The Liberal Hour

The authors are G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot and the subtitle is Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s.  Everyone interested in social change, or for that matter American political history, should read this book.  It doesn’t unearth new material but it is a good summary of what is known.  The jacket flap sums it up:

For a brief period in the 1960s, more progressive legislation was passed in Congress than in almost any other era in American history.  Demands that had lingered for decades on the political agenda finally entered the realm of possibility.  Reform has seldom come with such speed, such sweep, and such consequence.  What drove this political sea change?…[the authors] argue that the primary force behind it was not the counterculture, but those in the traditional seats of power.

If you study the history portrayed in this book, you are more likely to believe that an Obama victory would not bring radical change to American economic policy.  It’s hard to find the comparable "shock troops" in Washington right now.