In the past few weeks, I’ve blogged quite a bit about Barack Obama, especially on the subject of American exceptionalism. As those postings reveal, I’ve grown disenchanted with Obama since voting for him in 2008.
Obama earned my vote in 2008 because of his steadiness in reacting to the financial meltdown and his post-partisan demeanor, as compared to McCain’s unsteadiness in dealing with the meltdown and his selection of Palin for VP. Since 2008, however, Obama has sacrificed his post-partisan demeanor to achieve a big-government agenda, most particularly ObamaCare.
Obama’s policy shift is not difficult to understand. According to an article in the latest issue of Time magazine, Obama dreams of joining the pantheon of America’s six transformational presidents – Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt-1, Roosevelt-2, and Reagan – who were catalysts who challenged the orthodoxy of their time. Whereas Reagan persuaded Americans that government was the problem, Obama wants to persuade Americans that government can be a big part of the solution.
A liberal friend of mine suggested that before I jump to conclusions about Obama’s overarching objectives, I might benefit from reading his book – The Audacity of Hope. In fact, she was dismayed that I hadn’t already read it. The following is what I learned from the book:
Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope in the small window of time between winning election to the U.S. Senate and beginning his run for president. Say what you want about him, the guy does not lack energy or ambition. He wrote his first book – Dreams from My Father – shortly after finishing law school, while working as a lawyer and law professor. Four years later, he successfully runs for the Illinois State Senate and formally begins his life as a professional politician.
In the Prologue of The Audacity of Hope, Obama stakes out his post-partisan position – i.e., that shared ideals and common values of Americans are more significant than the disagreements that politicians and the media amplify.
Chapter One is titled, “Republicans and Democrats.” It elaborates on the disservice done by those who polarize Americans, especially Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. Although Obama admired Reagan’s connection with Americans, Obama disparages Reagan for “his John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote, and his gratuitous assaults on the poor.” (Where I come from, it’s not a good idea to disparage the Duke.) Obama understands Democrats who want “to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics,” but he suggests there was a post-partisan majority waiting to be lead:
- “I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point…. They are there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”
Chapter Two is titled, “Values.” Not surprisingly, Obama posits that “Democrats are wrong to run away from a debate about values.” His starting point with values is Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. After giving props to American individualism as a bedrock value, Obama qualifies that by saying, “Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends…. In every society (and in every individual), these twin strands – the individualistic and the communal, autonomy and solidarity – are in tension.” Obama correctly notes that finding the right balance between our conflicting values is difficult, but then provides an excellent description of why he is a Democrat:
- “That is one of the things that makes me a Democrat, I suppose – this idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, should express themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our families; but also through our government. Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture for the better – or for the worse.”
Chapter Three is titled, “Our Constitution.” Obama taught constitutional law, part-time, at the University of Chicago for ten years after graduating from Harvard. Suffice to say he doesn’t believe in construing the document as it was written. Rather, he prefers to read it as a “living document” to be interpreted by nine wise Supreme Court justices, although he acknowledges that many conservatives view the courts as “the last bastion of pro-abortion, pro-affirmative-action, pro-homosexual, pro-criminal, pro-regulation, anti-liberal elitism.”
Chapter Four is titled, “Politics.” As an amateur politician, I found this chapter most interesting. Obama’s first point is that politics is humbling in the same way that I have heard Jerry Jones and Red McCombs describe sports – i.e., unlike business, in sports there is only one winner and everyone else is exposed as a loser. Obama’s experience at losing occurred when he took on Bobby Rush for a congressional seat and lost by more than 30%. His description of the situation rings true:
- “I’m not suggesting that politicians are unique in suffering such disappointments. It’s that unlike most people, who have the luxury of licking their wounds privately, the politician’s loss is on public display…. They’re the sorts of feelings that most people haven’t experienced since high school… – the kinds of feelings that most adults wisely organize their lives to avoid.”
Aside from the pain of loss, Obama says, “Most of the other sins of politics are derivatives of this larger sin – the need to win, but also the need not to lose.” According to Obama, “without money, and the television ads that consume all that money, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose.” When he decided to run for the U.S. Senate, his media consultant David Axelrod told him that they would need $500k a week for a 4-week TV-ad campaign in Chicago and another $250k a week for the downstate ad campaign. To accomplish this financial need, Obama cold-called Democratic donors for several hours each day for three months, and this resulted in a mere $250k.
Then:
- “For whatever reason, at some point my campaign began to generate that mysterious, elusive quality of momentum, of buzz; it became fashionable among wealthy donors to promote my cause, and small donors around the state began sending me checks through the Internet at a pace we had never anticipated.”
Although Obama doesn’t explain where the groundswell came from, he does note eight pages later in this chapter that his relations with the media were exceptional:
- “A disclaimer here: For a three-year span, from the time that I first announced my candidacy for the Senate to the end of my first year at a senator, I was the beneficiary of unusually – and at time undeservedly – positive press coverage. No doubt some of this had to do with my status as an underdog in my Senate primary, as well as the novelty as a black candidate with an exotic background.”
You have to give the guy credit for acknowledging that he received undeservedly positive coverage, but what does that say about the “impartial” media? Also, Illinois already had a black senator (Carol Moseley Braun), although she didn’t grow up in “exotic” Hawaii or Indonesia.
I also give Obama credit for acknowledging in this chapter that the access that campaign contributors buy results in favorable treatment, either because the contributors are better able to articulate and justify their positions or because the candidate spends so much time with fat cats – “Still, I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met.”
You may recall that during Obama’s presidential campaign, his intellectual connection with some San Francisco donors led to a comment about common folks “clinging to their guns and religion.” This chapter contains an eerily similar reference when Obama described his donor base, although it does not drip with condescension like his SF talk:
- “Most were adamantly prochoice and antigun and were vaguely suspicious of deep religious sentiment. And although my own worldview and theirs corresponded in many ways – I had gone to the same schools, after all, read the same books, and worried about my kids in many of the same ways – I found myself avoiding certain topics during conversations with them, papering over possible differences, anticipating their expectations. On core issues I was candid; I had no problem telling well-heeled supporters that the tax cuts they received from George Bush should be reversed. Whenever I could, I would try to share with them some of the perspective I was hearing from other portions of the electorate; the legitimate role of faith in politics, say, or the deep cultural meaning of guns in rural parts of the state.”
Special interests are the next biggest corrupter in politics. According to Obama, they have outsized influence because “organized people can be just as important as cash, particularly in the low-turnout primaries that, in the world of gerrymandered political map and divided electorates, are often the most significant race a candidate faces.” Well said.
Obama concludes this chapter by describing the critical role played by TV (free and paid) and how negative ads can distort a reasonable statement into an incendiary sound bite that outweighs a history of sound thinking. He notes that because of circumstances he had never been subjected to a negative ad, but failed to explain what those circumstances were.
Chapter Five is titled, “Opportunity.” This chapter is Obama’s economic vision for America. Although he sees the American economy as based on the free market, he also sees three important roles to be played by government – (1) providing infrastructure (including education, science & technology, and energy independence), (2) regulating the market, and (3) “Finally – and most controversially – government has helped structure the social compact between business and the American worker.” I couldn’t agree more – i.e., the first two are no-brainers and the last one is controversial.
Obama doesn’t believe in the Ownership Society; he prefers the welfare state with social insurance:
- “That’s the basic idea behind the Ownership Society: If we free employers of any obligations to their workers and dismantle what’s left of New Deal, government-run social insurance programs, then the magic of the marketplace will take care of the rest. If the guiding philosophy behind the traditional system of social insurance can be described as ‘We’re all in it together,’ the philosophy behind the Ownership Society seems to be ‘You’re on your own.’…. In other words, the Ownership Society doesn’t even try to spread the risks and rewards of the new economy among all Americans. Instead, it simply magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today’s winner-take-all economy…. It’s not who we are as a people.”
I’m not so sure about that. When Obama emphasizes the communal nature of Americans, I wonder where he learned that. It’s almost utopian and is not the economy that I am familiar with.
One issue where Obama is completely out of step with America is unionization. He thinks the playing field needs to be leveled between organized labor and employers. One of his recommendations – “Employers should have to recognize a union if a majority of employees sign authorization cards choosing the union to represent them.” That may sound benign, but is it highly misleading. The alternative is to have the employees decide by secret ballot. I would love to hear Obama make an argument against a secret ballot because I have never heard one that makes sense.
Obama concludes this chapter on economics by describing a visit with the sage from Omaha – Warren Buffett. During that visit, Buffett provided an interesting analogy in support of an estate tax. He suggested that giving wealth to heirs without any taxation is like selecting the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of the winners at the 2000 games.
Chapter Five is titled, “Faith.” Obama was not brought up to be religious. His parents were apparently atheists, although he claims his mother was a highly spiritual person who viewed religion through the eyes of an anthropologist. His grandparents had been brought up as Christians, but had abandoned the religion. When Obama was searching for religion, he was attracted to black churches because they were concerned not only with personal salvation, but also with social justice.
Obama’s take on faith is that the Democrats need to understand that religion in America is not dying out and that the party must realize that religion informs that policies and conduct of successful politicians. His political formulation – “What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason.” Well said.
Chapter Six is titled, “Race.” Obama had surprisingly few insights regarding race in America. He acknowledges the progress made since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, but warns that America still has a long way to go. As proof of this distance, he notes that blacks make only 75% and Hispanics make only 71% as much money as whites – “How do we close this persistent gap – and how much of a role government should play in achieving that goal – remains one of the central controversies of American politics.” At a minimum, civil rights deserve more vigorous enforcement, and affirmative action can be helpful, if properly structured. Obama does not give a full-throated defense of affirmative action, but instead focuses on government action that would help all poor – “And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor and tax laws that restore balance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth, and health-care, child care, and retirement systems that working people can count on.”
Did you notice Obama’s comment about restoring balance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth? He went on to claim that black income rose to record highs under Bill Clinton because “government took a few modest steps – like the Earned Income Tax Credit – to spread the wealth around.” Sounds like his comment to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around” was not a slip of the tongue.
Obama concluded the Race chapter by describing two insoluble problems – (1) inner-city poor, and (2) illegal immigrants. About illegal immigrants, he admits:
- “And if I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments. When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
Chapter Eight is titled, “The World Beyond our Borders.” This chapter consists of Obama’s description of America’s foreign policy since the days of Washington. Not surprisingly, he took a shot at manifest destiny – “the conviction that such expansion was preordained, part of God’s plan to extend what Andrew Jackson called ‘the area of freedom’ across the continent. Of course, manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest – of Native American tribes forcibly removed from their lands and of the Mexican army defending its territory. It was a conquest that, like slavery, contradicted America’s founding principles and tended to be justified in explicitly racists terms, a conquest that American mythology has always had difficulty fully absorbing but that other countries recognized for what it was – an exercise in raw power.”
I don’t know where Obama learned his American history, but it sounds like he learned it in Indonesia or while being home-schooled by his mom. Texians earned their independence by defeating an invading army from Mexico. Several years later, Texas sought and achieved annexation by the United States, and this annexation caused a war with Mexico over a boundary dispute. In no way was this a “bloody and violent conquest… of the Mexican army defending its territory.” And in no way is manifest destiny a racist evil comparable to slavery. The frontier was waiting to be developed, and Native America and Mexico were not up to the task.
Regarding America’s current foreign policy, Obama reasonably argues against isolationism and in favor of our unilateral right to defend ourself (such as going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban). But:
- “Once we get beyond matters of self-defense, though, I’m convinced that it will almost always be in our strategic interest to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally when we use force around the world.”
Chapter Nine is titled, “Family.” In this chapter, Obama describes the difficulty in raising kids when both parents have to work. And he admits that he has been sheltered from much of those difficulties because of his resources (money, his wife, and his mother-in-law).
Epilogue. The Epilogue consists primarily of Obama telling the story of his keynote speech at the Kerry convention, but I couldn’t figure out the purpose of the story. He closed the book by quoting Benjamin Franklin explaining to his mother why he devoted so much of his life to public service – “I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.”
That explains Obama – he wants to make America better.
In reading The Audacity of Hope, I am reminded of why I voted for Obama in 2008. He is a fine person and a capable politician. But I think America would be better served by a president who leans more toward expanding free enterprise and less toward expanding the welfare state. Government has a role to create opportunity, but I think it diminishes opportunity when it seeks to “spread the wealth around.”