I'm only about 1/3 of the way through Barack Obama's second book, but it's impressed me enough already in a number of ways that I thought I should capture some of them while they're still fresh in my mind.
To begin with, I wouldn't have imagined, prior to getting well into this work, that a well-known politician would ever publish such an honest account of his values, experiences and viewpoints while still in office. What I would expect from someone in that situation is a book which would read like a collection of talking points, intended to show you in no uncertain terms just how correct each and every one of his or her stances actually is. Lots of anecdotes would be included, showing that abortion is or isn't murder, or proving that all markets should be unregulated or conversely how government should control every aspect of our lives. And it may even be the case that Republicans who choose to read The Audacity of Hope (for whatever reason) will interpret it in just that way. But if they do, then I suspect that they're probably skimming its pages and simply underlining the parts that they disagree with on principle.
I say that because there's a whole lot more to be found than just regurgitated Democratic Party doctrine, even within the four chapters that I've read to date. Obama allows throughout for the possibility that maybe he's wrong in this opinion or that one, but goes beyond that, focusing on the notion that what's important is that these topics get discussed! If he's trying to convince anyone of anything, as far as I can tell, it's this: let's respect each other's values and come together with the goal of finding the best possible solution to each problem with those values in mind (instead of simply shouting over each other). I found that a very refreshing approach from a politician, and it's no doubt part of his appeal in general.
Obama is also very deft at instilling empathy in the reader. In a chapter entitled "Politics", he expends some energy describing what it feels like to be a politician (recognizing, one assumes, that most people will never be in that position). He does this in order to more clearly identify why some of what the rest of us consider "politics as usual" actually occurs. He's not defending pork barrel politics or the disproportionate power of lobbyists in the least, but rather he's trying to provide context to the rest of us so that we can better understand the driving force behind those phenomena. By way of conveying just how big a part of an elected official's life "not losing" becomes, he uses the example of Al Gore in the months immediately following the 2000 election. As former Vice President of the United States, Gore had held incredible power before Jeb Bush's cronies cost him the presidential election (my bitter interpretation, not Obama's!)... and yet it all evaporated in short order when he became simply "the guy who lost to Bush." Seeing politicians through that lens provides all kinds of insight to readers of The Audacity of Hope as to what might impel them to go to the extreme lengths that they do in order to win elections... including, sometimes, criminally-long lengths!
He also writes very personally of how uncomfortable he was when he had to begin raising large sums of money to support his U.S. Senate campaign. "I started engaging in elaborate games of avoidance during call time - frequent bathroom breaks, extended coffee runs, suggestions to my policy staff that we fine-tune that education speech for the third or fourth time. At times during these sessions I thought of my grandfather, who in middle age had sold life insurance but wasn't very good at it. I recalled his anguish whenever he tried to schedule appointments with people who would rather have had a root canal than talk to an insurance agent, as well as the disapproving glances that he received from my grandmother, who for most of their marriage made more money than he did." Passages like that really humanize Obama, as well as pulling back the curtain a bit on campaign financing and the beggar's nature of it.
I'd love to see this book become required reading for (North) American teenagers, because I think that there are a great many important messages to be found within it. It's hard to imagine just how many young, impressionable minds might be inspired by Barack Obama's unique brand of pragmatism, optimism and honesty... certainly more than will be lead to greatness by Britney Spears' latest video or Plexico Burress' most recent night club misadventure.
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3 comments:
Sounds like a really good book. I saw a documentary on the CBC before the election in the US that profiled John McCain and Barack Obama. The thing that caught my attention was what he did during law school. He went Harvard Law and was elected as the first coloured person to be editor of the student-run Harvard Law Review. According to someone who was part the Review and a student at the same time, there was strong racial tension because, for the first time, there was a large number of African Americans at in the Law school. I'm not sure if it was a majority, but this person mentioned there was a strong sense of finally achieving something for African Americans. Obama won the position of president of the Review and the Democrat and African American contingent thought they would sew up all the important positions. Something that had not happened for a long time.
Obama, however, put some white Republicans in key positions because they were the best at those jobs. These were people that he had engaged in the past, but it alienated some of the African American/Democrat supporters, including the person relating the story.
This suggested to me a few things. The first is that Barack Obama knows how to get the best people working together. The second is that he knows how to write. I'm glad he's been able to publish honest opinions and show a willingness to change those ideas if they turn out to be flawed.
Interesting stuff about the CBC profile, Chris. Thanks for taking the time to type all that up!!
Another thing mentioned in an interview I just read with Obama is that he believes that he has a healthy ego and that that fact allows him to hire smart people, even if he thinks that they're smarter than him! Bush's criteria always seemed to be finding people who believed the same things as he did (intelligence never seemed to enter into it).
I think Obama is going to aim high in his first year, but I'm not sure that the American people are ready for just how much may be asked of them as a result. In this time of crisis, their new president won't simply be imploring them to demonstrate their patriotism by "going shopping" (as his predecessor did) but rather by making sacrifices for the greater good (including the welfare of future generations). I hope they're all up to it, but I have my doubts.
Leadership is an interesting thing - if Obama can promote a culture of "doing the right thing", starting with himself, there may be a big change. The doom-and-gloom of the economic crises, people that lost their houses and jobs may coupled with that example may cause them to examine what the did wrong. Hopefully they'll come to the conclusion it was borrowing all that money!
Some of Obama's budgetary comments are frightening - talk of trillion-dollar deficits for years after the recession. Hopefully he can create stimulus and infrastructure projects that don't mortgage the country's future for 4 or 5 generations. Deficit financing is fine, as long as the belt-tightening-during-good-times happens. Most governments can't resist using increasing income to make better programs, rather than using that surplus to pay down the deficit. The Chretien gov't was the only one I can recall that accomplished that, but they were only able to do that because the previous gov't was different party.
It will be very interesting to watch no matter happens.
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