Obama Book Club

What's that Mr. Obama's reading as he gets off his campaign plane in Montana? It certainly looks like Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Hmmh, interesting. Should the American President believe in a Post-American World? Well, I think it's healthy that he's at least taking in this perspective. It'd be interesting to find out what he makes of Zakaria's thesis. I wonder if anyone in the MSM, the other campaings, or the book publisher is going to pick up on this.

There's a review here in the NY Times, from which I excerpt the following:

This is a relentlessly intelligent book that eschews simple-minded projections from crisis to collapse. There is certainly plenty to bemoan — from the disappearing dollar to the subprime disaster, from rampant anti-Americanism to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will take years to win.Yet Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the “rise of the rest.”

The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China, trailed by India. China’s is indeed the most incredible success story in history — a tale of almost 30 years of growth in the 7-to-10-percent range that seems to defy the laws of economic gravity.

“America remains the global superpower today, but it is an enfeebled one.” It has blown wads of political capital, but it is still better positioned to manage the “rise of the rest” than its rivals.... America will be in trouble only when China becomes home to tomorrow’s hungry masses yearning to be free — and to make it.

You can read the first chapter here. And in this 2007 column, Zakaria writes about Obama.