The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power [Hardcover]

James Mann (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 14, 2012

The definitive analysis of the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Obama’s foreign policy

When Barack Obama took office, he brought with him a new group of foreign policy advisers intent on carving out a new global role for America in the wake of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. Now the acclaimed author of Rise of the Vulcans offers a definitive, even-handed account of the messier realities they’ve faced in implementing their policies.

In The Obamians, acclaimed author James Mann tells the compelling story of the administration’s struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global turmoil. At the heart of this struggle are the generational conflicts between the Democratic establishment—including Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph Biden—and Obama and his inner circle of largely unknown, remarkably youthful advisers, who came of age after the Cold War had ended.

Written by a proven master at elucidating political underpinnings even to the politicians themselves, The Obamians is a pivotal reckoning of this historic president and his inner circle, and of how their policies may or may not continue to shape America and the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Bookforum

Mann is an experienced and judicious observer of both presidential policy making and the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment, and, as in the case of his earlier book, many of his initial judgments are likely to pass the test of time. —Michael Lind

About the Author

James Mann, a former Washington reporter, columnist, and foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, is author in residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of many books on global affairs and U.S. foreign policy.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (June 14, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670023760
• ISBN-13: 978-0670023769
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #335,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Obamians July 13, 2012

By Jared Branch

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In The Obamians, a somewhat wonky term used to describe the chief Obamian (Obama) and his Obamians (aides), James Mann attempts to discern, through his foreign policy, an Obama doctrine. While his domestic policy has been hampered by Democrat (Guantanamo) and Republican (Obamacare, nee Romneycare) alike, day-to-day foreign policy execution does not require congressional approval. Foreign policy then, unlike domestic, is a "clear test of his underlying ideas and choices."

Obama chose his inner circle among a small and informal network of people with no foreign policy experience to purposely cultivate an image of Washington outsiders. His appointment of Hillary Clinton, a pragmatic decision to remove her from the Senate where she could possibly form a coalition against him, required a revamping of this image, and thus was born the "team of rivals" phrase to give a "grand historical gloss to the uneasy merger of the Obama and Clinton teams." In contrast, Bush's aides, his "Vulcans" as the author calls them, all shared a common history, namely Vietnam.

Mann has a lot to say about Vietnam. He argues that Obama is the first president not, in some way, shaped by the war. This is true, and interesting, but he takes this argument to extremes. Obama's team is young and they "tend to believe their ideas are new and original, a response to events or trends of the twenty-first century" and not, as Mann repeatedly argues, in response to Vietnam. While the Obamians came of age in a world influenced by Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis, Mann believes Vietnam plays a seemingly unconscious influence through which all of their decisions filter. While Mann is given to such sweeping statements, perhaps the only extent to which Vietnam plays a role is that Obama has to contend with the remnants of McGovern's left-wing antiwar base of the Democratic party.

Avoiding this and other extremes, Obama has attempted to "position (himself) in the middle ground, detached from the fray." While Obama is not simply a continuation of Bush (Mann cites healthcare and gay rights), any president has to contend with entrenched bureaucracies concerned solely with maintaining the status quo. Obama's positions have therefore been simultaneously more and less hawkish than his predecessor. By toeing the line of the middle ground, he has made constituents of both parties unhappy.

Resulting criticisms leveled against him have fundamentally misunderstood who he is. For a clearer picture, Mann turns to the Arab Spring and dissects the Obamian response to each country. In Libya, Obama showed the two most distinctive aspects of his foreign policy. First, that he was not squeamish about employing military power, as both parties believed. Second, that he was willing to recast the United State's role in the world to fit its limited resources, a role "far less wedded than his predecessors to the idea of an enduring American primacy or hegemony." His decisions were "by circumstance and strategy, country by country," based ultimately upon advancing American's interests in the region. Mann is concerned more with how Obama thinks than in a minutiae discussion of positions he takes.

An aspect missing from this discussion is Republicans. He assesses an event and a liberal response, leaving out the extent to which liberals are influenced by a conservative response. Republicans play virtually no role at all at any point throughout the book. Leaving out this crucial opposing view is surprising, as Mann is unbiased in his assessment of Obama. While he makes the argument that Vietnam shaped liberals who then influenced Obama, he implicitly argues that Obama is shaped more by these unconscious influences than in reaction to President Bush and his policies, which played a huge role in making his presidency possible.

Bush's policies "represented the outer limits of the expansion of American power." Obama's, on the other hand, have merely "added up to centrism." His presidency has marked "the beginning of a new era in America's relations with the rest of the world, an era when American primacy is no longer taken for granted," and an era in which America has less money and power to implement its will.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Obama Foreign Policy Team July 29, 2012

By Marc Korman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This semi-sequel to Rise of the Vulcans attempts to do for the Obama foreign policy team what James Mann's earlier book did for the Bush II foreign policy team. As with the earlier book, The Obamians covers members of the Obama foreign policy team from the well known Secretary of Stats to less well known officials such as Ben Rhodes and Michael McFaul from the NSC staff. The early chapters are some of the most interesting as they explain how many of these individuals ended up working for President Obama. Mann's take on why Hillary Clinton was brought in, to remove an independent political power from within the President's own party, is of course the most interesting. The three major categories of Obamians are the "team of rivals" (essentially Secretary Clinton and to some extent), former Clinton Administration officials though usually those from the lower levels of power in the 90s who would probably work for any elected Democrat, and the true Obamians, many of whom got to know Obama when he was in the Senate. Not everyone fits into these categories neatly such as Richard Holbrooke and Bob Gates.

The Bush II story may have been a little more compelling and easier to tell as the neoconservative ideology was a major driver of Bush's foreign policy decisions and the conflict between Secretary Powell and the rest of the Bush team was a bit more striking than any conflict here. Rise of the Vulcans was published before President Bush's second term led to a reassessment of many of the early foreign policy decisions. In Obama's White House, there is less of a strict ideology and when there is one, Mann finds it is often just being the opposite of Bush. Even though Obama has not taken the opposite approach of Bush on every foreign policy issue, indeed in some cases he has doubled down on Bush's policies, his team seems to often start from the standpoint of trying to avoid being like Bush.

Obama's less ideological approach makes it difficult to grab a narrative thread and run it through his foreign policy. That lack of ideology may make the people and personalities working for the President more important because it is not obvious from the start what direction the U.S. will go. The US contribution to the war in Libya is an excellent example as Obama pushed his military advisers farther than they were originally planning to go, perhaps a surprise for a President who ran against the Iraq war. Obama's shift in Afghanistan from the counter-insurgency policies of his early presidency to an increased focus on counter-terrorism is another example of this non-ideological approach. Obama is a pragmatist, not an extremist.

Of course, Obama's greatest foreign policy accomplishment was the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Some revisionists think any president would have made this decision but Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mitt Romney all said Obama was mistaken to say during the 2008 primary that he would act on intelligence and take Bin Laden out in Pakistani territory. But that's exactly how it played out.

Obama and his Obamians have dealt with Iraq, Afghanistan, the Christmas underwear bomber, Guantanamo politics, the Arab Spring, Bin Laden, an increasingly outward looking China, an anti-American US citizen cleric in Yemen, and much more in just three and a half years. James Mann tells these stories with great skill and hopefully he plans to repeat this type of writing for a second Obama term and/or future presidents.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Foreign Policy Influentials Whose Names the Public Rarely Knows July 16, 2012

By jem

Format:Hardcover

One of the most fascinating aspects of James Mann's thorough analysis of Obama's foreign policy during his first three years is meeting the influential insiders. The public knows and has opinions about cabinet level decision makers like Clinton, Gates, and Panetta and military leaders like Petraeus, but most of us would draw a blank on the responsibilities of Thomas Donilon, Denis McDonough, Samantha Power or Ben Rhodes. Mann emphasizes time and again the manner in which a new generation -- including the president himself -- does not use the Vietnam War as its point of reference in shaping US foreign policy.

Key elements of Mann's subtitle, "The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power," are the rapid changes shaping the world: technological innovations from military hardware to communications, radical changes in balance of power from Asia to Africa to the Middle East, severe change in the economic strength of the US. The superpower role the US has occupied ever since World War II is still relevant but facing challenges. The necessity of multilateral policy is ever more evident.

Mann provides detailed inside information about not only foreign policy decisions but the process that leads to the final presidential decision. He is relatively even handed in praising and criticizing Obama's foreign policy successes and failures. His strength is analyzing the evolution of Obama's team as they gain experience. Initial attempts to establish dialogue with Iran or North Korea have been as unsuccessful as they were for previous administrations, but the attempts may have produced wider cooperation for imposing tougher sanctions. Diplomatic overtures to countries such as China that were initially interpreted as weakness forced changes to a bolder, more assertive presentation of US policy. The president's choice of the riskiest option for eliminating Osama bin Laden not only silenced critics about Obama's will but avoided any doubt about bin Laden's death or creating a martyr site for his followers. Responses to revolutions in the Middle East from Egypt to Bahrain, Libya to Syria have been inconsistent for both allies and adversaries to understand. But most dramatic is Mann's description of Obama's evolution on military tactics -- initially adopting the Petraeus insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, but in the face of unrealistic long range costs for nation building redefining goals to utilize drones and special forces to destroy terrorist leadership. For the most part Obama and his team are portrayed as centrists defined by realism rather than idealism.

Mann's description of foreign policy in the Obama administration offers readers a realistic view of what to expect if he is re-elected. Well known leaders such as Gates and Holbrooke are gone and Clinton has indicated her intent to depart, but Mann details the evolving foreign policy leadership team. If that concerns you, this book prepares you.