The Audacity of Hope
Well, since all anyone seems to be talking about these days is Barack Obama (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), I thought now would be as good a time as any to review his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope.
Let me start by being clear what the book is not. It's not the sort of candid memoir his first book was. This book is clearly more calculated and self-conscious. Nor is it an attempt at issue advocacy. Obama discusses a number of substantive issues in the book, but he doesn't dwell on them and he's clearly not trying to win the debate over those issues right here and now.
The book is--and I think Obama would admit this if pressed--a marketing device; it's an attempt to establish the Obama brand and make a few bucks while doing so. What makes the effort tolerable, however, is that it does not seem to be the calculated handiwork of political consultants and professional image-makers. The book is clearly a sales pitch, but it seems to be Obama's own personal sales pitch. It's his attempt to explain who he is and why he believes what he believes. And he's a very talented writer, so he's able to maintain an engaging, conversational tone throughout. You come away from the book, at least the better chapters, feeling like you've got a better sense of who Obama is. In short, Obama does an excellent job humanizing himself in the book.
On the one hand, he comes across as ambitious, confident in his abilities and beliefs, and somewhat restless, all of which you'd pretty much have to be to even consider running for president. But he also comes across as someone who understands just how lucky he's been, who appreciates how many things had to break his way in order for him to be in the position he is today. And he doesn't seem to harbor any illusions that he is destined for greatness or that his continued success is somehow pre-ordained or inevitable. This is perhaps his most endearing quality. He comes across as genuinely startled by his meteoric rise to national prominence, and he doesn't seem to be taking anything for granted. In this respect, he presents a stark contrast to our current president, who has made it clear time and again that he feels God himself put him in office in order to carry out His will.
What I found to be the most frustrating aspect of the book is the way Obama chooses to frame his dicussion of the substantive issues. Invariably, Obama begins each discussion with a long colloquy of 'one the one hand/on the other hand' type observations. He seems to go out of his way to present even those views with which he strongly disagrees as being, on at least some level, reasonable. To be sure, Obama always gets around to explaining where he stands eventually, and it's usually in a pretty good place, but at times you just wish he would state what he believes and move on to the next topic, rather than endlessly dancing around the issue.
The farther I got into the book, though, the more sympathy I developed for what Obama was trying to do. A simple fact of life is that a lot of people believe a lot of very unreasonable things. As Obama points out at one point, we live in a country where more people believe in angels than in evolution. And Obama seems to be keenly aware that if you treat people's beliefs as silly or unserious (even when they clearly are) it can be a real impediment to persuasion. What Obama has is a gift for making people feel that he respects their beliefs, even when he disagrees with them. As a litigator and blogger, I grow impatient when ignorance and flawed logic are indulged, even if just rhetorically. But that doesn't mean I can't see the wisdom in Obama's approach.
Indeed, his relentless even-handedness actually obscures to some degree just how solidly liberal his political beliefs are with respect to most issues. Nonetheless, it's clear that Obama is trying to walk a very delicate line. On the one hand, in order to be successful as a national candidate, he needs to be able to appeal to independents, moderates, and others who do not reliably vote Democratic. And Obama clearly believes that the way to do this is by trying to stay above the fray as much as possible, to present himself as the antidote to the kind of "slash and burn" politics we've come to expect. On some level he also perceives, no doubt, that projecting this aura of reasonability is crucial if he wishes to maintain his standing among the press corps and Beltway elite, which, fairly or not, is a very important consideration for anyone seeking the presidency.
But Obama's rhetorical style, such as it is, risks alienating many of the newly influential activists and opinion-makers on the left, particularly when Obama attempts to establish his moderate credentials by contrasting himself with more extreme left-wing positions.
For example, Chris Bowers at MyDD wrote a post on Monday criticizing Obama for this very thing. Bowers, who worked for Obama's Senate campaign, took issue with Obama's habit of contrasting his own position with less reasonable positions supposedly held by those to his left. Bowers suggested that by using these "left wing strawmen," Obama is perpetuating right-wing caricatures of liberal positions. Bowers has a point, but one I ultimately find unpersuasive.
I think what Obama's doing is very different than what, say, Joe Lieberman does. Obama is not claiming that the positions he disagrees with are held by a majority of Democrats or even a prominent minority. And he's not trying to tack rightward in order to be perceived as a "centrist." What he's doing is triangulating against a fringe position and thereby making the mainstream Democratic position, which he holds, seem entirely moderate by comparison. Republicans do this all the time, and it can be quite effective. By comparing their actual positions to fringe right-wing positions, they are able to shift the entire debate to the right and make extreme positions seem moderate and sensible.
But I suspect that there's more to Obama's rhetorical style than raw political calculation. His desire to appear reasonable to all people at all times seems to be as much psychological as it is political. Obama strikes me as the kind of person who wants to be liked by everyone. I know the type. He's a friendly, outgoing, very personable guy, the kind of person who thinks that, if given the opportunity, he can win over just about anyone. We all know people like this, people who lose sleep over the thought that someone out there might not like them. This an endearing quality in many ways, but it may also be a bit of a political liability.
Obama has so far managed to avoid creating any real enemies (which is a testament both to his skill as a politician and to the relatively short amount of time he's spent in the national spotlight). He's received rock star treatment by the public and has managed to secure the most consistently favorable press coverage I've ever seen of a Democratic politician. But should he manage to win the Democratic nomination, all of that will change overnight. Suddenly he will find the full weight of the Republican political machine bearing down on him. He will be relentlessly attacked, mocked, and slandered, even by people who he thought were his friends. And this will be his true test. We've never seen anything but the affable, light-hearted, agreeable Obama. But when the Swift Boaters surface, and they always do, Obama will have to show us another side of himself. If he doesn't, he'll never make it.
Just this week, news of Obama's unfortunate middle name ("Hussein") has started to make the rounds of the right wing blogs. It's not hard to see where that will lead. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Obama has to be prepared to deal with the kind of muck that is going to get thrown at him. He won't be able to just laugh it all off (though I would suggest trying to laugh off the middle-name issue, and the sooner the better; maybe a joke along the lines of "at least my parents didn't go with their first choice: Hitler")
The Audacity of Hope is a good read in that it gives you a good sense of who Obama is, what motivates him, and what kind of campaign he is likely to run, if he runs. I think most people who bother to read it will come away with a favorable impression of the man. What the book does not provide, however, is any real insight into how Obama is likely to react under the intense pressure of a presidential campaign. But perhaps I'm being unfair; I'm not sure anyone can really know how they will react to something like that until it happens. This really is the big question mark with Obama, however. Unlike other candidates, he hasn't been subjected to the sort of scrutiny and negativity that comes with a fiercely constested election. How will he react when his gameplan needs to be revised at some crucial point in the contest? What will happen when Obama's new kind of politics runs head-on into his opponents' old kind of politics?
My instinct is not to underestimate Obama. If I had to bet, I'd bet that he has what it takes to rise to the occasion, despite his relative lack of political experience. I'd like to see that, because I think that, more than any other candidate, Obama has the potential to transform politics as we know it, to really shake things up. As the title of his book implies, sometimes you just have to have the audacity to hope that change lies just around the corner.
Let me start by being clear what the book is not. It's not the sort of candid memoir his first book was. This book is clearly more calculated and self-conscious. Nor is it an attempt at issue advocacy. Obama discusses a number of substantive issues in the book, but he doesn't dwell on them and he's clearly not trying to win the debate over those issues right here and now.
The book is--and I think Obama would admit this if pressed--a marketing device; it's an attempt to establish the Obama brand and make a few bucks while doing so. What makes the effort tolerable, however, is that it does not seem to be the calculated handiwork of political consultants and professional image-makers. The book is clearly a sales pitch, but it seems to be Obama's own personal sales pitch. It's his attempt to explain who he is and why he believes what he believes. And he's a very talented writer, so he's able to maintain an engaging, conversational tone throughout. You come away from the book, at least the better chapters, feeling like you've got a better sense of who Obama is. In short, Obama does an excellent job humanizing himself in the book.
On the one hand, he comes across as ambitious, confident in his abilities and beliefs, and somewhat restless, all of which you'd pretty much have to be to even consider running for president. But he also comes across as someone who understands just how lucky he's been, who appreciates how many things had to break his way in order for him to be in the position he is today. And he doesn't seem to harbor any illusions that he is destined for greatness or that his continued success is somehow pre-ordained or inevitable. This is perhaps his most endearing quality. He comes across as genuinely startled by his meteoric rise to national prominence, and he doesn't seem to be taking anything for granted. In this respect, he presents a stark contrast to our current president, who has made it clear time and again that he feels God himself put him in office in order to carry out His will.
What I found to be the most frustrating aspect of the book is the way Obama chooses to frame his dicussion of the substantive issues. Invariably, Obama begins each discussion with a long colloquy of 'one the one hand/on the other hand' type observations. He seems to go out of his way to present even those views with which he strongly disagrees as being, on at least some level, reasonable. To be sure, Obama always gets around to explaining where he stands eventually, and it's usually in a pretty good place, but at times you just wish he would state what he believes and move on to the next topic, rather than endlessly dancing around the issue.
The farther I got into the book, though, the more sympathy I developed for what Obama was trying to do. A simple fact of life is that a lot of people believe a lot of very unreasonable things. As Obama points out at one point, we live in a country where more people believe in angels than in evolution. And Obama seems to be keenly aware that if you treat people's beliefs as silly or unserious (even when they clearly are) it can be a real impediment to persuasion. What Obama has is a gift for making people feel that he respects their beliefs, even when he disagrees with them. As a litigator and blogger, I grow impatient when ignorance and flawed logic are indulged, even if just rhetorically. But that doesn't mean I can't see the wisdom in Obama's approach.
Indeed, his relentless even-handedness actually obscures to some degree just how solidly liberal his political beliefs are with respect to most issues. Nonetheless, it's clear that Obama is trying to walk a very delicate line. On the one hand, in order to be successful as a national candidate, he needs to be able to appeal to independents, moderates, and others who do not reliably vote Democratic. And Obama clearly believes that the way to do this is by trying to stay above the fray as much as possible, to present himself as the antidote to the kind of "slash and burn" politics we've come to expect. On some level he also perceives, no doubt, that projecting this aura of reasonability is crucial if he wishes to maintain his standing among the press corps and Beltway elite, which, fairly or not, is a very important consideration for anyone seeking the presidency.
But Obama's rhetorical style, such as it is, risks alienating many of the newly influential activists and opinion-makers on the left, particularly when Obama attempts to establish his moderate credentials by contrasting himself with more extreme left-wing positions.
For example, Chris Bowers at MyDD wrote a post on Monday criticizing Obama for this very thing. Bowers, who worked for Obama's Senate campaign, took issue with Obama's habit of contrasting his own position with less reasonable positions supposedly held by those to his left. Bowers suggested that by using these "left wing strawmen," Obama is perpetuating right-wing caricatures of liberal positions. Bowers has a point, but one I ultimately find unpersuasive.
I think what Obama's doing is very different than what, say, Joe Lieberman does. Obama is not claiming that the positions he disagrees with are held by a majority of Democrats or even a prominent minority. And he's not trying to tack rightward in order to be perceived as a "centrist." What he's doing is triangulating against a fringe position and thereby making the mainstream Democratic position, which he holds, seem entirely moderate by comparison. Republicans do this all the time, and it can be quite effective. By comparing their actual positions to fringe right-wing positions, they are able to shift the entire debate to the right and make extreme positions seem moderate and sensible.
But I suspect that there's more to Obama's rhetorical style than raw political calculation. His desire to appear reasonable to all people at all times seems to be as much psychological as it is political. Obama strikes me as the kind of person who wants to be liked by everyone. I know the type. He's a friendly, outgoing, very personable guy, the kind of person who thinks that, if given the opportunity, he can win over just about anyone. We all know people like this, people who lose sleep over the thought that someone out there might not like them. This an endearing quality in many ways, but it may also be a bit of a political liability.
Obama has so far managed to avoid creating any real enemies (which is a testament both to his skill as a politician and to the relatively short amount of time he's spent in the national spotlight). He's received rock star treatment by the public and has managed to secure the most consistently favorable press coverage I've ever seen of a Democratic politician. But should he manage to win the Democratic nomination, all of that will change overnight. Suddenly he will find the full weight of the Republican political machine bearing down on him. He will be relentlessly attacked, mocked, and slandered, even by people who he thought were his friends. And this will be his true test. We've never seen anything but the affable, light-hearted, agreeable Obama. But when the Swift Boaters surface, and they always do, Obama will have to show us another side of himself. If he doesn't, he'll never make it.
Just this week, news of Obama's unfortunate middle name ("Hussein") has started to make the rounds of the right wing blogs. It's not hard to see where that will lead. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Obama has to be prepared to deal with the kind of muck that is going to get thrown at him. He won't be able to just laugh it all off (though I would suggest trying to laugh off the middle-name issue, and the sooner the better; maybe a joke along the lines of "at least my parents didn't go with their first choice: Hitler")
The Audacity of Hope is a good read in that it gives you a good sense of who Obama is, what motivates him, and what kind of campaign he is likely to run, if he runs. I think most people who bother to read it will come away with a favorable impression of the man. What the book does not provide, however, is any real insight into how Obama is likely to react under the intense pressure of a presidential campaign. But perhaps I'm being unfair; I'm not sure anyone can really know how they will react to something like that until it happens. This really is the big question mark with Obama, however. Unlike other candidates, he hasn't been subjected to the sort of scrutiny and negativity that comes with a fiercely constested election. How will he react when his gameplan needs to be revised at some crucial point in the contest? What will happen when Obama's new kind of politics runs head-on into his opponents' old kind of politics?
My instinct is not to underestimate Obama. If I had to bet, I'd bet that he has what it takes to rise to the occasion, despite his relative lack of political experience. I'd like to see that, because I think that, more than any other candidate, Obama has the potential to transform politics as we know it, to really shake things up. As the title of his book implies, sometimes you just have to have the audacity to hope that change lies just around the corner.
posted by A.L. at 11:53 AM
10 Comments:
maybe a joke along the lines of "at least my parents didn't go with their first choice: Hitler"
That would be in astoundingly poor taste, dismissive of his parents, too unserious as to the implications, and just plain offensive to people.
He has to own his name, and that will require some care in expression but I would hope that by this point in his life he knows what his name means to himself and can speak from the heart.
That would be in astoundingly poor taste, dismissive of his parents, too unserious as to the implications, and just plain offensive to people.
He has to own his name, and that will require some care in expression but I would hope that by this point in his life he knows what his name means to himself and can speak from the heart.
For the record, I totally agree. Thought I do think there is room to approach the issue humorously (though hopefully with a little more tact than my "joke")
Great post. Obama's book just moved to the top of my reading list. Maybe you missed your calling AI, as a book reviewer for the Times.
I found your comment "Obama, more than any one else, has a chance to transform politics" interesting. Amidst all your talk of triangulating - measured as his triangulations are - you really think he could change politics? How is he a step up from Pres. Clinton, who was incerdibly charasmatic yet beholden to similar interests and political tactics? I just don't know what you're seeing to think he can effect change - whether he inspires people to be better citizens, or implements policy allowing people to live up to a new, higher standard.
What do you think his priorities are? Will he bring about media fairness? For all his rhetorical gifts, can he open people's eyes and get them to re-evaluate their influences and priorities? That's a tall order, but not too tall for the President of the US, I think. It'll be interesting to watch, that's for sure.
Matty,
I guess I should be a little clearer. When I say that Obama has the potential to transform politics, I don't mean that suddenly politics will cease being politics. What I mean is that Obama has the potential put a new face on policies and a general approach to governing that have been much maligned over the last few decades. He has the charisma to sell a number of important ideas and reforms to the American people. In other words, I envision a scenario where a President Obama is able to accomplish a great deal while in office.
I also think that if he can manage to win the presidency running the type of campaign he is likely to run (virtually 100% hopeful and positive), it could change the way candidates approach campaigning in the future, at least a little bit.
Thanks, AL
Maybe you're right. But I feel of all the things that can happen between now and 2008, an inspiring politician is simply too much to hope for. I guess my capacity to believe in politicians has short-circuited or something. Of course, Obama doesn't need to change the world, he doesn't need to perform miracles, he just needs to change our environment a little, to make it conducive for little things, like affording people to be optimistic about the outcome of policy. I guess that's a realistic expectation.
For those of us who haven't read the book, what does Obama actually believe about, say, abortion rights, gay rights, and the role of the courts in American politics?
What sort of "war on terror" does he think the country should fight?
What is, or what are, the most pressing issues in American politics, according to Obama?
I'm a bit troubled by the superficiality of much of the attention paid to Obama. What exactly is his vision of America in terms of public policy?
I think you'll find that Obama's positions are pretty down the line liberal, even in some of the ways that are no longer en vogue. He's pro choice, pro gay rights, and even pro gun control and anti-death penalty. He was against the war in Iraq from the start (publicly). Generally, I find his policy policians to be pretty hard to take issue with.
I agree with Bowers.
Though there's much to like about Obama, he absolutely does fluff up the rightwing's straw men:
"But what I am suggesting is this — secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.... To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
How can one be unpersuaded about Obama's tendency to throw other Democrats -- and all atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and believers in non-Judeo-Christian religions -- under the bus when he makes these kinds of statements, which validate bogus and destructive rightwing memes?
First, I live in north Illinois and for someone to survive the machine Chicago politics you have to be able to rise to the occassion and to adjust game plans. It's a tough place to come from.
I also think some of his thinking and trying to see both sides, and trying to be liked by both sides in rooted in childhood. He was half and half when that was not as common or accepted as it is now. He also grew up in Jakarta where he was more of an outsider.
Back in Hawii, he lived with his grandparents and had to adjust to that. I think this made him try to be accepted and liked more than if he was born in a full black or white home. Grew up here.
Then his roots and the half of him that was African made him feel different. This I know as being half french. There is a part of you that feel kinship with the other country as well, a curiosity and need to know your other half. Be connected somehow. You always feel like you have half of you here and half there. You have to find away to resolve this split.
This is what gives him his world view and knowledge of global issues. It also gives him his need to try to see other sides of an argument and try to understand that side. And to work with it. Many people confuse this with the Clinton centrist ways and so flag him as a moderate who is not liberal or progressive.
They tend to judge him as sell out and too cozy with the right.
But, it's different. Yes, there is the political reasons. You cannot do things to help yourself if you don't do things this way but, there is more. I do think some progressives are not seeing the real picture and label without knowing or understanding. You cannot get things done if you act like a spoiled ass. Or make quiote like stands i.e. Bush. They don't see this.
I just saw the post above mine. I do want to say that some of the religous aspect is due to him making himself known as a christain due to his knowledge that the right at some point would use his name against him.
The other point is that he is trying to get the dems to update and look at and modernize some things. They do have some reactions and issues that are very 70s. They need to be able to appeal to all voters and not just the base if they re to win.
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