My Review of Josh Dawsey's, Tyler Pager's. and Isaac Arnsdorf's "2024: How Trump......."

Slow Motion Train Wreck

Washington journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf have written a personality-driven account of the 2024 presidential election. Starting in 2022 they take us behind the scenes of the Trump, Biden, and later Harris campaigns for the presidency. There is an inevitability to it all, but after all the book is an after the fact accounting of the election.

What the book lacks is a review of the structural backdrop to the election. There should have been tables of polling data on the relative popularity of the candidates along with the electorate’s view on whether the country was on the “right track” or the “wrong track.”

Much of the ground here was discussed in “Original Sin,” but that book ended with Biden dropping out of the race. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/06/my-review-of-jake-tappers-and-alex.html) Both books are consistent in the view that Hunter Biden’s legal problems weighed greatly on Biden. The authors are sympathetic to Harris, but they do note her many unforced errors, specifically her failure to fully rebut her 2020 positions on hot button social issues, her failure to separate herself from Biden and picking the lackluster Tim Walz as her VP selection.

 

I learned much about the Trump campaign and how Suzie Wiles brought a modicum of discipline. She was instrumental in neutering Ron DeSantis, her former boss and the real rival to Trump. I also didn’t realize how important Steve Witkoff and Laura Loomer were to Trump. Witkoff was his consistent consigliere and is now a special ambassador to the Russia/Ukraine and the middle east. Loomer, despite being somewhat of an unguided missile, rallied support for Trump before and during the campaign.

 

The book also reinforced my view of Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff and campaign honcho. Klain instinct was always to seek support on the Left. This was true post-debate and well before, when he was in charge of policy. In my opinion it is was his predilections that kept Biden tacking Left while in office which, in my view, doomed his presidency.

 

This authors give us a real fly on the wall perspective to both campaigns, but I said at the outset, a full review of the structural parameters of the race would have been helpful.

My Review of Tom Arnold-Forster's "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography"

 The Evolution of Walter Lippmann from Socialist to Conservative-Liberal

 

I previously reviewed Craufurd Goodwin’s book on Walter Lippman as an economist. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-amazon-review-of-craufurd-goodwins.html ) Here we have Tom Arnold-Forster’s work as a complete intellectual biography of Lippmann’s thought. Lippmann, born in 1889 from a wealthy Jewish family, would over the next seven decades would become one of America’s great pundits. He would ignore his Jewish heritage throughout his life.

 

Lippmann advised presidents, worked on Wilson’s 14 Points, was present at the Versailles Conference and with his 1922 “Public Opinion” became a leading political scientist. To Lippmann social psychology was the driving force behind the formation of public opinion.

 

After graduating from Harvard Lippmann hung out in the socialist milieu of the Greenwich Village and the New Republic crowd of the 1910’s. He became good buddies with the soon to be communist, John Reed. However, he never lived there and retreated to his upper-eastside family home.

 

From his perch as a syndicated columnist, first with the New York World and then with the Herald Tribune, through his "Today and Tomorrow" column he became widely known and very influential. He fully supported the urban liberalism of Al Smith. He was extraordinarily prescient in 1931 about the enormity of the crisis caused by the Great Depression and again in 1938 he fully understood Hitler’s motives to conquer Europe.

 

However, once the immediate emergency of the depression was over, Lippmann moved to the Right. So much so that a group of European conservative economists, including Hayek, sponsored a 1938 colloquium in his honor. Simply put Lippmann’s opposition to state planning put him in good stead with that group and it was there he coined the term “neo-liberal.”

 

He went all out to support the U.S. military build-up from 1939-41 and after the war he became an advocate of military-Keynesianism. Early on he understood the danger coming from the Soviet Union and he popularized the term, “Cold War.” His Eurocentricity made him a critic of the Vietnam war.

 

Lippmann was a great believer in the role of newspapers in forming public opinion. Afterall, he wrote “Public Opinion” just prior to the advent of radio. I wonder what he would think now of the collapse of newspapers and panoply of information sources that the public now has available?

 

My concern about the book is that Arnold-Forster largely presents criticisms of Lippmann from the Left about his economics and his belief in a strong America. Criticism from the Right comes very late in the book and is minimal. My guess is that the author unfortunately sides with the Left.

The Pentagon Makes a Play for Rare Earths

In taking a page out of Winston Churchill's playbook, where Britain acquired a 51% controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP) on the eve of World War I, the Pentagon today made a $400 million dollar investment in rare earth miner/refiner MP Materials. The Pentagon on full exercise of its convertible preferred and warrants will own 14% of the company and become its largest shareholder. Paired with the investment is a long-term supply contract at fixed minimum prices thereby ensuring profitability. 

Rare earths are used to make highly sophisticated magnets that are used in advanced aircraft (think F-35) and guided missiles. At the present time the bulk of the rare earths used by the Pentagon and U.S. industry are imported from China, not the best of circumstances.

The Pentagon's logic behind the deal is identical to Churchill's over 100 years ago. As First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill was seeking a secure supply of oil for the Royal Navy. In addition to its investment, Britain secured a 20-year supply contract for Anglo-Persian's oil. 

As an aside, the preferred stock is convertible at $30.03 a share. MP Materials stock shot up to $44, so thus far the Pentagon is well ahead of the game.

My Review of Tim Bouverie's "Allies at War"

 A Menage of Convenience

 

Historian Tim Bouverie has written a follow-on to his “Appeasement…” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-amazon-review-of-tim-boveries.html ) with an exhaustive history of the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance of World War II. After Stalin’s dalliance with Hitler fell apart in June 1941 he joined up with Churchill. Although Roosevelt supplied Britain with lend-lease aid, he didn’t become a full partner until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Bouverie recounts in great detail the diplomacy involved in keeping the alliance together where, to say the least, the war aims of the three parties differed.

 

I will not recount here what has already been written about the big wartime conferences in Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta. What I found most interesting was how Churchill’s dealings with Vichy France, Spain, and Iraq in 1940 and 1941 was of great strategic import. To back up a bit in 1936 British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare teamed up with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval in a failed scheme to appease Mussolini in Ethiopia. Moving ahead to 1940 we found Hoare working brilliantly as ambassador to Spain to keep Spain out of Axis hands while Laval worked for the Nazi’s has a high official in Vichy France.

 

In response to Vichy, Churchill acted boldly in sinking a good portion of the French fleet off the coast of Algeria to keep it out of the hands of Germany. The U.S. policy towards Vichy was far more muddled. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/12/my-amazon-review-of-michael-neibergs.html )

 

Simultaneously Churchill had big troubles in the middle east where a pro-axis coup in Iraq threatened its oil supplies. Churchill deployed his over-stretched army in Egypt and Palestine to over-turn the coup and remove Vichy authorities from Syria. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-amazon-review-of-john-broichs-blood.html ) All the while London was being blitzed and Britain’s position in Egypt was under threat.

 

As the war was winding down the early fissures of the Cold War came to the fore. Although Bouverie does not think the Cold War was inevitable, I would tend to disagree. He doesn’t give much weight to the removal of the more pro-Western Maxim Litvinov from his ambassadorial post in Washington and similarly the removal of Ivan Maisky from London in 1943 with more hardline officials. To me that was a major tell. Once Stalin achieved the initiative on ground in 1942 his war aim was to seize eastern Europe to establish a buffer from Germany. Bouverie is correct in stating that Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta could do little to alter the facts on ground.  The combination of the Soviet army along with the success of its spy services made the Soviet Union a clear winner at enormous cost of World War II. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/06/my-amazon-review-of-sean-mckeekins.html )  That in turn set the stage for the Cold War.

 

Tim Bouverie has written an important book about diplomatic history. There is much here to study, and he demonstrated that although the parties had different war aims they succeeded in destroying the Hitlerite regime.

Slaying the CEQA Dragon

 In a victory for the “abundance agenda” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/04/my-review-of-ezra-kleins-and-derek.html ) over the “enviro-liberals” (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/04/donald-trump-and-enviro-liberals.html ) and their labor union* allies the California Legislature just amended the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to exempt multifamily housing projects in urban areas from the strictures of the law. No longer can narrow special interest groups hold up much need housing by threatening and engaging in litigation.

 

California is the midst of the worst housing crisis in the Nation. The median price of a single-family home is $900,000 and where so-called affordable housing projects come in in excess of $1,000,000/unit. California used to build housing and from 1960 -2010 the state authorized about 200,000 units/year. In 2024 only 100,000 units were authorized, and the state is now short about 2,000,000 units.

 

Although the housing shortfall has many causes, much of the blame can be placed at the feet of CEQA. A coterie of neighborhood groups, enviro-liberals, labor unions and law firms seem to work in unison to stop much needed housing. Until about 1970 house prices in California were roughly in line with the national average. However, with the Friends of Mammoth Decision that made CEQA applicable to private projects and the passage of the California Coastal Act in 1972, house prices took off. As a result, house prices in the Golden State are nearly two and half times the national median. It is no wonder that there is an exodus from the state.

 

The Democratic Legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom deserve credit for enacting this legislation. It is way late, but better late than never.

 

*Labor unions used CEQA to extort project labor agreement from developers. Indeed high-rise construction under the Bill requires union labor.