Books by Barack Obama

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance  / The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

By Barack Obama

Book Review by Kam Williams

After Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. delivered the keynote speech at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, he was heralded as the future of the party, a rising black star who might one day ascend to the presidency. But Ford’s political career appears to have flamed out prematurely with his recent unsuccessful run for the Senate in his home State of Tennessee.

Already poised to assume the mantle of the promising black Messiah is Barack Obama, another up-and-comer who, like Ford and Barbara Jordan before him, was catapulted into the limelight courtesy of a charismatic keynote speech at the convention. And since Obama has hinted that he might throw his hat into the ring in 2008, some might want to get a sense of what makes the Junior Senator from Illinois tick.

 You can find his middle-of-the-road philosophy quite eloquently explained in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, an optimistic assessment of the state of the union. Clintonesque in tone, starting with its title, the book is evocative of the ex-President’s “I still believe in a little place called Hope” slogan from both of his successful presidential campaigns.

 This tame tome, ostensibly carefully crafted with the intent of being all things to all people, unfortunately ends up reading like little more than the transparent game plan of guileful politician. He’s clearly courting both Republicans and Democrats, here, by praising President Reagan as much as he does FDR.

When discussing racism, he comes off as no liberal, but more in the “content of your character” camp as advocated by African-American neo-cons like Shelby Steele and John McWhorter. In this regard, he has no problem putting the onus on blacks to accommodate themselves to the mainstream culture, because “members of every minority group continue to be measured largely by the degree of our assimilation.”

Obama goes on to conclude that “the single biggest thing” we could do to reduce inner-city poverty “is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock.” If these sort of simplistic “blaming the victim” pronouncements are truly Barack’s best ideas on how to reclaim the American Dream, I suggest he keep dreaming.

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Other Responses

Barack Obama articles on Black Agenda Report: Since his days in the Illinois state legislature Barack Obama's position on health care has consistently devolved.  Once a bold champion of medical care as a human right, Senator and presidential candidate Obama has become a timid advocate of failed "market-based" health care solutions . . . Hypocrisy on Health Care by Bruce Dixon  White fears that Obama will reawaken the tragically unfinished revolutions of Reconstruction and Civil Rights are further soothed by his claim that most black Americans have been "pulled into the economic mainstream" (pp. 248-49). Never mind that blacks are afflicted with a shocking racial wealth gap that keeps their average

net worth at one eleventh (!) that of whites and an income structure starkly and persistently tilted towards poverty.  Obama's Audacious Deference to Power by Paul Street  / 

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Excerpts from Prologue

It’s been almost ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five at the time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient with life. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that I run, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as a community organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with my wife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: I talked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version of the same two questions.

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I suspect that some readers may find my presentation of these issues to be insufficiently balanced. To this accusation, I stand guilty as charged. I am a Democrat, after all; my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal. I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs–including my own–on nonbelievers. Furthermore, I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.

But that is not all that I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers. 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. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.

Source: Random House

posted 2 February 2007

updated 13 January 2007