Eric Alterman

Bio

Eric Alterman is a Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, a columnist for The Nation, The Forward, and The Daily Beast, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, the Nation Institute and the World Policy Institute.

Alterman is the author of eight books, including Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama (2011), Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America’s Most Important Ideals (2008, 2009), and the national bestsellers What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004), and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (2004). The others include: When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences, (2004, 2005). His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992,1993, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award, and Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy, (1998).

Termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today" in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of "the smartest and funniest political journal out there," in The San Francisco Chronicle. In recent years, he has also been a columnist for: Worth, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Moment, and The Sunday Express (London), MSNBC-TV and MSNBC.com, and a history consultant to HBO Films.

A former Adjunct Professor of Journalism at NYU and Columbia, Alterman received his B.A. in History and Government from Cornell, his M.A. in International Relations from Yale, and his Ph.D. in US History from Stanford. He lives in New York City.



Photo by Deborah Copaken Kogan

In KABUKI DEMOCRACY: The System vs. Barack Obama bestselling author and Nation columnist Eric Alterman asks why President Obama has been unable to deliver on the promises of his 2008 campaign. He argues that while the Obama presidency has undoubtedly been a disappointment from a progressive point of view, its failures cannot be entirely blamed on his own mistakes, those of his staff or even on Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress. Rather, they are due to a political system that stymies democracy when voters choose progressive change:
“Presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence. But what they cannot do, even with supermajorities in both houses of Congress behind them, is pass the kind of transformative progressive legislation that Barack Obama promised in his 2008 campaign.”

A revised, updated, and much-expanded version of Alterman’s July 2010 online essay for The Nation, KABUKI DEMOCRACY deconstructs all aspects of the political system—from lobbying to the Supreme Court to the failure of the press to the prominence of anti-government ideology—to reveal how structural impediments have blocked Obama from carrying out his democratic mandate. Alterman offers a clear game plan for potential change, expounding his belief that “with regard to almost every single one of our problems, we need better, smarter organizing at every level and a willingness on the part of liberals and leftists to work with what remains of the center to begin the process of reforms that are a beginning, rather than an endpoint in the process of societal transformation.”

With its sharp, elegant prose, incisive political analysis and its expansive agenda for actual change, KABUKI DEMOCRACY cuts through the clichés of conservative propaganda and lazy mainstream media analysis to demonstrate that genuine change of the kind Obama promised in this 2008 election will only come to America when people care enough to challenge the system.