Coming Up Short

Robert B. Reich, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025), $30.00, ISBN 9780953803288

In his newest book, Coming Up Short, author Robert Reich offers readers a unique combination of personal memoir, U.S. history and policy discussion condensed into 350 pages. Born in 1946 he grew up as a founding member of the boomer generation. He lived through the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era while a student and then took an active role in politics, serving in judicial and administrative appointments during the Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations. While he never held political office, he made an unsuccessful run for governor of Massachusetts and served as an informal advisor to political candidates and office holders during his years as a professor in academia.

The narrative follows a rough chronology through his life divided into six parts that serve as chapters.  Since he met bullies growing up in South Salem, New York and attending Lewisboro elementary school, standing up to America’s rich corporate bullies becomes a theme guiding the narrative. Education at Dartmouth College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School and his work as a clerk to a federal judge, Assistant Solicitor General to Robert Bork, policy director at the Federal Trade Commission, and Secretary of Labor allowed him to meet dozens of future and current politicians and write opinion informed by personal experience.

Reich expresses his support for equal rights and social justice with the stories of his encounters with dozens of politicians and celebrities he met during his career. Boomers especially get a chance to reconsider old events in a new perspective. In 1965, as Dartmouth class president, he met Hillary Rodham, then a student at Wellesley College, and then introduced her to Bill Clinton six years later while they and Clarence Thomas were all Yale law students. While still a student  he was an intern for Robert Kennedy, then volunteered for the Gene McCarthy presidential campaign, traveled to England with Bill Clinton to be Rhodes scholars and figure out how to evade the Vietnam draft. He met Robert Bork while his law school student and then worked for him when Bork was Solicitor General. A 22-page saga of Bork’s career and the origins of the term “Borked” follow. Reich suggests Bork deserved better than he got from the press and Congress.

Reich titles Part III, The Giant U-Turn, that identifies a 1971 letter of attorney and later Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recommending a shift of corporate America to “mobilize for political combat.”  Before describing some of the resulting abuses and characteristics of corporate misconduct, Reich describes his work with the Carter administration and defends President Carter as not as bad as we think. In two other sections he discusses his relationship with John Kenneth Galbraith and a professorial tenure battle of his wife while at Harvard.

Part IV has eighty pages, the longest in the book, which Reich entitles Failure. It describes his work as a Democratic party advisor to Senator Gary Hart, Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, and Bill Clinton.  After Clinton wins the presidential election he becomes Secretary of Labor, which he hoped would allow him to pursue an agenda to benefit the working class. Reich describes his failed efforts as Secretary of Labor by narrating his bureaucratic policy battles with Secretary Robert Rubin and with stories of Alan Greenspan and others.

One of his failures occurred at a Bridgestone tire plant in Oklahoma where a failure to install safety cutoff switches had killed and injured workers and remained as a risk to injure more. Reich responded to the failure by seeking an emergency order to require installation of cutoff switches and imposed a $7.5 million fine. The company denied all wrong doing and threatened to close the plant. Reich backed down: “The bullies won. I am haunted by our failure. All I had considered was the moral superiority of my position and the thrill of the spectacle. I hadn’t imagined Bridgestone would take hostage the livelihoods of more than a thousand people.” He was haunted because he made the wrong decision to give in! He left the job at the end of Clinton’s first term to spend more time with his kids; a claim we can believe but readers might conclude, as I did, that he was worn out with Bill Clinton and his Wall Street tilt.

In the gathering storm, the title for Part V, readers get subtitled commentary on episodes of misconduct and cowardice by individuals in positions of leadership. Reich quotes from a speech he made to the Democratic Leadership Council where he warned them of a two tiered society of winners and losers. After the warning come stories of people who promoted or acquiesced in the two-tier society: Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barak Obama, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and others.

About midway through Part V Reich switches to the aftermath of the Bush recession to discuss the tea partiers, occupiers and other angry people.”  There is special mention of the cowardice of Clinton and Obama: “Both Clinton and Obama stood by as corporations busted trade unions, backbone of the working class.” Recall Obama did not prosecute the Bush era banking looters. Reich recounts visits to Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina and the anti-establishment rage he found there. He goes on to discuss the end of the American Dream and the end of the Republican party as a political party. The final subsection offers the five elements that make fascism. He finishes with “Americans can preserve our democracy and share our prosperity only by attacking and countering concentrated wealth and the political corruption that accompanies it.” 

Part VI, The Long Game, ends the book with a smorgasbord of personal stories, a few suggestions, and a tiny slice of optimism. One story was his failed campaign for Massachusetts governor. As a political advisor he thought he knew elective politics but running for office taught him the essential personality traits he does not have: narcissist, extrovert, method actor, thick skin, and also avoid consultants and be respectful of media. He concluded “Running for office made me even more keenly aware of the role and responsibility of mainstream media in a democracy in danger of coming apart.”

Other stories describe an aborted appearance with “Dr. Phil,” his friendship and admiration for Bernie Sanders, the pleasure of seeing and remembering some of his students. The last pages have some broad suggestions for restoring capitalism, reclaiming patriotism, creating better workplaces, and sharing profits. The book ends with thoughts on growing old, 79, and the need for the younger generation to take over and restore democracy.

The Reich book is built on the same ethical principles as similar books and commentary by others like Arlie Russel Hochschild, Heather Cox Richardson, and recent books of Steven Brill and David Leonhardt. However, his 60 year career in politics and academia required him to confront an unusually long list of political disputes and meet an unusually long list of people who became colleagues, friends and adversaries. Unlike political memoirs in my experience Reich agonizes over his failures. Unlike corporate media he calls evil by its true name: campaign finance is bribery, Trump Republicans are liars, enablers and accessories to crimes against the constitution. Anita Hill was right, Justice Alito is the most cognitively dishonest justice since Roger Taney, Democrats Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama are cowards; the Democratic party has failed for decades to protect the working class, and more.

In a section titled “My Illicit Affair” Reich describes his friendship with Republican Senator Allan Simpson of Wyoming, a political opponent he admired for “his sincerity and passion for democracy.”  Still friends in 2016, Reich asked why more Republicans weren’t speaking out against Trump.

“They’re scared,” he said.

“Scared of Trump?”

“No,” he said, lowering his voice. “They’re scared of the kind of people Trump is attracting and what he’s bringing out in them.”

“You mean they’re scared of being physically harmed?”

“Friend it only takes one nut case?”

Enough said.