Reviewing Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land”
When Barack Obama was elected president, I was still in elementary school.
I had no knowledge of the contemporary political debates of Washington, nor the magnitude of the global crises unfolding. All I knew was that a historic candidate had won the heart of America.
Driven by a desire to scrutinize this segment of recent American history, I read Obama’s memoir with great interest. Admittedly, I finished it late (nearly five months after the book’s release), but the topics are so wide-ranging that I found it easier to metabolize the book in pieces.
The early chapters are full of detail-ridden stories of Obama’s senatorial and presidential campaigns. Looking back, the story of how a young, thin, African American man with the middle name Hussein went from national obscurity to President of the United States in a matter of a few years is, well, striking on its face.
Obama describes his own rise to power as one borne out of America’s idealism — the hope that we could “tear down walls between classes, races, and religions”. To a degree, it reflected the desire of some Americans to feel atonement for our country’s racial sins and, in electing a black president, to show how far we had come since the bitter policies of slavery and Jim Crow.
Additionally, young Obama spoke about foreign affairs with a diplomatic posture that ran counter to America’s historic hostility to the Arab world. He spoke of the Islamic world’s contributions to Western civilization and called for mutual understanding between the sides. He famously said he would meet with top U.S. adversaries without pre-conditions.
Even though Obama’s presidency did not ultimately resolve these racial, ethnic, and religious legacies, his candidacy did embody fresh dynamism at the time.
Politically speaking, Obama’s unique identity helped mostly in that it elevated his media status as a U.S. Senator and drove enthusiasm for him in the 2008 Democratic primary. But keep in mind that when the general election rolled around, the national political climate heavily favored the Democrats. The massively unpopular Republican president (George W. Bush’s approval rating hovered around 25–30%) was presiding over an economic crisis and the escalation of America’s war in Iraq. It would have been a miracle if Obama didn’t beat John McCain.
Nevertheless, the Obama campaign did motivate young people at an unprecedented level. Voters in the age 18–29 demographic composed a larger share of the electorate in 2008 than in any other U.S. election.
Unsurprisingly, Obama recalls his campaigns with a level of purity that reeks of a politician’s artful revisionism. He acts as though his intentions were always noble and his political calculations minimal. He calls his campaign “consistently positive” and quotes a political consultant who allegedly told him he was “too normal” to run for president.
He claims to have “dreaded” big-dollar fundraisers, but he certainly held plenty of them. His campaign was even fined $375,000 by the FEC for reporting violations, a story that Obama does not mention in the book.
By the shady standards of political campaigns, Obama’s was cleaner than most. Still, his routine dismissal of gaffes, lies, or scandals as merely the creations of a sensationalist media is annoying. The reality is that Obama did raise huge sums of corporate money and made promises to voters that he would go on to break.
The book then turns to his presidency, chronicling his first two and a half years in office (up to May 2011, when Osama bin Laden was killed). He seeks to defend his personnel, economic, and foreign policy choices.
Undoubtedly, the central crisis during Obama’s first term was an economy in free fall. He defends his $800 billion stimulus package as the only politically viable option to deal with the crisis. In hindsight, however, it pales in comparison to the COVID relief bills of 2020 and 2021.
The impact of the stimulus is decidedly murky. The U.S. did avert an outright depression, which was the direction we were heading. But our “recovery” from the recession was painfully slow. The unemployment rate — an imperfect but relevant metric — peaked at 10% in late 2009 and did not drop below 8% until three years later. Many economists, certainly those of Keynesian persuasion, believe that Obama’s approach was too austere, contributing to America’s slow growth.
Moreover, even late in Obama’s recovery, wealth inequality was at a record high and roughly half of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.
All the while, the institutions and executives whose recklessness and greed caused the 2008 crisis suffered little more than a slap on the wrist. The fact that Obama’s cabinet included Wall Street insiders like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin did not strengthen his efforts.
If Obama wanted to twist arms within the Democratic Party to achieve more sweeping economic reforms, I believe he could have done so. He bemoans the constraints of Congress, but his political capital was enormous during his first 100 days (his approval rating held around 65%). At that moment, the anger at Wall Street and the hunger for populist economic reform were visceral. Instead, Obama opted for tweaks around the edges with the stimulus, the stress test, and Dodd-Frank.
So where did he spend most of his political capital? The answer is of course on healthcare. In the book, he makes a strong case for the importance of the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, it was the biggest overhaul of our healthcare system since World War II. The number of uninsured Americans dropped by 20 million. All of the following provisions were excellent: expanding Medicaid, mandating coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, reducing insurance-company overhead, and allowing young people to stay on their parent’s plan until age 26.
Still, Obama campaigned on a public option, and he quickly gave away that farm in order to gain precisely zero Republican votes in the Senate. Despite the law’s moderate nature (right-wing think tanks had previously advocated for an individual mandate system), it became a political lightning rod — a rallying cry against “socialism” that the GOP rode all the way back to power in the 2010 midterms.
The lesson to me is that you might as well pursue the unapologetically progressive option, given that you will be smeared as “radical” by the GOP either way.
Obama’s record on foreign policy was less than stellar in his early years. He surged troop levels in Afghanistan, listening to the supposed wisdom of Defense Secretary Bob Gates. He expanded the use of drones and special operations. He did not close Guantanamo Bay or prosecute the torturers from the Bush administration. In general, he comes across as too deferential to the Pentagon and intelligence leaders — the same military-industrial complex that Obama rightfully questioned when he was the anti-Iraq War candidate.
Finally, there are other failures of leadership that he simply does not address. He could have taken cannabis off of the Schedule 1 list of controlled substances. He could have pardoned whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. He could have performed diplomatic and humanitarian interference in Yemen.
I find frustration with many of the policies of the Obama years. Holistically, though, I do think he ranks in good standing among the presidents of American history.
I must say that he is an incredibly gifted writer and narrator. And after listening to his voice on Audible for 29 hours, I can’t help but be inspired by the man himself. He overcame challenging life circumstances and rose to power with a stoic, intellectual, and fundamentally optimistic demeanor.
At the same time, Obama is contributing to increasingly blurred lines between politicians and celebrities, activism and virtue-signaling, information and entertainment. Is it a good thing that the world’s former most powerful person is now signing Netflix deals and doing a podcast with Bruce Springsteen? Given the weight of his life-and-death decisions, probably not.
The American presidency is such a unique office. Whether we like it or not, the head of state really is a symbolic leader for the country — a projection of our values and an inspiration for young people at home and abroad. In this respect, Obama was a star. And he was such a stark contrast to Trump, who revealed the consequences of a leader failing to extol basic democratic principles (like accepting election results).
Yet as head of government and commander-in-chief of the largest military that humanity has ever known, every president must be held accountable.
In a way, it’s still too soon to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the Obama years. As William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
