I just finished reading Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President" a few days ago. I must say, I was rather impressed by the book. Suskind is clearly an extremely talent writer, reporter and researcher, and it is hard to fathom how he was able to dig up so much history on the three years of the Obama presidency and a year of campaigning.
When I first started the book, I was a bit hesitant to give Suskind full credit for his objectivity - after all he is a Wall Street Journal reporter - owned by everyone's favorite right wing puppet master - Rupert Murdoch. However, through well thought out and researched arguments, Suskind had me convinced of the validity of his arguments within the first 100 pages (The entire book is 480 pages or so).
I won't spoil the story for anyone still interested in reading the book - but a long story short, Suskind argues that Obama in the end was played by Wall Street through a set of advisers (many of whom were previously from Wall Street) who manipulated and controlled information, limited the scope of debate, and generally pursued their individual agendas sometimes against the direct wishes of President Obama. The underlying critique was directed at Obama's lack of fundamental management skills, which seems to have some merit.
Go out and buy this book or check it out from the library. It's a great read and has some interesting insights into modern day politics and the Obama Administration.
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