Writing at the Chronicle’s Percolator blog, Thomas Bartlett covers the recent American Historical Society meeting. Several sessions were devoted to the first year of Obama. Not surprisingly, nearly all the historians were willing to cut Obama plenty of slack, even those who were critical.
The most sensible comment he quotes is from a UCSB prof who said that Obama’s administration was “strikingly deferential to the entrenched interests its trying to reform.” True as far as it goes, but what’s unusual about a president’s being deferential to special interests? History profs would benefit from a course on public-choice theory.