A Promised Land

 

A Promised Land – by Barack Obama

I was surprised to find out that this was the 73^rd book that I have read that focused on the life of one or more U.S. Presidents.  I was shocked as well when it dawned on me that this was the first one that I’ve read that was actually written by the President himself.  I’m really not sure if this tainted the book in terms of respectability.  Obviously (especially with modern presidents) you have to be careful as there are plenty of hatchet jobs of individuals published as well as hagiographies.  Obviously a retrospective by the individual himself will be more forgiving, but I never felt as I was reading anything one-sided. I felt this was a very honest reflection, extremely well written, and managed to captivate my attention the entire time.

It should be noted that this is not a complete history of the two terms of the Obama presidency. This is part one, and as I write this review, part two has not been released, nor do I know when it will be. My guess is that Obama simply had too much to say, and at some point, he realized he had to come to a stopping point and pick up with his memoirs in a future volume. This book could be considered part one of an autobiography, but details of his pre-presidential years are told sparingly. He’s already been elected president by the time we get to around page 200.  This is a jarring contrast with some other presidential biographies that I’ve read. I’m reminded of the (so far only a) tetralogy of Robert Caro’s work on President Lyndon Johnson.  We had to get through three massive 800 or so page volumes before LBJ ever arrived in the White House (as only the VP no less).

When one honestly considers the political life of Barack Obama, though, this really shouldn’t be too surprising.  When he made his famous introductory speech in 2004 at the Democratic Convention, he was still only a State Senator of Illinois.  As one remembers, after that event, his popularity took off like wildfire. He also wrote two prior reflections; one before most knew who he even was.  So most everything here is about “President” Obama; from the time he takes office up until Spring 2011. That was right around the time Osama Bin Laden was caught.

Regardless of what you might think about the man, he knows how to write his reflections quite well.  I’m sure he had plenty of help penning this thing, but he manages to balance his recollections quite nicely.  The majority of this book deals with the ins and outs of running a country.  He details for his readers the many issues that he faced during his tenure, yet he’s smart enough not to go too deep into the weeds.  I remember, for example, one book I read about President Jimmy Carter written by his Domestic Affairs Advisor where that author felt it necessary to devote a 77-page chapter to stagflation.  Mr. Obama is smart enough to know your average reader doesn’t want that deep of a look.  He still makes an effort to make sure his readers have a thorough understanding of some topics that they may not pay too close attention to during the regular course of events.  Example: he spends a good bit of time detailing relations with Iran, Russia, and China (in that order) and gives his readers a nice primer of the particular country; explaining why these countries are adversaries of the U.S. and how the conflict started.  This is a smart move.  Most Americans can tell you, for example, that Iran is one of the “bad guys”, but most have no idea why. They couldn’t tell you who Mohammad Mosaddegh was, nor the events of the CIA orchestrated coup of 1953. So Obama gives us a nice brief background to all of these events so the reader can enjoy the reflections a bit more.

This is how Obama tells the entire story here. Regardless of whether he’s detailing the extension of Bush’s TARP initiative to provide life support to a nearly catatonic economy, or detailing the comings and goings of the disastrous BP oil spill that seemed impossible to fix while the oil continue to gush into the Gulf. Obama gives us a front seat to all of this, and reflects his observations and actions while sounding….well….presidential.

He keeps the political squabbling to a minimum, yet he simply can’t tell his story without bringing up the headbutting with rivals such as John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and just about everyone over at Fox News.  It’s quite sad to realize that the majority on the other end of the political spectrum simply wanted Obama to fail, and if that meant temporarily selling their soul to demons that controlled the mid-terms, well – so be it.  (To be fair, I read John Boehner’s account of his days in congress, and he seemed to paint a slightly rosier picture of his relationship with Obama.  True, Boehner thinks the current Republican party is starkers, but he seemed to paint himself as someone willing to compromise and make sacrifices.  I didn’t get that impression of him in this book from Barack Obama, however.)

Being the compassionate family man, we read an awful lot of his relationship with his wife and daughters. It’s very sweet, and very necessary I suppose, yet I felt this took away from the overall narrative.  We must remember that his wife and daughters probably never saw such an event as a presidency within the family being anything remotely possible during most of their lives, so it’s comforting that dad always managed to make time for his family that found themselves thrown into the presidential whirlwind rather suddenly. And of course, one could easily skip these parts of the book when the reflections get a tad too saccharine laced. I imagine most would probably enjoy these diversions more than I did, however.

As a person who always admired Barack Obama, I highly enjoyed this account of his presidency through his own eyes.  I’m not sure when we’ll get a part two, nor if he tends to continue his tale beyond his tenure as president.  Personally, I hope he lives a very long life and pens several more memoirs.  It’s nice to remember when sanity actually was an asset inside the Oval Office.