David Greenberg: What their books tell us about the presidential candidates
[David Greenberg teaches at Rutgers University and writes for Slate. His books include Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image and Calvin Coolidge.]
... Many writers have discussed the difference in tone between [Barack Obama's recent book, The Audacity of Hope and his] first book, Dreams from My Father (1995), which was written before his political career began and hurried back into print during his 2004 Senate run. As Andrew Ferguson wrote witheringly in the Weekly Standard: “Audacity is an infinitely weaker, duller book than its predecessor, and its single interesting revelation is unintentional: . . . we have lost a writer and gained another politician.” The judgment, it must be said, cannot be dismissed as mere partisan denigration. If anything, I think, Ferguson overpraised Dreams from My Father, possibly to establish the contrast at the heart of his essay.
Yet the discrepancy is real enough. And it raises an interesting question: Which book is likelier to prove a reliable guide to how Obama would function as president? Does the earlier book, less tainted by political calculation, reveal some purer self, whose cares and dispositions would inexorably make themselves felt when it comes time to govern? Or has the pressure to posture and calibrate and spin become so all-consuming as to erase any line between campaigning and governing that might once have existed? If this is so, and I think it is, then The Audacity of Hope, full as it is of the usual (if slightly more lyrical) boilerplate, is actually the better window into an Obama presidency, because, politics being a part of governance, once in office Obama wouldn’t be reverting to some prior, truer, uncorrupted self. This conclusion is grounds for disappointment, because in the end The Audacity of Hope is a hesitant and overly careful book, quite lacking in any measure of audacity.
Obama comes across as a man who wants to bare his soul but can’t bring himself to do so. Instead, he ends up seeming like a man who is pretending to bare his soul. The book’s false notes call into question the resonance of what had seemed like true notes. For example, Obama offers a glimpse of a rare and genuine-sounding self-deprecation when, describing his first days in the Senate away from home, he tells of phoning his daughter in Chicago to ask what’s new, only to hear her blasé reply, “Since you called before? . . . Nothing. You wanna talk to Mommy?” But it would be much easier to admire little stories like these if Obama didn’t also fill the book with dollops of unpersuasive false modesty, like referring to his “thoroughly cockeyed idea of running for the United States Senate” in 2004—a line that contains a hint of condescension, because all leaps into national politics are a gamble, and Obama, given his talents, was actually a plausible and compelling candidate from the start.
The dominant quality of Audacity of Hope is its caution, its painstaking desire not to offend. Ideas are mulled, not argued, with a studied thoughtfulness conspicuously on display. Like a metronome, the line of reasoning shifts back and forth between one side of an issue and the other, alternative paragraphs beginning with “Nevertheless,” “Still,” “I don’t want to exaggerate . . . ,” “The critics have a point . . . ” This diligent recognition of all sides of an argument usually leads Obama to moderate-liberal positions on the issues—most of them thoroughly inoffensive as policy prescriptions. It also locates him in a high-minded tradition within Democratic politics, embodied by such men as Adlai Stevenson and Gene McCarthy, that prefers to transcend conflicts rather than win them.
EQUALLY IMPORTANT, the device also seeks to take the sting out of any right-wing (or left-wing) assaults on Obama’s own positions; to a degree, it implicitly disarms them. For in preemptively voicing each dissent on behalf of imagined naysayers, Obama renders them less hostile and less threatening. He makes those who would then remain dissatisfied with his putatively consensus conclusions appear to be intolerant or inflexible....
Read entire article at Dissent (Fall Edition)
... Many writers have discussed the difference in tone between [Barack Obama's recent book, The Audacity of Hope and his] first book, Dreams from My Father (1995), which was written before his political career began and hurried back into print during his 2004 Senate run. As Andrew Ferguson wrote witheringly in the Weekly Standard: “Audacity is an infinitely weaker, duller book than its predecessor, and its single interesting revelation is unintentional: . . . we have lost a writer and gained another politician.” The judgment, it must be said, cannot be dismissed as mere partisan denigration. If anything, I think, Ferguson overpraised Dreams from My Father, possibly to establish the contrast at the heart of his essay.
Yet the discrepancy is real enough. And it raises an interesting question: Which book is likelier to prove a reliable guide to how Obama would function as president? Does the earlier book, less tainted by political calculation, reveal some purer self, whose cares and dispositions would inexorably make themselves felt when it comes time to govern? Or has the pressure to posture and calibrate and spin become so all-consuming as to erase any line between campaigning and governing that might once have existed? If this is so, and I think it is, then The Audacity of Hope, full as it is of the usual (if slightly more lyrical) boilerplate, is actually the better window into an Obama presidency, because, politics being a part of governance, once in office Obama wouldn’t be reverting to some prior, truer, uncorrupted self. This conclusion is grounds for disappointment, because in the end The Audacity of Hope is a hesitant and overly careful book, quite lacking in any measure of audacity.
Obama comes across as a man who wants to bare his soul but can’t bring himself to do so. Instead, he ends up seeming like a man who is pretending to bare his soul. The book’s false notes call into question the resonance of what had seemed like true notes. For example, Obama offers a glimpse of a rare and genuine-sounding self-deprecation when, describing his first days in the Senate away from home, he tells of phoning his daughter in Chicago to ask what’s new, only to hear her blasé reply, “Since you called before? . . . Nothing. You wanna talk to Mommy?” But it would be much easier to admire little stories like these if Obama didn’t also fill the book with dollops of unpersuasive false modesty, like referring to his “thoroughly cockeyed idea of running for the United States Senate” in 2004—a line that contains a hint of condescension, because all leaps into national politics are a gamble, and Obama, given his talents, was actually a plausible and compelling candidate from the start.
The dominant quality of Audacity of Hope is its caution, its painstaking desire not to offend. Ideas are mulled, not argued, with a studied thoughtfulness conspicuously on display. Like a metronome, the line of reasoning shifts back and forth between one side of an issue and the other, alternative paragraphs beginning with “Nevertheless,” “Still,” “I don’t want to exaggerate . . . ,” “The critics have a point . . . ” This diligent recognition of all sides of an argument usually leads Obama to moderate-liberal positions on the issues—most of them thoroughly inoffensive as policy prescriptions. It also locates him in a high-minded tradition within Democratic politics, embodied by such men as Adlai Stevenson and Gene McCarthy, that prefers to transcend conflicts rather than win them.
EQUALLY IMPORTANT, the device also seeks to take the sting out of any right-wing (or left-wing) assaults on Obama’s own positions; to a degree, it implicitly disarms them. For in preemptively voicing each dissent on behalf of imagined naysayers, Obama renders them less hostile and less threatening. He makes those who would then remain dissatisfied with his putatively consensus conclusions appear to be intolerant or inflexible....