Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-308) and index.

Chapter One. Obama -- The Content of His Character -- The Orbit of His Presidency -- Chapter Two. Governance : The Obama Administration -- The Obama Style -- President and Congress -- Cabinet and Staff -- The Bureaucracy -- Politics and Principle -- Chapter Three. Governance : The American State -- The Regulatory State -- The Judicial Battleground -- Federalism -- Chapter Four. Rough Waters : Finance and the Economy -- The Economy and the Polity -- Fixing Finance : TARP and Dodd-Frank -- The Trial of Jobs -- Debt and Taxes -- Chapter Five. Home Fires Burning : Social Policy -- Obamacare : A Noble Experiment -- Climate, Energy, and Transportation -- Muffled Fire Bells : Education and Immigration -- Chapter Six. Living in the World -- Foreign Affairs -- The US and the EC : Comparative Perspectives -- Chapter Seven. The 2012 Overture -- Setting the Stage : The Political Culture -- Advocacy, Money, and the Media -- Ideology -- Chapter Eight. 2012 -- The Contest -- Examining the Entrails -- Chapter Nine. Looking Ahead -- Into the Second Term : Governing -- Into the Second Term : Politics -- Status and State -- History's Lessons.

"Barack Obama came into office in the midst of one of the worst financial crises in American history and had to extract the US from two grinding foreign wars. He succeeded in enacting the most progressive legislative agenda since the Great Society years, and has pivoted American foreign policy toward East Asia. In The Obama Presidency, political historian Morton Keller provides the first major historical assessment of the still-unfolding Obama presidency, examining his presidential persona and governing style, his domestic and foreign policies, and his place in the larger context of modern American politics. Obama came into the presidency with a unique set of assets: the first African-American president, with a transformative, messianic view of what he hoped to accomplish as President; and the capacity to excite the hopes of large segments of the electorate. That expectation has been tempered not only by his Republican opposition, but by larger realities: the play of interests and contingency, and the institutional weight of the presidency. The major tension in Obama's presidency has been between his strong commitment to an active federal government and the powerful counter-forces in contemporary American public life. Obama is in a sense haunted by his presidential predecessors in the twentieth century Democratic reform tradition, and constantly either looks to them or invokes them. But he has had to contend with the unique set of difficulties surrounding the active, centralized, bureaucratic state in our time. The eventual outcome of Obama's presidency, and its place in the American political tradition, has still to be determined. But this pioneering attempt at a historical assessment of the Obama presidency highlights the tensions, achievements, and failures that are sure to influence future interpretations"-- Provided by publisher.