Raghuram Rajan: “The real problem is that we [in India] are still trying policy shortcuts. They are no substitute for longer term tasks like enhancing human capital investment, creating a simple but fair land acquisition process, ceasing the constant rejigging of tariffs and taxes that make it hard for producers to invest, and strengthening infrastructure. Perhaps the government should pause and first assess whether PLI works?”
Francis Fukuyama: “First of all, the more liberal forces and political parties in the Western world need to win elections. In the short run, you can’t reform institutions unless you have enough political power to do that. My personal opinion is that the Democratic Party has not recently done a great job of attracting centrist voters needed to win in the electoral college. That’s part of the reason that Trumpism has done well. You’ve got to solve the short term problem of winning elections and getting sufficient political consensus so you can move on to deeper institutional fixes.”
WSJ: ““Becoming FDR” leaves no doubt, however, that profound personal hardship made him a better president, indeed a great one. Political adversaries, Mr. Darman observes, underestimated Roosevelt: “Encountering him in the years after polio, they assumed he was simply a feebler version of the same man he’d been before. Unable to see how much he’d learned, and grown, from his struggle, they paid a heavy price.” Roosevelt’s presidential mind-set of “action, and action now”; the carefully timed aid to allies and building up of readiness for war; the bond he formed with the “forgotten man”; the reassuring voice and pitch-perfect speeches that would be quoted ever after—all these reflected qualities that had been shaped, and sharpened, in those seven long, quiet years…As Mr. Darman’s absorbing book reminds us, what remained in the crippled, near-helpless Roosevelt in 1921 was the inner iron needed to begin life anew—and to become the leader who, scarcely more than a decade after a terrifying diagnosis, confidently exhorted an entire nation to cast off fear itself. “
