Rohkeus toivoa : ajatuksia amerikkalaisen unelman pelastamisesta

I had to. I just had to. After the horribly awful election last week, I had to listen to this book. I had bought it years ago but it had sat on my shelf. After the election, I grabbed the audiobook from my library's OverDrive site and sped through Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico listening to it.

My first reaction was incredible sadness that this man will no longer be our president in a few short months. His thoughts on government, politics, and America are uniquely intelligent, empathetic, measured, and reasonable. They make sense, and I dearly needed some sense this past week.

Ultimately, I also felt hope, because this man is and was my president, and had worked to make our country better -- not just for the rich and privileged, but for everybody. And I have hope because he showed that most people just want the same things, and that we can all find common ground. ( )

As I write this, we are two years into a new administration, one that is in stark contrast to the previous administration. Frankly, I prefer the tone and direction of the Obama administration over the Trump administration. I prefer Barack Obama's qualities as a man and President over our current President. While I had not read The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream prior to Barack Obama taking office, I wish I had. I am confident I would have been able to support his agenda more. The Audacity of Hope clearly outlined his agenda and it was about hope. It was about raising the standard of living for everyone and I mean everyone. This is in direct contrast to the agenda of the man currently in office. Read more ( )

This is actually a re-read. The first time I read this, it was right after President Obama was elected, but had not yet taken office. I wanted to learn more about the man who I had supported through that election season and had been elected to lead the nation.

Most of the book holds up. What we've learned about President Obama after eight years of leadership matches what was in the book. Though dedicated to public service, he is also a family man. His focus is more on others than himself, which is also a fault, and one he admits to with regards to his family. The biggest thing that struck me this time around was how...naive...he was. How naive we all were. We knew there were still race issues in this country, but this is a man who had to deal with him being hung in effigy on a daily basis. The birther conspiracy because of his name. The constant attacks on his religion. Even more disappointing is the idea of bipartisanship. With his election came the formation of the Tea Party within the Republican Party, which proceeded to eliminate moderates and put in as many ultra-conservatives as possible and transformed the Republican Party into the "Party of No" and gridlocked congress in a way it had not been gridlocked since the Civil War. I don't think I'll be able to re-read this book again in the future, as the politics are of a bygone era. May as well talk about Whigs and Tories for all the change that has since occurred. ( )

I didn't like it because it was fiction parading as non-fiction, from the story to the author. William Ayers wrote this book, not Obama. And it's filled from the first page to the last with evasions, omissions, obfuscations, skirtings of the truth, and outright lies. ( )

This was a surprisingly interesting book. It was an odd combination of personal anecdotes and policy proposals. Odd, for me, because, when I read about politics, I am used to more abstract, academic fare. The anecdotes lend a certain weight to the proposals. You don't just learn what Obama's political positions are, but also why he holds those positions. It's also quite well written.

This adds a similar weight to his (better-known) speeches as well. For example, when Obama talks about bipartisanship, he really means it. Having read this book, I can see how they are those lines in his speeches are not just (for him) empty platitudes. He seems to really mean them, because in the book, he gives not just the position but an argument for the position and specific, concrete reasons for it, on both a policy level and a personal level. The time and effort he puts into his arguments here (and, in my opinion, their effectiveness) strongly suggest that he's completely sincere.

His sincerity (on the issue of bipartisanship) is further supported by a recent news story I read where he asked Congressional Democrats to make further compromises on a stimulus bill, in order to get more Republican votes, even though the Democrats already had enough votes to win. I get the impression that a lot of people have heard him speak, but few have yet taken what he's said seriously. Had Democrats on the Hill complaining bothered to read his book, they might not have been surprised.

I was struck by how often he used variations on the phrase 'a new consensus'. If you take his arguments seriously, then this would mean that, for Obama, compromise is not a means, it's an end. That is, he's not a centrist is the mold of Bill Clinton, willing to compromise in order to achieve and stay in power and maybe do some good in the meantime. Obama, on the other hand, presents compromise as a goal with value in itself.

Compromise is itself a virtue in two senses. First, more generally, compromise is what democracy is all about, the very process itself. To dismiss it as merely a means to an end is to dismiss democracy itself in the same way. Second, compromise is a virtue for the sake of progressive causes as well. Changes and improvements achieved by compromise--a compromise that takes the form of a 'new consensus'--have the capacity to have vastly more impact and staying power. Why simply change a law (when the next time the other guys are in power they'll just change it back), when you can change peoples minds (the common consensus) instead. This isn't just pie-in-the-sky naivete, but a political strategy for lasting, effective change. By way of precedent, FDR didn't just enact the reforms of the New Deal, he was able to forge a common consensus between Democrats and moderate Republicans that lasted (at least) 50 years. Johnson did the same thing with the Voting Rights Act. The point isn't that everyone has to agree and sing songs around the campfire, but only that enough people agree for long enough that the reform in question becomes a basic assumption for future political discourse.

It will be fascinating to see if he will be able to get it to work.

Anyone interested in American politics would benefit from this book. Whether you agree with his goals or not, this book goes a long way to explaining his strategies and motives. ( )