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Cohn shows how repeated failures by both Democrats and Republicans to get a decent policy through our rickety 18th-century constitutional structure led to the strategy that produced Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act - a policy that improved our system in many ways but also entrenched some of its worst elements. When it comes to Obamacare, Cohn details how congressional Democrats designed their effort around the lessons they had learned from all the previous failures and partial successes. As Cohn notes, the Obama administration picked this Republican model partly because it to coax some support from the GOP, which both Obama and anxious Democratic moderates badly wanted as cover. [Extracted from the article]

Books & the Arts When Barack Obama took office, he faced the biggest combination of crisis and opportunity that any incoming president had since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The former is a brutal and devastating indictment of Obama's strategic missteps as he confronted the crisis, while the latter attempts an apologia for the Bush-Obama crisis management strategy that inadvertently confirms Hundt's key points. The Obama administration not only accepted Paulson's priority of saving Wall Street but also chose to sacrifice those ordinary Americans whose problems were caused by the banks but who now threatened their future stability. Obama could have driven the big banks into bankruptcy and forced the Fed to take action. [Extracted from the article]