“One man, one woman, even a president cannot change the political system in one, two, three years,” said Katrina vanden Heuvel in a recent appearance on RT, during a discussion of her new book The Change I Believe In: Progress in the Age of Obama. Though Obama is hardly the only one to blame for our country’s current crises, she argues, his conciliatory leadership style has failed to confront the corrupt culture of Washington—a culture that only a sustained grassroots movement could ever dismantle. You can read more of Katrina’s analysis of current events here.

—Teresa Cotsirilos