Article: Obama's The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative

Review by By David Walsh
14 February 2007


The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama, New York: Crown Publishers, 375 pp.

Is there a single honest or original thought in Barack Obama’s new book? If so, it does not immediately come to mind.

The Illinois junior senator and Democratic Party presidential hopeful’s The Audacity of Hope is a calculated effort, from its title to its final page, designed to demonstrate his readiness to take the reins of political power in the US. That is to say, while Obama directs portions of his book toward sections of the more well-heeled and complacent Democratic Party faithful, those most inclined to wishful thinking, the audience that primarily concerns him consists of the powerful corporate, financial and media figures who organize and ultimately shape the campaigns of the two major parties’ candidates.

Obama was born in Honolulu to a white American mother (born in Kansas) and a black Kenyan father; his parents separated when he was a child. His mother, an anthropologist, remarried and moved to Jakarta. After spending a number of years in Indonesia, Obama lived with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii. He graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983. Two years later, he moved to Chicago to direct a non-profit project that organized job-training programs.

Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988, eventually becoming president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked for a law firm and taught at the University of Chicago law school before running for the Illinois state senate in 1996. He won a seat in the US Senate in 2004.

Obama uses his ethnicity as a kind of unspoken metaphor for his political approach. Here is a man, the message is intended to convey, who is white and black, liberal and conservative, foreign and American, a man above party ideology and the petty bickering of partisan politics.

In his book, he pursues this theme consistently. “I am a Democrat,” he tells his readers on page 10, “my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal,” and he goes on to enumerate some of the issues that make him a Democrat. “But,” he quickly adds, “that is not all that I am.... I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised.... I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military.”

more at the link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/obam-f14_prn.shtml

But not until I get over the audacity of him running for president. :puke: