Reading Obama's Audacity of Hope, Part II

Picking up where the previous post left off, here are my thoughts on chapters 3-6 of Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope.

Chapter Three: Our Constitution

In this chapter he discusses the senate and the separation of powers. He also goes into detail on laws, and the devil being in the details. Those wanting a brief description of partisanship in relation to judicial nominees and the “nuclear option” regarding filibusters will find this chapter particularly interesting. As a former professor of constitutional law his lengthy and heartfelt review of the Constitution, its history and the development of current interpretation of it. Here are two comments, the first from p.86

And yet for all our disagreements we would be hard pressed to find a conservative or liberal in America today, whether Republican or Democrat, academic or layman, who doesn’t subscribe to the basic set of individual liberties identified by the Founders and enshrined in our Constitution and our common law: the right to speak our minds; the right to worship how and if we wish; the right to peaceably assemble to petition our government; the right to own, buy and sell property and not have it taken without fair compensation; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; the right not to be detained by the state without due process; the right to a fair and speedy trial; and the right to make our own determinations, with minimal restriction regarding family life and the way we raise our children.

And this from p. 96 on slavery:

How can I, an American with the blood of Africa coursing through my veins, chose sides in such a dispute? I can’t. I love America too much, am too invested in what this country has become, too committed to its institutions, its beauty, and even its ugliness, to focus entirely on the circumstances of its birth. But neither can I brush aside the magnitude of the injustice done, or erase the ghosts of generations past, or ignore the open wound, the aching spirit, that ails this country still.

Throughout the chapter, but especially at the beginning (the third page in) and ending he mentions Sen. Robert Byrd, who wrote a multi-volume history of the senate. I won’t give it away, but Byrd’s discussion of one of his few regrets in life is one that must have touched them both.

Chapter Four: Politics

This is my favorite chapter in the book. It is a bluntly honest description of fundraising and campaigning and how those things change people, specifically candidates and elected officials. If you haven’t ever seen the inside of a political race, this will provide a good introduction. It was so well-constructed that I found impossible to pull out any one paragraph or group of sentences that were any better than the others or able to stand on their own without including more of an excerpt than I thought people would want to read. Just go through the whole thing; it’s only 35 pages.

Chapter Five: Opportunity

Obama opens and closes this chapter with stories of what happens when you do and don’t fly on private jets. This comparison was my favorite anecdote (or connected series of anecdotes) in the entire book. I won’t spoil it for you by including any of those stories here. Again, read it yourself. In between he gives a brief history of the role of government in business, education, and energy. Doing so in such a short space means it is only the most cursory of overviews, to provide the structure needed in setting the stage for what is happening today. Later he takes on social security and health care, acknowledging the complexity of these issues and not pretending to come up with quick and easy solutions.

Here is a paragraph from p. 187

Americans are willing to compete with the world. We work harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We are willing to tolerate more economic instability and are willing to take more personal risks to get ahead. But we can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance – and if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall.

He wraps up the chapter with a story about meeting Warren Buffet and talking with him about tax policy. They agreed on the need for the wealthy to pay more, as noted on p. 193:

And perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that’s hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes costs more than the average American’s yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.

Chapter Six: Faith

It has been something of a fad for some Democrats to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeve. Obama doesn’t do that. Instead he gives the development of his own faith and how it has informed his politics. I like this statement as a good summation of what he has to say, from p. 221:

In judging the persuasiveness of various moral claims, we should be on the lookout for inconsistency in how such claims are applied: As a general rule, I am more pronte to listen to those who are as outraged by homelessness as they are by the indecency of music videos. And we need to recognize that sometimes our arguments are less about what is right than bout who makes the final determination – whether we need the coercive arm of the state to enforce our values, or whether the subject is one best left to individual conscience and evolving norms.

He does argue in favor of inviting people of faith into the Democratic Party, and not simply letting the conservative Republicans lay sole claim to votes who profess religious beliefs.