What The Antichrist Is Reading

By Dwight Garner
Barack Obama in Bozeman, Mont. on Monday May 21, 2008, 12:07 pm .

(Doug Mills/The New York Times)

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So now we know what Barack Obama is reading these days: Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World.” This is, in its way, the most stylish book ad I’ve seen in a while. Looks like Obama is on Page, I dunno, 116.

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Writing in the Book Review a few weeks ago, Joseph Joffe said about Zakaria’s book:
Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the ”rise of the rest.” After all, how can this giant follow Rome and Britain onto the dust heap of empire if it can prosecute two wars at once without much notice at home? The granddaughters of those millions of Rosie the Riveters who kept the World War II economy going are off to the mall today; if they don’t shop till they drop, it’s because of recession, not rationing.
The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China, trailed by India. China’s is indeed the most incredible success story in history — a tale of almost 30 years of growth in the 7-to-10-percent range that seems to defy the laws of economic gravity. The United States, Germany and Japan had similar tales to tell in the late 19th century, but bust was the price of boom, and for Germany as well as Japan (add Russia, too), headlong industrialization ended in the horrors of 20th-century totalitarianism.
But for China it’s up, up and away. As Zakaria memorably puts it, ”China today exports in a single day more than it exported in all of 1978.” Authoritarian modernization just hums along. The Party’s message reads ”Enrich yourselves, but leave the driving to us,” and most of 1.3 billion Chinese seem happy to comply — and to consume. With power safely lodged in the Politburo, China does not conform to the historical pattern of ”first rich, then rowdy,” which led to Tokyo’s and Berlin’s imperialist careers.
Anyone know what book John McCain is — or should be — carrying around?