ANDREW BACEVICH says even if Obama gets elected in November, he will disappoint us, and won’t be able to achieve his goals. That’s because the imperial presidency has eviscerated democracy; the endless wars have been a catastrophe for the body politic, and consumerism and debt are destroying the economy and the environment. Bacevich’s powerful and frightening new book is THE LIMITS OF POWER: The End of American Exceptionalism.

PLUS: RICK PERLSTEIN, author of NIXONLAND, talks about the tasks facing Obama: if he’s going to change anything in America, he will have to move quickly in the first days of his presidency – that’s the lesson of FDR and LBJ – it’s where the Clintons went wrong. Rick wrote about “The Liberal Shock Doctrine” in The American Prospect.

Also: Americans in Cuba on the eve of the Castro revolution – that’s the setting for RACHEL KUSHNER’s fascinating new novel TELEX FROM CUBA. For the Americans, plantation society in Oriente Province is a paradise – until the rebels come down from the hills.

-- Wed. 8/27 at 400pm with Jon Wiener.