Oliver Libby has been a public servant under multiple presidential administrations, and has since put his values to work in venture capitalism. But both worlds—public service and smart, profitable investment—have been unsettled by cultural division and political gridlock in the last five to fifty years. In STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING, Libby proposes a program to set America back on track, re-building both the economic power of the middle class and a shared vision of civic life.
STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING aspires to combine “some of the best ideas from the Left and the Right into a new radically moderate plan that is action-oriented and can reinvigorate our nation.” Its title outlines the basic principle: a strong floor (below which no citizen can fall) with no ceiling (to support aspiration towards greater and greater achievement). This is a popular idea, but it’s not a “popular” book; it’s straightforward about its wonky bona fides, and doesn’t shy away from leaning on data to support its ideas. That might alienate some potential readers, but its balance of a crisp, conservational tone with expertise and information will surely appeal to fellow wonks and passionate readers. That prose style (down-to-earth, but never afraid of leaning into expertise) essentially reflects the content itself, in which the text proposes non-partisan ways to reinvigorate American civic life. That program itself is fair, optimistic, easy to understand from its historical precedents, and well-served by the clarity of the prose. (Cynical readers might note, however, that this mostly boils down to framing Democratic or progressive ideas as common-sense, moderate, or non-partisan, while frantically insisting, “This is not an argument for socialism.”)
The project is a laudable one, and the policy proposals have self-evident appeal. But STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING feels uncomfortably more like a wish-list than a plan; it skips fundamental steps in the underlying but necessary political and cultural processes. The text calls out the need for a “way back to a shared reality,” but addressing that problem is nearly an entire book on its own. Yes, a revamped set of civil service programs for young people, bodies to regulate AI and misinformation, and more would go a long way toward bringing Americans physically together—allowing for humanizing conversation, exchanges of ideas, and greater awareness of the role government plays in serving the American people. But effecting those changes requires building political will in the first place, and STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING falls into the catch-22 of assuming that people will start caring about the nation, as a nation, again. That means the text is, at best, one cog in a bigger machine—and not the most important one.
STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING nevertheless makes for sometimes-fun, sometimes-wistful reading for Americans still invested in the idea of America.
~ Dan Accardi for IndieReader