David Freddoso, who wrote The Case Against Barack Obama, is author of the new book Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy. He talks to National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the man who’s seeking a second term in office.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why go “gangster,” when the first thing you then have to do in the book is explain how you don’t really mean to call the president Tony Soprano?

David Freddoso: The question is perhaps better directed at Obama’s administration. Why send a group of pinstriped thugs from the Treasury Department to interfere in a private company’s bankruptcy, all so that the property of its lenders can be given to a politically favored union? Why should officials at Chrysler, who actually pushed at one point for fairer treatment of the secured creditors, receive threatening, angry e-mails from the Treasury, and the creditors receive threats from a White House smear campaign?

That episode was the one that first brought cries of “gangster government.” Unfortunately, Michael Barone’s observation on it fits a broader pattern of this administration’s workings that has unfolded over time. Why did we see the drugmakers buying protection from the Obama White House during the talks over Obamacare? Why did Obama’s administration flagrantly violate a law that Obama once co-sponsored, in order to protect a friend from a zealous inspector general’s investigation? Why does this administration dedicate 99 percent of its attention to helping an institution — organized labor — that represents 6.9 percent of private-sector workers? Why is Obama overturning century-old precedents to help his friends and hurt his enemies? Why do White House advisers refer to American business as a golden goose that they don’t want “crapping all over them”?

When I first spoke to Barone about his idea of “gangster government,” I never imagined that the Obama administration would do so many things to help establish the pattern.

Lopez: Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich — why bring up stories from the past?

Freddoso: Blagojevich is hardly a story from the past. We’ll be seeing a lot of him later this month — and as always, far more than anyone really wants. We might even see Rezko.

What I found most interesting about his first trial were the specific allegations about Rezko that we didn’t know about when Obama was running for president. It turns out that Rezko might have been much more than just an influential guy who shook down investors to raise lots of campaign money for Blagojevich, and then got his friends appointed to key positions (and even got one of his relatives into the University of Illinois on Blagojevich’s say-so). Prosecutors have now made public details about how Rezko was allegedly handing envelopes full of used greenbacks to the governor’s chief of staff. Rezko allegedly hired the governor’s wife to a no-work, no-show job and thus funneled at least $110,000 into Blago’s bank account.

In that light, the weird land deals that Obama and Rezko got into, which took place in the same general period, really deserve a second look. When Obama admitted to a boneheaded move, he did so for a reason, and it’s worth looking at why and how these new details show that it’s even more boneheaded than originally believed. Here’s a guy who supposedly had the governor of Illinois eating out of his hand, and then engaged in these strange real-estate deals that definitely worked out well for the state’s junior senator. That adds a new dimension to the story that wasn’t there previously.

Lopez: Isn’t this all guilt by association?

Freddoso: Not at all — in fact, to say so would be unfair to Obama’s associates. Neither Tony Rezko nor Blagojevich had anything to do with the shameful Chrysler episode. Neither of them was involved in overturning a century of bankruptcy law or 45- and 75-year precedents in labor law in order to help politically important constituencies. None of them has gone to such lengths to make businesses more vulnerable to lawsuits, nor to funnel taxpayers’ hard-earned money to green bandits in the wasteful economic enterprises of high-speed rail and wind and solar energy. That’s all Obama, and that’s what Gangster Government is about.

Although the first chapter looks back at Obama’s Chicago roots, that’s only the beginning of the story. The most important thing is that the reader looks at his subsequent acts and measures them by that same “above-the-law” yardstick that governs life in Chicago.

I warned in 2008 that the man who won his very first election by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot was probably not the great reformer he claimed he was — the man who was going to fix Washington when others could not do so. Gangster Government is a book about how, after coming to Washington with that lofty promise, Obama has instead ruthlessly exploited Washington’s brokenness.

It was only later that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and the new non-resident mayor of Chicago, explained the importance of not wasting crises, because they allow you to do things you couldn’t do otherwise. We’re now seeing a lot of crises not being wasted.

Lopez: What does Socrates have to do with it?

Freddoso: I nearly choked on my coffee when I saw Obama’s comments about helping friends and punishing enemies — it really summed everything up well. I recalled that the same idea had been set forth by one of the characters in Plato’s Republic, only to be refuted by Socrates right out of hand. That isn’t right.

Lopez: What does the president have against Adam Smith?

Freddoso: Obama believes that his own, visible hand is a better guide for our economy than market demand. It is a widely shared conceit. The stimulus package, especially, is an exercise in reshaping rather than restoring the economy — of exploiting an economic crisis in order to move companies and industries in a direction that Obama personally prefers. He talks about this whenever he refers to the so-called jobs of the 21st century that he wants to create.