“The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”
by Barack Obama
Crown Publishers, 2006
375 pages

Will Barack Obama run for president in 2008? Is he qualified to run at this point in his career? What is the basis for his appeal to so many people?

Since his exciting keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, Obama has continued to generate excitement, drawing large crowds wherever he appears.

His new book, “The Audacity of Hope,” is a beautifully written blend of personal history and sharp historical and political analysis—illustrating a remarkable combination of knowledge, intelligence, empathy, self-awareness and honesty.

This is not a simple Democratic campaign document. In fact, it makes questions of Obama’s political ambitions seem secondary. He’s after something bigger here: finding a nonpartisan common dream—based on our history, laws and shared values—that the great majority of Americans agree expresses the heart of our beliefs as a people.

This book follows his earlier revealing and highly successful 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” which traced the fascinating, highly emotional story of his tangled family history. The son a white American mother and a black Kenyan father (who left the family when Barack was 2), Obama spent his young life in Hawaii and Indonesia before coming to the U.S. mainland. He eventually attended Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

In 1996, at 35, recently married, and after four years of working as a civil rights lawyer and community organizer in Chicago, Obama won a seat in the Illinois Legislature. In 2000, he ran and lost a race for Congress. Then in 2004 he was elected to the U.S. Senate in a landslide victory over Alan Keyes.

The nine chapters in “The Audacity of Hope” are filled with a wealth of information and ideas about issues that are vital to the country now and will challenge us for many years: “Republicans and Democrats,” “Values,” “Our Constitution,” “Politics,” “Opportunity,” “Faith,’ “Race,” “The World Beyond Our Borders” and “Family.”

His grounding in U.S. history and constitutional law, which he taught for 10 years at the University of Chicago Law School, serve as a strong foundation for his general approach: “What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future,” he says. The “elaborate machinery” of the Constitution and Bill of Rights “are designed to force us into a conversation, a deliberative democracy in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of … persuading others of their point of view and building shifting alliances of consent.” He points out that our history shows how we often enter political dialogue with conflicting strong beliefs that must be revised and compromised, and that even our “collective judgments (are) highly fallible.”

Obama’s voice is calm, rational, knowledgeable and reassuring. He clearly states what he believes, and why, even on such controversial issues as globalization, immigration, foreign affairs and national security. (The prescience of his October 2002 speech opposing the invasion of Iraq is an especially impressive part of his record.)

He has strong views, and is highly critical of the Bush administration’s choices, although he recognizes how complex and difficult many of the important problems are and accepts the reality that successful legislation and leadership require patience and hard compromises. In his six years in the Illinois Legislature and currently in the U.S. Senate, Obama has demonstrated his understanding that a legislator must work with people of differing opinions, and that one must resist the temptation “to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values, and are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.”

His tempered approach reminds me of Lincoln, one of Obama’s heroes, as Lincoln dealt with the issue of slavery and holding the Union together.

In the chapter “Values,” he makes the significant point that it is often not appropriate to try to regulate or legislate in this area, but that the discussion of values is crucial to our free society. “The broader question of shared values—the standards and principles that the majority of Americans deem important in their lives, and in the life of the country—should be the heart of our politics, the cornerstone of any meaningful debate about budgets and projects, regulations and policies,” he writes.

Many times politicians who seem to start out as idealists end up part of the self-serving Washington crowd, pandering to special interests and lobbyists. This book gives evidence that Obama is a realist and understands how the enormous pressure to raise the huge sums of money necessary for re-election corrupts the political process. He describes how for many candidates the loss of an election often translates into a personal feeling of “total, complete humiliation,” and thus can drive a candidate into a “fanatical single-mindedness, often disregarding their health, relationships, mental balance and dignity.”

“The Audacity of Hope” displays a deeply thoughtful, self-reflective and even self-critical person. Throughout he acknowledges many of his own flaws, “the blind spots” each of us becomes aware of as we get older, how each of our lives “are full of contradictions and ambiguities.”

He worries that he has “chosen a life with a ridiculous schedule,” leading him to be gone from home for long periods, putting great stress on his family, “not always giving (them) all that I could” and causing him to regret missing the pleasures of a simpler life with his wife and daughters. And he sometimes worries that, in leading this political life, he is being “selfish, that I do what I do to feed my own ego or fill a void in my heart.”

I was charmed by the story of how he met and wooed his wife, Michelle, and by his expression of deep feeling for her and his two daughters. But he confesses the conflicts that their two-career marriage and family has faced because of his career. There were times when, “tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance.” He acknowledges that “no matter how liberated I like to see myself as—no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I were equal partners…. The fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments.”

He is aware how increasing fame can change him. But he says he knows “that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. … Instead, it comes from knowing that in some demonstrable way I’ve been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity.”

In this period of vicious partisanship and negative campaigns, Obama speaks to our best aspirations. His optimism appears based on his belief in the basic goodness and commonality of the majority of the American people. “They recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting,” he writes.

His books show that Obama enjoys using writing to explore his life and thinking. His style is gracious and fluid, often eloquent, deftly mixing interesting personal anecdotes with personal and political philosophy. He has ideas and a vision that he want to express. And, being a highly introspective person, he also must know that it will be useful in his political career. However, independent of his motivation for writing it, this book is worth reading and can make a valuable contribution to the nation’s discourse during these troubling, often depressing, times.

What his precise electoral aspirations are is not obvious from the book and may not be clear to him at this point. Words and ideas are certainly important, but they are only the beginning. Character and maturity are crucial. Political life in America is brutal and has defeated many to whom we have looked with great hopes.