Getting a Grip

jess December 10th, 2007

(Frances) I’m flying home from the almost-final trip of my fall tour for Getting a Grip. After two delays totaling five hours, I am pretty droopy when in Denver I begin the final leg home.

Okay, I admit, I’m not too tired to call a good buddy to tell her the exciting news that my book just made the San Francisco Chronicle quality paperback bestseller list.

Still pinching myself about that!

But the flight goes surprisingly fast because of a fabulous book by my hero, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. His title Conscience of a Liberal suggests the book might be an overly nice, preachy essay. But it isn’t. Just as he almost always does in his columns, Krugman nails his argument. In powerful, fast-paced prose he lays out that, of course, we know how to end poverty, and we were well on our way to ending it during the era in which I grew up — the 40s to the mid-70s — until antidemocratic forces reversed direction. It’s an argument I make in Getting a Grip and Krugman fills in essential, fascinating detail. And, he explains the critical role of racism in this turnaround.

One of Krugman’s greatest gifts is how he clarifies health care reform. The topic doesn’t have to make your head spin. It never will again once you’ve read this book, I promise.

My only gripes about Krugman’s new book are two.

He fails to emphasize the mother of all issues—that of getting money out of politics. Here, too, we know how to do it and have proof of what works. See our video Getting a Grip on Money and Politics.

Less critically, but still importantly, Krugman uses the term “movement conservatives” to describe those who are turning America away from a democratic path of fairness and opportunity. Krugman typically writes with such precision that I’m shocked. Even he admits there’s nothing “conservative” about them.

I suggest, Dr. Krugman, that you would be truer to your message in terming them “radical elitists.”

“Radical” means root and these folks are attacking the best of America’s roots: constitutional protections and equality of opportunity. These folks are “elitists” because they are driving us toward ever greater concentrations of wealth, killing opportunity and stunting the lives of the majority.

Overall, however, Krugman’s book offers a profoundly clarifying argument. I see Conscience of a Liberal as a great companion to Getting a Grip.

• Frances