State of the Union, 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile

Calling the first year of the Clinton administration ``a profound disappointment'' for progressives, a group of policy scholars associated with the Institute for Policy Studies offer useful advice in 15 essays. While some of the book is already dated--and most essays aren't long enough to be solid and nuanced--there is much trenchant criticism. Robert Borosage argues for much greater cuts in military spending, and Marcus Raskin calls for a transformation of the ``national security state,'' ending, for instance, the covert operations of the CIA. Barry Commoner proposes both realistic environmental steps like federal procurement of electric cars and more ambitious actions like restructuring of the chemical industry to reduce the production of hazardous waste. Other analysts tackle issues such as poverty, gender, race and community. In a stimulating roundtable discussion, Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg argues that critics should give the president more than a year to deliver. Caplan is the New York director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; Feffer is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions. (Dec.)