Robert Reich ‘s memoir, Coming Up Short, is more than his recollections of the most recent period in American history. It is a well documented exploration of the very important question: how did we get where we are today?
Reich grew up in the quarter century after World War II, when the postwar economic boom, the New Deal and strong labor unions dominated political and economic thinking. He explores those expansive days when the middle class grew, when civil rights reform morphed into the anti-war movement of the l960’s to the present when all of these accomplishments seem to be unraveling. How did we become a nation dominated in the political arena by MAGA movement?
Coming Up Short is for those who have wondered how American society produced the Trump phenomenon, for those who wonder how recent economic history produced such bitterness and racism in a new American populism. Coming Up Short looks at the second half of the Twentieth Century. It is a well documented economic history, an engaging and well written book that provides: 1) a primary source (an eyewitness story told by a participant,) 2) a well documented history, (a secondary source) and 3) a vision for the future by someone whose values are progressive.
Reich had served in the Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama Administrations, leaving government service to teach at Harvard University during the Reagan Administration. He also taught at Brandeis University and at Berkeley. He retired after more than 20 years of teaching. During his time at the university, he observed a number of changes in the economy—from the switch from manufacturing to a knowledge based economy and an ever increasing flow of corporate money into politics. As the economy grew, it left some workers behind and allowed the dominance of an attitude opposing government help to reeducate and relocate workers. The movement of corporate money into politics predated the Reagan Administration’s assertion of the “trickle down” theory and the later “Citizens United vs. FEC” that enabled large corporate political donations to be given nearly anonymously. In chapter III, Reich discusses the role that Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and the myriad American chambers of commerce played in the initiation of a movement that ended up alienating workers, dividing them from the reform movements that could have helped them. And so today, with the increasing wealth divide in the country and the increasing influence of corporate interests in politics and government, we have the MAGA movement, where non-Europeans and immigrants have become scapegoats.
Clearly, this is a book written from the progressive standpoint and will be read by progressives. But today’s progressives are not the liberals of the 80’s and 90’s. It was in that period that the corporate-political powerhouse grew with the influx of corporate money to spread the notion that corporations owed nothing to workers, consumers and the environment. Reich’s book is engagingly written and thoughtfully organized. It’s worth a read.