This book started out in the four star category, but ended up at a three for me. Woodward relates in (sometimes excrutiating) detail the fight to raise the debt limit in 2011. Really, when I say detail, I mean detail. He knows what people said and when they said it. To his credit, he doesn't do a whole lot of interpreting. The reader can draw their own conclusions as to who was right and who was wrong and who was to blame for the entire fiasco.I am not going to share my conclusions on the matter - - only to say here that in my mind, the very experienced Senate and House leaders brought the most to the table in terms of actually solving the problem at hand. But there were many, many people who undermined both the efforts of the President and those of the Congressional leadership . . .and perhaps it is the fault of the leadership that they couldn't reel in their sides. It certainly wasn't for a lack of effort on the parts of Obama and Boehner. If it were just those two guys calling the shots, there would have been a deal that would have been better for the country overall. Not that they didn't have their own interests. Obama wanted a solution that would last past election day. Boehner wanted no revenue increases without masking them as tax reform (somewhat understandably as he had no chance of selling the very adamant Tea Party contingency on them, and their votes were needed).If you love politics and political intrigue, you'll find this book pretty engaging. But after awhile, you kind want to smack everyone silly. It's pretty darn dysfunctional. Frighteningly so actually. We are lucky they figured out anything at all because seriously we could be in a huge prolonged depression right now had they not raised the debt ceiling. Honestly, I was in a bit of a depression after reading the book. It's only ONE example of how our government solves problems, and let's just say, it was incredibly unimpressive.I appreciated Woodward's writing style overall - - I was captivated. But there were some components of the deal that could have been explained a bit better by him to assist the reader. I was an economics major, but some of the ideas that were put forth just didn't seem totally clear to me in terms of how they were actually going to work. But I did admire how he stayed pretty impartial and showed all the differing perspectives of the major players.Definitely a worthwhile read . . .but realize it is 300 pages focused on a very narrow topic. You have to be interested. For the sake of not getting my GR account deleted, and for the sake of not losing my job, I won't bother to comment on the subject matter of the book, either the politics or the policy. To judge only the book as a book: very informative, vivid. Christopher Hitchens' sneer that Woodward is "stenographer to the stars" is no insult. It is then that he is at his best. When (rarely, rarely, rarely) comments or intrudes, things get cloudy, unclear, illogical. Great stenography.
What do You think about The Price Of Politics (2012)?
Did not finish. Depressed me to think of how dysfunctional our political system has become!
—Cassandra
