The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

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  To save time, I've taken to listening to unabridged audiobooks when reading is too inconvenient (oh Apple, how much I love you for inventing the iPod!)
  Hearing Obama deliver his own work in that warm Kansas accent of his (in what, incidentally, was a Grammy-winning recording) really added something for me. What is was exactly I cannot say, though I suspect it was trying to hear where Obama put his personal emphasis. The book is part political autobiography, part thinly-disguised presidentia... (show more)

  To save time, I've taken to listening to unabridged audiobooks when reading is too inconvenient (oh Apple, how much I love you for inventing the iPod!)
  Hearing Obama deliver his own work in that warm Kansas accent of his (in what, incidentally, was a Grammy-winning recording) really added something for me. What is was exactly I cannot say, though I suspect it was trying to hear where Obama put his personal emphasis. The book is part political autobiography, part thinly-disguised presidential policy manifesto. It is much stronger - by which I mean more interesting - as the former rather than as the latter. It gives Obama's story of his rise from lowly hack in the Illinois legislature to thrusting young member of the US Senate. Unless you've been living in a dungeon for the last 18 months, you know what came next. Something about "Change we can believe in" apparently.

  Along the way we, the readers, are entreated to his reflections and observations on everything from lobbying, Senate races, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and finding the time for family, to the subject which is the not-so-silent concomitant of Obama's bid: race. Obama's race, a subject with which he himself has dealt more fully in his "Dreams from my father", is at the centre of his appeal because he is able, so he claims, to be a post-race politician. He is not a part with the old politics of race; he can safely reject the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of this world. Some might say that this is because they've done the hard work for him. He was able, after all, to attend both Columbia and Harvard. I'm not qualified to comment. Obama is thoughtful on slavery, what he calls the US's "Orignal Sin" and the Jim Crow segregation that followed its abolition. One gets the impression that it causes him a great deal of sadness that the Founding Fathers, men whom he clearly admires greatly, were not able to see that the central promise of America's revolution, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." et al, applied to the slaves on their own estates. One of the book's many anecdotes concerns his meeting, as a newly elected Senator, with the Senate's then longest-serving member, a former Klansmen from the South who had opposed the Civil Rights measures to which Obama, not surprisingly, attributes the possibility of his political success. The meeting turns out to be warm but there is much that goes unspoken, that must remain so if Obama's message of change is to be anything other than a good line. Nevertheless, it's enough to make you believe in progress again.

  Given that most books written by politicians are ghost-written tripe, Obama stands out all the more for really being able to turn a shapely phrase. Unlike Kennedy, who actually won a Pulitzer prize for his "Profiles in Courage", I have no doubt that Obama wrote every word. That he found the time to write it at all is indeed impressive. He avoids cliches. His style is sober but never ponderous or pedestrian. He seems full of the earnest optimism that persuaded so many people that the US might be faced with a candidate able to transcend the narrow partisanship of its recent domestic politics.

  Then he gets to the policy. Oh dear. Here I'm torn. On the one hand I want to give Obama credit for trying to do justice to the complexities of issues of concern; to abortion, gun control, and the role of the Judiciary in American public life. However, too often I just couldn't escape the feeling that he was simply unwilling to stick his neck out and had resorted to laying out the debate rather than taking sides on it.

  In all, if Obama is actually anything like the portrait of himself contained in this book - in politics never a safe assumption - then he emerges as a highly intelligent, thoughtful observer of the political scene; as a devoted husband and father who can give truly moving testament to the love he feels for his wife and children, not to mention the future he wants for them; but, so far, a policy lightweight offering standard Democrat fare together with the finest rhetoric since Kennedy.Perhaps, then, that is what he will prove to be if he wins: a good man but a bad president. Only time will tell. (show less)

   

   

  by Thomas Nunn on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:36AM

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  In a way that stuns even me, Mr. Obama has inspired and challenged me to re-consider a number of my long-entrenched political views. As a politically homeless, fiscally conservative, socially progressive independent, I've had little reason to care much about either of the old parties' primaries -- and I've certainly not been so intrigued by a candidate in my life time that he makes me wonder if I've been wrong on some issues. I may not agree with Mr. Obama on a lot of things, but there is som... (show more)

  In a way that stuns even me, Mr. Obama has inspired and challenged me to re-consider a number of my long-entrenched political views. As a politically homeless, fiscally conservative, socially progressive independent, I've had little reason to care much about either of the old parties' primaries -- and I've certainly not been so intrigued by a candidate in my life time that he makes me wonder if I've been wrong on some issues. I may not agree with Mr. Obama on a lot of things, but there is something about his approach that makes me stop and consider his views. Getting someone to listen is half the battle. Whether he becomes president in 2008 or 2016 and beynd, he is going to reside in the White House one day. What's on his mind? What's he made of? I want to know more about this guy. (show less)

   

  by Christopher Lancette on Mar 29, 2008 at 01:33AM

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