Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

Written by Ron Suskind

Narrated by James Lurie

The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single, powerful, quintessentially American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, tapping brazen innovations over the past three decades, learned how to manufacture it.

Until August 2007, when that confidence finally began to crumble.

In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in “a new era of responsibility.” It is a story that follows the journey of Barack Obama, who rose as the country fell, and offers the first full portrait of his tumultuous presidency.

Wall Street found that straying from long-standing principles of transparency, accountability, and fair dealing opened a path to stunning profits. Obama’s determination to reverse that trend was essential to his ascendance, especially when Wall Street collapsed during the fall of an election year and the two candidates could audition for the presidency by responding to a national crisis. But as he stood on the stage in Grant Park, a shudder went through Barack Obama. He would now have to command Washington, tame New York, and rescue the economy in the first real management job of his life.

The new president surrounded himself with a team of seasoned players—like Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner—who had served a different president in a different time. As the nation’s crises deepened, Obama’s deputies often ignored the president’s decisions—“to protect him from himself”—while they fought to seize control of a rudderless White House. Bitter disputes—between men and women, policy and politics—ruled the day. The result was an administration that found itself overtaken by events as, year to year, Obama struggled to grow into the world’s toughest job and, in desperation, take control of his own administration.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind intro-duces readers to an ensemble cast, from the titans of high finance to a new generation of reformers, from petulant congressmen and acerbic lobbyists to a tight circle of White House advisers—and, ultimately, to the president himself, as you’ve never before seen him. Based on hundreds of interviews and filled with piercing insights and startling disclosures, Confidence Men brings into focus the collusion and conflict between the nation’s two capitals—New York and Washington, one of private gain, the other of public purpose—in defining confidence and, thereby, charting America’s future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Sep 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062095800

Ron Suskind

Ron Suskind is the author of the # 1 New York Times bestseller The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed A Hope in the Unseen. He has been senior national affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Visit the author's website at www.ronsuskind.com.

Reviews for Confidence Men

[drakevaughn_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ahhh, it’s an election year and time for politics. My first dive was into Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men and it was amazing. Summarizing the early years of the Obama presidency, the book contrasts the hopes and desires of the young president with the soul-crushing realities of mismanagement and incompetence. Although, I didn’t always agree with Suskind’s premise of the self-destruction of males in powerful positions, there was plenty of research to back it up. From the way President Obama heeded to the male dominated Wall Street bankers, to his exclusion of women in some of the administration’s most serious decisions, the gender issues were presented fairly and without bias. More than anything, the book portrayed the president’s leadership style as bucking major decisions to others, mostly the alpha males in his staff. Likewise, his inability to confront those underneath him, such as Timothy Geithner and Rahm Emanuel, resulted in poor compromises and the inability for any real change. It’s no accident that the book opened with a portrayal of Elizabeth Warren, who seemed to embody the reformer that the public desired, and closed with her being denied a role at the Consumer Protection Bureau that she was instrumental in creating.Suskind presents a superb historical analysis of the challenges of this presidency and is uncompromising in pointing out its flaws. And unlike most of the garbage that passes for political analysis, which is really just partisan hackery, Suskind sticks to the facts, which are neither kind to the Democrats nor the Republicans. A must read for anyone interested in modern politics.

[curious_squid · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is about President Obama first years in office and the financial crisis.

Too soon! Too soon!

This type of book is not my cup of tea, but I powered through because it was a book club book. In the end it made me see certain things in a slightly broader context, but I think the story would be much better when written with some perspective.

[writemoves · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is another view of the financial crisis and how the newly elected Obama administration handled it. Based on Suskind's findings, they did not handle it very well. Too many egos, too much political infighting and a lack of leadership from the President stymied progress on financial and economic fronts. This book basically covered events from 2008 – 2010 so given the economic recovery Obama and his administration must've gotten their act together. Pres. Obama is shown as a very smart man who grasped quickly the implications and effects of the economic turn down. Unfortunately the team and cabinet he assembled were not able to work together and develop a comprehensive economic plan to address the nation's woes, particularly unemployment.

This book is 482 pages but if you are a political junkie like me, you'll find it an interesting read.

[publiusdb-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ron Suskind's a good writer, but he's also in love with Barack Obama. Well, maybe not in love, but he's certainly not an objective or dispassionate observer. Even while he's observing that Obama may not have been ready for the Presidency, he's lavishing praise on the politician.

I read as long as I could, but after a third of the book fawning over Obama without really examining what was going on, I started to tire. Barack Obama is no villain as he's been portrayed by many, but neither is he a semi-deity or Olympian hero. Further, much of the material that Suskind covers is not new, having been reported in other sources. If you've read nothing else about the last few years, it's not a bad way to become familiar with some of the major players, and it's not horrible writing. But if you're looking for in-depth analysis and reporting, there are better books out there. "Too big to fail" is a good place to start.

I may come back to it later, but right now, it feels repetitive. Meanwhile, life's too short to read books that duplicate what you've already read. I'm moving on to a new book tonight.

[librarianbryan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First, it struck me as strange to be reading a book about a sitting president’s cabinet. It felt like a forced telescoping (microscoping?) of history. I still have mixed feelings about this. I have never read a book like this before (one about a sitting president’s cabinet). It felt lurid. I couldn’t resist after so many members of said cabinet tried to backtrack in the press after the book was released. To me, this meant whatever was in the book was probably true. Or maybe the author had misrepresented his sources.

With those preliminaries out of the way, the gist is that Obama choose the wrong economic team and that Tim Geithner and Larry Summers deliberately ignored Obama’s policy intentions and enacted what they themselves thought was best. The degree to which this was intentional on their part is I suppose a matter of debate. Suskind faults Obama for not being able to control these two men. There you go - start arguing with your conservative family members.

Suskind criticizes Obama for asking “What’s my narrative?” instead of being concerned with specific policy points. But Suskind himself deliberately shapes a novel-esque narrative: Obama is the patsy, Geithner & Summers are the villians, and Gary Gensler is the hero. [ed. note: someone should out me here: Obama is the POTUS; Suskind is a journalist]I’m sure Obama’s experience during the time Suskind is writing about would be different. I’m reminded of Jimmy Carter’s Whitehouse Diary. Carter’s subjective experience (and his later analysis thereof) provide a telling lens for what is generally considered a failed presidency. That comparison should be enough to tell you all you really need to know without reading Suskind’s book.

Outside of those considerations, the first chapter is too overtly literary. Suskind is better served sticking to the “facts.” Which he does in later chapters. But he does repeat certain passages or points over and over. I couldn’t help but think this was for the benefit of people who wouldn’t bother to read the whole book. I suppose people who typically read books like this don’t read the whole thing. I feel so provincial.

[tonynetone_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The hidden history of Wall Street, by journalist that tells the story of what happened into the White House's to response the financial crisis, the a forthcoming book that chronicles staff and presents Obama as a conflicted, wavering leader, an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits like ignored order from President Obama some like reconstruction of major banks, Ron Suskind interviewed more than 200 people, including Obama, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind examines the key players handled the world economic to cover a controversial new book throes of the financial crisis, referring to recent political criticism and others, aimed at the optimism intuition and conscience.