Reading Obama's Audacity of Hope, Part I

Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. NY: Crown Publishers, 2006. 375 pp.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Obama writes very well. No co-author is listed anywhere and he writes much as he speaks so I assume these are all his words. It took me longer than I expected to finish the book. The writing is a pleasure to read so it wasn’t a matter of having to slog through. Quite the contrary, much of what I read was sufficiently engaging and thought-provoking that I would have to stop and savor or absorb what he says.

There are nine chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue (also acknowledgements and an index).

Prologue

As any good prologue does, this one introduces the book, why he is writing it, and so on. He provides a very succinct overview of his political philosophy on pages 1 and 2, as a response to those who ask why he, or anyone, would want to get involved in anything as nasty as politics. He says:

“In response, I would usually smile and nod and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was – and always had been – another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve very problem, but we can get something meaningful done.”

He lays out his overarching policy statements in a very simple way. Each of these items opens up a huge can of worms but finding common ground to start with is the best beginning and we can wrestle with such things as merit pay for teachers versus seniority and health care plans a few steps down the road. But this is a good start:

If anything, what struck me was just how modest people’s hopes were, and how much of what they believed seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class. Most of them thought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a living wage. They figured that people shouldn’t have to file for bankruptcy because they got sick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education – that it shouldn’t just be a bunch of talk – and that those same children should be able to go to college even if their parents weren’t rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals and terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water, and time with their kids. And when the got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect.

Okay, I can sign on to all of those things. He isn’t calling for free tuition at Harvard, just the ability to go to college, not free health care, just options other than bankruptcy.

One of the things I like best about this book is his repeated discussion of finding common values and working from those. His book is not, as many political works are, divisive or aimed to incite one particular base (or, if it is, I’m part of that base and don’t see it).

He addresses some of that in this passage from p. 7:

”You don’t need a poll to know that the vast majority of Americans – Republican, Democrat, and independent – are weary of the dead zone that politics has become, in which narrow interests vie for advantage and ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth. Whether we’re from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor, and common sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a continuous menu of false or cramped choices.”

It is almost impossible to separate our beliefs from our life experiences and Obama acknowledges that, by calling himself a prisoner of his own biography (p.10).

Chapter One: Republicans and Democrats

The first chapter gives an overview of partisanship and a general political history of the country, especially in his lifetime and devoting a lot of space to the Reagan and Clinton years. He talks especially about the increase of incivility and partisanship. In such a small number of pages there is only so much he can cover and his goal is not to provide a complete history, but to provide a structure to his discussion, mixed in with his own views and philosophy. For example, this section from p. 22 struck me because, I too, become weary of pronouncements that we live in the worst of times:

”When Democrats run up to me at events and insist that we live in the worse of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.”

He declines to return partisanship for partisanship, spelled out on p. 41-42.

”There are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way – in their own lives at least – to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves.”

He provides a very thought-provoking list of examples that I would encourage you to read.

Chapter Two: Values

On page 45 he has an excellent description of the president. Having met George W. Bush I would agree with his observations.

Again, a theme in this chapter is that the dividing lines in American society are products of political parties and the media more than easily found lines in residential and business communities. He talks about the things we as citizens of this county hold dear, regardless of our political, religious, sexual, or other orientation. He quotes from the Declaration of Independence and talks about how American values have become clearer to him for having lived and visited with family in Indonesia and Kenya. As one example of starting from common values when working on contentious policy he discusses a bill he introduced into the state legislature to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessionals in capital cases. In sitting down with all the parties involved, police, prosecutors, public defenders, death penalty opponents, and others, they started with the view that no innocent person should end up on death row. All were agreed on that, and worked their way down into the specifics. In places the bill was modified. Against the odds and predictions, it passed.

From here he ventures into dangerous waters. I agree with him on what he said but understand why it gets him into trouble. He says that Democrats should not be afraid to discuss social values and preferences, even when we do not think these values should be written into law. The examples he uses are advertisements on television during sports events that families might watch together and the mores of television characters, whether real or imagined. He is not suggesting that we legislate what is shown but that people show better judgment. As a contrast he points out the conservative blind spot when it comes to executive pay.

He ends the chapter with a discussion of values on the campaign trail and some remembrances of lessons learned from his mother and grandparents and how some of his values evolved as he matured. He ends with some very good points (p. 68):

When I was a community organizer, way back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighborhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy, and money. Those are the true tests of what we value, I’d tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren’t willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.