The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country

Podesta, John, with Halpin, John

ISBN 10: 0307382559 / ISBN 13: 9780307382559

Published by Crown Publishing, New York, NY, 2008

About this Item

Glued binding. Paper over boards. viii, [2], 246 p. Notes. Further Reading. Index. The Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, offers fresh ideas and a bold new vision for Americans who are hungry for change and demanding answers to questions concerning terrorism, the conflict in Iraq, rising health-care costs, and other pertinent issues. From Wikipedia: "John David Podesta (born January 8, 1949) was the fourth and final White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, from 1998 until 2001. He is the former president and now Chair and Counselor of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Podesta was a co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. On December 10, 2013, it was reported that Podesta would be joining the Obama administration as a special advisor. Podesta spent most of his early years in Chicago, where he was born, growing up in the neighborhood of Jefferson Park on the city's Northwest Side. His mother, Mary (nee Kokoris), was Greek-American, and his father, John David Podesta, Sr., was Italian-American. In 1967, he graduated from Lane Technical High School in Chicago. In 1971, Podesta graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He attended the Georgetown University Law Center and graduated in 1976. Podesta worked as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice's Honors Program in the Land and Natural Resources Division (1976 1977), and as a Special Assistant to the Director of ACTION, the Federal volunteer agency (1978 1979). His political career began in 1972, when he worked for George McGovern's presidential campaign, which lost in 49 states. Podesta held positions on Capitol Hill, including Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas Daschle (1995 1996); Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee (1987 1988); Chief Minority Counsel for the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee (1979 1981). In 1988, Podesta founded with his brother, Tony, Podesta Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C., "government relations and public affairs" lobbying firm. Now known as the Podesta Group, the firm "has close ties to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration [and] has been retained by some of the biggest corporations in the country, including Wal-Mart, BP and Lockheed Martin." Podesta has also served as a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the United States Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Podesta served as both an Assistant to the President and as Deputy Chief of Staff. Earlier, from January 1993 to 1995, he was Assistant to the President, Staff Secretary and a senior policy adviser on government information, privacy, telecommunications security and regulatory policy. In 1998 he became President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff in the second Clinton Administration and executed the position until the end of Clinton's time in office in January 2001. He had a key role in introducing Executive Order 12958 which led to an unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from the U.S. diplomatic and national security history and also oversaw Clinton's pardons in the last days of his administration. Podesta founded and is currently Chair of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and Counselor to the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In addition to his work at American Progress, Podesta is currently a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, his alma mater, where he has taught classes on Congressional investigations and technology law and policy. He is also a member of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee. In 2008, Podesta autho.

Seller Inventory # 68888

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country
• Publisher: Crown Publishing, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307382559
• ISBN 13: 9780307382559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Woodrow Wilson
  • Bill Clinton
  • Human Rights

About this title

Synopsis

AMERICA IS FACING UNPRECEDENTED CHAL LENGES—new threats to our economic well-being, our environment, and our security. The American people are looking for real answers; the next president must mobilize our government and our citizens in ways that no president has done since FDR. America needs the power of progress . . . once again.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the American Dream was beginning to dim in a nation riven by growing inequalities in wealth and run by a powerful network of privileged industrialists and their political allies. But that era also gave birth to a renaissance in American political thought that forever changed our nation.

At a time when conservative ideology served as an excuse for the accumulation of wealth and privilege, the original Progressive movement created a new political order built on America’s basic principles—justice and equality for all, economic opportunity, and a commitment to the common good.

The lives of all Americans have been profoundly improved by the achievements of progressive reformers, from the eight-hour workday and voting rights to our victory in the Cold War and the economic gains middle-class Americans enjoyed under our most recent progressive president, Bill Clinton. Today’s challenges demand a second great Progressive era. America needs an economy in which workers at every income level share in our riches; a climate policy that stops global warming and ends our addiction to fossil fuels; and American leadership in the global fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and poverty.

In The Power of Progress, John Podesta—former Clinton chief of staff—along with his colleague, John Halpin, explains how progressive values changed America in the wake of the Gilded Age and how these values will reshape America after the Bush presidency. Tapping the spirit of great progressive leaders from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr., The Power of Progress provides the road map toward a government responsive to the needs of its citizens; one that is focused on our generation’s greatest challenges: combating global warming, growing our economy and expanding the middle class, and meeting America’s twenty-first-century security challenges.

About the Author

JOHN PODESTA was the White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton from 1998 until 2001. He is currently president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.–based research and educational institute founded in 2003. Podesta is also a visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center.