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Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy
Author(s): Benjamin Wittes
- Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
- Publication Date: 17 May 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 247 pages
- ISBN-10: 0815721986
- ISBN-13: 9780815721987
Book Description
Ready or not, the quadrennial run for the White House is upon us. American voters face a very different landscape than they did four years ago, when the presidential race was relatively wide open and neither the sitting president nor vice president was seeking the nation s highest office. Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qadaffi are gone, but so are millions of American jobs. It is springtime in much of the Arab world, but for many voters this is the winter of their discontent. Governing the United States will be supremely difficult for whoever emerges in November 2012 reading this book would be a good first step. Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy is an indispensable guide to the key questions facing White House hopefuls in 2012. It features a dozen accessible yet authoritative analyses, each one focusing on a specific policy issue currently vexing the nation. All of the authors are Brookings scholars. In addition to contributing a chapter on terrorism, editor Benjamin Wittes draws from each of the Brookings Institution s research programs in this wide-ranging survey of national policy in America. Among the Brookings authors lending their expertise is Ron Haskins (Creating an Opportunity Society) on fiscal policy. Michael O Hanlon, coauthor of 2010 s Toughing it Out in Afghanistan, discusses America s next moves in South Asia, while bestselling author Kenneth Pollack teams with Shadi Hamid in analyzing the Middle East, particularly the Arab Spring. Alice Rivlin, former director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the president’s Office of Management and Budget, examines health care issues. As the presidential contest heats up, an increasingly disgruntled public s focus on domestic politics will intensify. Former White House policy adviser William Galston opines on possible political and institutional reform. Hot-button domestic issues, such as health care and housing, come under the microscope as well. Economist Ted Gayer discusses America s options regarding energy and climate while Bruce Katz, director for metropolitan policy, takes a fresh crack at Rethinking Federalism. The capstone of a major institution-wide initiative, Campaign 2012 truly is Brookings at its best explaining tough problems in accessible terms, and proposing viable solutions. It is one-stop shopping for citizens in need of a primer on the issues that will drive the 2012 presidential campaign.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Before joining Brookings, he served nine years as an editorial writer for the Washington Post. His previous books include Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantánamo (Brookings, 2010) and Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror (Penguin, 2008). He and Jeffrey Rosen are coeditors of the 2011 Brookings book Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.
