There's an old saying that where you stand depends on where you sit. Perhaps a corollary for journalists should be that what you report depends on where you report. Jonathan Alter has written a great account of the successes and failures of Obama's first year in office, but I wonder what his account might look like if he had spent the year around Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Given Obama's general deference to Congress on most important legislation, one could argue that the really important story of 2009 was at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, especially when it comes to healthcare reform. Obama, of course, played a key role in setting general priorities, but actually turning these into actual legislation fell on Pelosi's and Reid's shoulders. To use a historical analogy, FDR obviously played a key role in World War II, but if you really want to understand how the Allies won in Western Europe, you would be better served by focusing on Ike.

This post is part of TPM's book club discussion of Jonathan Alter's new book, The Promise.

Hi Jonathan,

The Promise is a thorough book with many topics that are probably familiar (and interesting) to TPM readers. I want to hone in on the foreign policy sections, partly because it's an element of Obama's record that is often covered inadequately -- as you point out in the book.

Put aside rhetoric, and Obama literally prioritized international engagement on his first year schedule more than any President in history:

"In 2009 he made ten foreign trips to twenty one nations (four of them twice). The next most frequent foreign traveler was George H.W. Bush, who visited fourteen countries in 1989."

This high-level engagement, the book reports, was key to Obama's top "foreign policy priorities" of mending relations with the Muslim world and securing nuclear warheads. (I took this description to connote new, proactive priorities, beyond the ongoing tasks of counterterror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

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Jonathan Alter's book is fascinating to read and raises lots of questions. One that I have stems from his prelude of sorts, where he looks at how Obama responded to the market collapse of September 2008 and suggests that Obama's coolness and gravitas during the crisis assured his election. In fact, Alter creates an air of inevitability around Obama's election, writing:

"The Obama administration wouldn't occupy the White House for another four months. But what the Chinese for centuries have called the 'mandate of heaven'--the legitimacy mysteriously but unmistakably bestowed upon a leader--had shifted. Barack Obama's first year in power had already begun."

The rest of the book pivots off this moment, explaining the difficulty Obama has faced in living up to this mandate, so I think it's important to question this a bit further. Was there really a mandate, heavenly or otherwise? Alter supports his claim by pointing out that Obama won the election "by the widest margin of any Democrat in nearly a half century." Actually, Obama won by a margin of just under 7 points (53-46), but Bill Clinton won by nearly 9 points in 1996.

Even if Obama's margin had been larger than Clinton's, his victory was not overwhelming. Various analyses of the election results suggest that given the state of the economy and the widespread unpopularity of George W. Bush, Obama may have in fact underperformed, perhaps because of his race. Indeed, among white voters, Obama lost in a landslide, 43 to 57. Additionally, large numbers of white Americans not only didn't vote for Obama, but questioned the legitimacy of his policies, his election, and even his qualification as a citizen to hold the office of president.

Given these facts, perhaps the only inevitable thing about Obama's first year is not some heavenly mandate, but that any successes would be difficult and costly.

In response to Jonathan Alter's first query: "What did you learn about his (Obama's) approach to the economy, health care, Afghanistan or the media in 2009 that informs how we might view his performance in 2010 and beyond?"

I would say that if the President is smart, he will change his approach of 2009 rather dramatically, especially in the areas of the economy and Afghanistan. It is perhaps understandable that a young President might defer to the expertise of the Democratic establishment in his first days in office. Clearly the views of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Richard Holbrooke carried a lot of weight in early 2009 when critical decisions were being made about the economy and Afghanistan. But this was not the "Change" candidate we voted for in November of 2008. It is now clear that the Establishment wisdom was wrong on both the economy and Afghanistan. The Big Banks continue to pay out obscene bonuses despite the government bailout and the Afghanistan surge shows no signs of progress.

If Obama has shown us anything, it is that he remains a pragmatist. He already seems to have decided that Paul Volker's advice is more sound in the economic arena and if he sticks to his promise of withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011, he should be able to go into the 2012 election reclaiming the mantle of change you can believe in.

I'm intrigued that Jonathan Alter expected Obama to ace communications and struggle in executive leadership. After observing Obama and his team during the 2008 campaign, I would have expected the opposite. Obama can be a gifted orator (though to be truthful, his speeches since early 2008 have been underwhelming) but my overriding impression of his 2008 campaign was its organizational consistency and efficiency--No Drama Obama, if you will. Obama and his campaign team displayed three important aspects of executive leadership:

1. Have a plan and stick to it.
2. Keep focused on long term goals.
3. Be ready to adjust your plans and goals as conditions require.

Given this, Obama's first year in office has worked out pretty much as I would have expected, light on the internal drama but big on actual accomplishments. As for 2010, my guess is that we'll see more of the same. In part because this pattern is pretty well established by the President and his closest advisors, but also because the Obama people probably know that their ability to manipulate short term political factors is extremely limited and that doing so might come at the cost of their long term political goals and fortunes.

In THE PROMISE, I tried to report the back story of the historic events of 2009, but I was also deeply interested in questions of temperament and political character. I aimed to give readers enough information about Obama the man and how he makes decisions for them to assess in a more sophisticated way how he handles events like the oil spill that arose after my book was completed.

So my first question for those of you kind enough to join this discussion is a simply one: What did you learn about his approach to the economy, health care, Afghanistan or the media in 2009 that informs how we might view his performance in 2010 and beyond?

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This week at Cafe, senior Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter joins us for a discussion of his book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One. Alter has chronicled Obama's first 14 months in office, and, in his own words:

I tried to report the back story of the historic events of 2009, but I was also deeply interested in questions of temperament and political character.

Given the media fixation on Obama's temparement in response to the catastrophic BP oil spill, this is bound to be an interesting discussion. Our contributors this week are The Nation columnist Ari Melber, who has a new piece out about solving Obama's press problem; Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College; and Jon Taplin, Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and Cafe regular. More will be joining us throughout the week -- enjoy!

I'm a writer who at times likes to think of himself as an intellectual, and certainly I'm someone who's interested in intellectual history and past highbrow political arguments. And my own book about American foreign policy deals a fair amount with that sort of material. But since the time of writing, I've come to think I paid too much attention to the history of ideas and debates and too little to basic structural issues. The Icarus Syndrome, it seems to me, tilts in the other direction -- presenting the history of smart people arguing about American foreign policy as if it was the key driver of actual policy.

That seems to me to be fairly wrongheaded. Take, for example, the Carter-Reagan contrast that Peter mentions in his introductory post. It seems to me that the further we get from this period historically the more it will look like a time in which the fate of the superpowers was rocked by oil price swings beyond their control. With the United States the heaviest oil consumer in the world and the USSR a major oil producer, a high-price era like Jimmy Carter's administration makes the U.S. look weak whereas a period of falling prices such as Reagan presided over restored our confidence while shaking the Soviet economy.

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The Icarus Syndrome is an argument wrapped around three stories. The argument is that success breeds disaster. The process plays itself out this way: A group of foreign policy thinkers and actors hit upon a strategy for dealing with some immediate, finite problem. The strategy succeeds, at least in their eyes, so they grow more confident in it. Confronted by some new challenge, they reason by analogy: this strategy worked before, so it will work again. But although they think they're on a treadmill, they are actually on a ladder--broadening ideas beyond their original context, taking on more risk, becoming less sensitive to America's fallibility and their own.

The first story is about the war progressives--Woodrow Wilson, Walter Lippmann, John Dewey--who made their success in rationalizing American politics a template for rationalizing world politics. At home, they believed they were turning politics from a clash of selfish, arbitary power--industry versus labor, in particular--into a sphere of reason and law. Independent experts would investigate problems and promulgate answers that appealed to the broader, common interests that all Americans shared. Thus, reason would conquer force, and domestic conflict would give way to what Colonel House called "a scientific peace." That became their vision for the world America would help create after World War I, a world community operating by certain common, scientific rules rather than a jungle in which nations divided into rival alliances. That vision blinded Wilson to the reality that any postwar world order needed to rest on a balance of power in which the US, Britain and France joined together to restrain German power.

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This week at Cafe, Daily Beast and Time contributor Peter Beinart joins us for a discussion of his new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.

Please welcome Peter and his fellow participants -- Matt Yglesias, who once blogged at Cafe and is now at Think Progress; Jeremi Suri, E. Gordon Fox Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Henry Kissinger and the American Century, among other books; and our very own Josh Marshall.

Enjoy the discussion!

My thanks to Jonathan Alter for joining what is becoming a mutual admiration society. Jon understands the Roosevelt-Obama analogy better than anyone--not only by virtue of his vivid, excellent (and presidentially approved) book on FDR's Hundred Days, but also his upcoming book on Obama's first year, which I'm eager to read. That analogy, as Jon has made clear in his columns and commentary, is sometimes apt and illuminating, but can also be lazy or just plain unfair. (If you were Barack Obama, would you want to be constantly compared and contrasted to the greatest president since Lincoln?)

As Jon suggests, the idea that only liberal justices can be "activists"--a right-wing conceit that is at least tacitly accepted by most commentators--should have been put to rest in the 1930s along with the doctrine of liberty of contract.

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Jeff and Barry differ over whether the sparks that have flared up this year between President Obama and the Roberts Court signals the start of a reprise of 1937, or a one-off episode of political theatre that will amount to nothing. Barry seems fairly confident that "the experience of 1937 will prove invaluable in preventing a replay." Jeff seems to believe that "like the Four Horsemen of the Hughes Court, today's conservative justices relish conflict, delight in provocation, and show little self-restraint." Ergo, the gloves are off.

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I'm going to repair to the "amen corner" on the quality of Jeff Shesol's new book. He captures the political climate of the late 1930s brilliantly and by revising conventional wisdom about "the court-packing scheme" (a lazy shorthand that we'd now call a meme) he brings into question all the unthinking political assumptions of our own day.

The court-packing scheme meme of our era, in a legal context, is that liberals favor "activist judges" and conservatives favor "strict constructionism" and oppose "legislating from the bench." Cases like Bush vs. Gore and Citizens United should finally obliterate those canards, though it is up to bloggers, commentators and readers of all stripes to bury them for good. These misperceptions have no intellect content and are easily refuted but must be confronted 10,000 times in 10,000 venues for them to be properly consigned to history's dustbin. The same goes for exposing Roberts (with his bogus claim in his confirmation hearings to only be interested in "calling balls and strikes") and especially Scalia, whose "originalism" is shot through with hypocrisy, gaping logical holes (he cannot both support Brown v. Board of Education and be an originalist) and displays of showy wit that have been routinely and appallingly confused with intellectual distinction.

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I'm happy to engage in a little counterfactual activity. Not between the covers of my book, but here in this public forum.

In retrospect, it seems reasonably clear that FDR did jump the gun. As you point out, Barry, the "switch," in a meaningful sense, predated Roosevelt's Court-packing proposal. Owen Roberts voted with the liberals to uphold the minimum wage in Parrish in December 1936--nearly two months before the launch of the plan--though the vote was taken in conference, and not publicly revealed until late March 1937. To the extent that Roberts' position was affected by external events--and it's very hard to avoid that conclusion--the events in question were most likely, first, the fierce public reaction to Tipaldo and, second, the results of the 1936 election, just as you suggest. And once Roberts had joined with the liberals on the minimum wage, it's hard to believe that even absent the Court-packing bill, he would have abandoned them less two weeks later on the Wagner Act, in a far more significant set of decisions.

So if FDR had held his fire, he might still have won the war.

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Dahlia, many thanks for your generous words--and for your excellent question, which has to have occurred to our president from time to time, especially in recent months. Should he say more--should he say anything at all--about his understanding of the Constitution, and about the role of judges? He's got to have some pretty well-formed views, and it's not just Court-watchers like you who'd like to know what they are.

It's a paradox: here we've got a former constitutional law professor as president, but beyond a few sharp words in the State of the Union address, and a comment yesterday about a woman's right to "bodily integrity," he's had far less to say than his critics (and some of his supporters) about the meaning of the Constitution as it applies to key questions of national policy. No doubt he's got plenty to say on the subject. No doubt he's unwilling to cede the argument to a group of attorneys general busily climbing over one another, elbows flailing, legal briefs waving, to get in front of a Fox News camera and mouth pieties like "liberty." So what's holding the professor back?

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I could not be more thrilled to be here celebrating and discussing Jeff Shesol's terrific book. I was lucky to meet Jeff after he reviewed my own recent book on the Supreme Court and its accountability to public opinion, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution. The New Deal fight plays a central role in my book, and I thought I knew a lot about it. But Jeff has taught me a great deal more. I found Supreme Power to be a page-turner, full of fascinating detail and beautifully-written. I'm jealous - in the best of ways!

I want to take a stab at one question Jeff asks, and use it to answer another question many are asking today. Jeff explains his book as a mystery: did the ordinarily savvy politician who was FDR take a leave from his senses in the spring of 1937? Was the Court plan ill-fated from the start, and a colossally bad idea? In Supreme Power, Jeff does a terrific job of contextualizing what happened so that the events of 1937 all make apparent sense. And still, I was left wondering -- had FDR nonetheless jumped the gun?

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I have said it before but will say it again, I love, love, love Supreme Power. It's not just that it's riveting history, beautifully rendered. It's that it offers up such a rich context and frame for the conversation we are having right this very minute over the Roberts Court, the newly vacant Stevens seat, and the President's recent rumblings about the court's campaign finance decision in Citizens United.

One of the things that fascinates me about the parallels between Roosevelt's frustration with the "nine old men" of the Supreme Court under Charles Evans Hughes, and the way Obama has recently spoken of the Roberts Court, is that Roosevelt was so willing to talk boldly about his constitutional vision for the country. Here was FDR, this mediocre law student and evidently rather indifferent lawyer, unloading 90 minute extemporaneous speeches from his desk about the need for an evolving constitution as the press took dictation. And here we have President Obama, a constitutional law professor and president of the Harvard Law Review, who can speak so cautiously about judges and constitutionalism, you'd think he was talking about cosmetic dentistry.

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I'd like to thank TPMCafé for inviting me and this impressive group of writers and thinkers to discuss my new book, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court. In this initial post I'll say a few words about what drew me to the topic of FDR's Court-packing fight and I'll set out the key themes of the book. Then I'll pose a few questions about the 1930s that we might address in light of recent events--among them, President Obama's attacks on the Citizens United decision, Chief Justice Roberts' response, the constitutional crusade against the health care act, and the impending nomination of a replacement for Justice Stevens.

I decided to write about the Court fight because it seemed so completely at odds with everything I knew (or thought I knew) about Franklin Roosevelt. There's a standard narrative, and it goes something like this. First, there's the FDR we all know (and many of us admire)--the FDR who dispelled "fear itself," passed the New Deal, and saved democracy in America. Then he wins re-election by a landslide and is transformed overnight into Mr. Hyde. Overcome by arrogance and hubris, he seeks vengeance on the Court by trying to pack it with liberals. Then, having failed in that, he reverts to the FDR we all know (and many of us admire), and leads the nation to victory in World War II.

Could it really be that Franklin Roosevelt--described at the time as "the greatest politician ever to be placed within a human skin"--simply lost his head for six months in 1937? That never made much sense to me. I wrote the book because I wanted to understand what drove FDR to make the biggest political miscalculation of his life.

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I'm very happy to re-introduce regular book clubs to TPMCafe, one of my favorite features of the site. We're kicking things off with a discussion on Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court by Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton and author of Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade.

Joining the discussion this week are Dahlia Lithwick, Barry Friedman, and Jonathan Alter.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Thanks very much to TPM for hosting this discussion of Snitching. The book is about the secretive deals that permeate the U.S. criminal system, in which offenders can avoid liability or punishment by giving the government information. The term "snitching" has taken on a life of its own these days, so let me be clear that the book is not about whistleblowers or people who call 911 or even people who get paid money for their tips. Rather, it explores the very specific, widespread policy that permits the government to barter away guilt in exchange for information.

Even though it's almost invisible to the public, the use of criminal informants is everywhere and it influences every facet of the justice system. Snitching affects street corner encounters between police and suspects, as police decide whether to arrest or "flip" suspects and turn them into informants. Snitching permeates the culture of jails and prisons, in which offenders know that if they come up with information about each other they can get a deal. Snitching plays an important role in prosecutorial decision-making, for example about which suspect in a case should get to be the witness and which one should be the defendant. It drives FBI investigations, it's crucial in plea bargaining, and is one of the single most important factors that courts consider at sentencing, particular in federal court. In other words, criminal informant practices reveal a lot about how the American justice system really works.

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Our knowledge of the colloquial term "snitching," which arrives largely from popular culture, is fairly inadequate. The reality behind the practice is far more nuanced. It is also deeply integral to our criminal justice system, as the law professor and author Alexandra Natapoff demonstrates in her new book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.

Natapoff teaches at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She is considered an expert on snitching, the widespread practice of police or prosecutors offering deals to criminal offenders in exchange for information. Her book examines the detrimental spread of this practice into our legal system. TPM is pleased to kick off our newest book club discussion of Snitching.

Since Max Blumenthal raised the issue of the Democratic Party and the religious right, I thought I'd add a few more thoughts on that and Republican Gomorrah.

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Max Blumenthal is onto something significant here with his idea, laid out in his last post, that the enthusiasm shown for Obama during the presidential campaign by progressives stemmed from a sort of secular salvation narrative. I suspected something like that during the campaign, just gauging from my own emotional response to Obama's campaign speeches. If I, a jaded reporter, was getting that lump in my throat, then how much more deeply were activists feeling the Obama magic?

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