind their teeth
at the frequent nods to the other side, but for anyone seeking a sober assessment of the past six years, this book is an absolute must-read." --Sean Trende, Senior Elections Analyst, RealClearPolitics
"A gracefully written comprehensive survey of American politics during the Obama era. More systematic than journalistic accounts already published and less specialized than academic studies yet to come, it occupies a unique niche and will be of broad interest to lay readers and specialists alike." --Morris Fiorina, Wendt Family Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
"This analysis of Barack Obama's first term reflects the broad vision and deep learning of one of the Wise Men of American political history. Morton Keller fluently details the tempestuous partisan controversies of the President's first four years while establishing a larger perspective that lays bare the ideological and institutional deadlock of our democracy." --Alonzo L. Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History, Ohio University