The Obama Oeuvre
The history of lead reviewers over the past half century or so at The Washington Post Book World is illustrious: Geoffrey Wolff, William McPherson and Jonathan Yardley with editors of the stature of Brigitte Weeks, Nina King and Marie Arana.
The incumbent, Carlos Lozada, is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the acclaimed What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era which involved reading 150 books by or about Donald Trump. For that alone, Lozada deserves our appreciation and maybe to have his head examined.
So, when Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land was published last month, I was surprised to see this tweet from Carlos: “I get the feeling that no matter how many books he writes, Barack Obama’s best book will always be the one that came first.”
As the publisher 25 years ago of Dreams from My Father, I took his observation as a preemptive, gentle put-down of the new book. Lozada’s review of the memoir in the Post was very positive but parsed. The closing line said the book has two impulses: “hope tempered by caution; caution streaked with hope — capture the promise of A Promised Land.”
I have now read the book, all 700 densely packed pages. For what it is worth, a great many readers would do well to listen to the audiobook, which Obama reads (my wife’s choice) or put it on a device where the type font can be enlarged if that is your preference.
As to my judgment? With respect Carlos, this book is better than Dreams. The writer is a quarter century older with experiences and introspective skills he could not possibly have had as a young state senator and community organizer.
I have read, edited and published scores of memoirs by major political figures from the White House, the Kremlin, the Pentagon, Congress, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. This is unquestionably the most thoughtful and personal of those books because it is so clearly a book that Obama wrote himself — doubtless with the assistance of researchers, input from Michelle, friends, aides and the craft of his editor Rachel Klayman at Crown.
It is that good because it is real, which means there are pages of political battles, policy issues and frustration with the media that are, I suspect, less scintillating than a scandal-driven tell-all would be. But they do a remarkable job of explaining how things work in Washington and what it truly feels like to be the President of the United States of America.
Anyone drawn to this book will know that our political process is messy, cynical and disappointing. Yet it is the way things get done. If we’ve learned nothing else in the last four years (and we have actually learned a great deal) governing by attempted fiat with contempt for democracy is not tolerable.
If there is an assessment of the Obama presidency to be made, it can be said that he was, on the whole, reasonable, moderate in temperament and grounded emotionally to his family. He did, however, sneak smokes and chew gum non-stop. If he bit his nails, that is not mentioned.
The memoir is a genuine effort to tell us what went on as this man of mixed race with a funny name (Hussein? Obama-Osama?) and little experience in national politics dealt with power that is vast but hardly unlimited. In a section called “In the Barrel”, he describes what it was like when the establishment decided to take Obama down a few pegs. He recognized that winning the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office came with a cost of inevitable criticism. His comment that a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer handcuffing Henry Lewis Gates on his own doorstep had acted “stupidly” cost him white support in polling, he writes, that never was recouped.
The book reveals that he identifies as Black and was raised by a white mother and grandparents. But his racial awareness, his responses to events and his sensitivity to the underlying biases he regularly encountered were constant factors in his mind.
At one point, he sends Vice President Biden to Capitol Hill to negotiate with Sen. Mitch McConnell knowing that on some level the Republican thought of Obama as, he writes, a “Black, Muslim, socialist” which, of course, he would vehemently deny.
Throughout the book, Obama interjects flashes of his exchanges with Michelle, Sasha and Malia. He goes further than any other major political figure I can recall in discussing how his pressurized life and ambition impacted his marriage. At first, I thought the cute exchanges with the daughters was cloying until I realized that the banter was essential to keeping the family on track.
His back-and-forth with aides like David Axelrod, Reggie Love and photographer Pete Souza and even his way of handling the volcanic Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, reflects a man whose spirit was revived by feeling that he could hang out with the people who reported to him and not lose his authority.
The eight years of the Obama administration will probably be regarded as relatively calm by American standards, not a single scandal of the Watergate, Iran-Contra, Clinton impeachment variety. Yes, there were major crises like the Great Recession and foreign challenges that were unmet or mismanaged in places like Syria and Libya. And getting the Affordable Care Act carried a high political price along with other policy initiatives that defied the GOP’s determination to make Obama a one-term president. What Obama has recorded with a writer’s detail and flair is just how hard it is to be a good president.
There is already a tally being done on whether Barack’s book will sell as well as Michelle’s global blockbuster. My guess is it will not. Those lengthy policy passages in which he takes his sweet time demand some patience for a reader. And, as a rule, first lady memoirs do better than the presidents’. That was definitely the case with Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush, whose husband George H.W. did not even bother to try to compete.
Let me say again, A Promised Land is as good a book as any of us have a right to expect from our President. This is yet another contribution to our national legacy and understanding by that fellow with the funny name.
