Book Review: The Audacity of Hope

Last Christmas, my brother gave me The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, mostly because of my vocal support for him against my father’s quiet stubborn, Republican support for Mitt Romney. “Here’s a book about your ‘Golden Boy,’” he says to me as he tosses me the present.

I have a tendency to infuriate my brother whenever we debate or discuss anything, because I will often play the devil’s advocate, especially if I feel my brother makes broad, sweeping generalizations that don’t work in the real world - or as my brother often accuses me, I often “intellectualize” the situation. Barack Obama’s book would infuriate my brother as well, and anybody else who holds strong views about anything, as his book flips and flops one way or another about the vital issues the United States faces today.

The book divides into nine chapters, each labeled with a buzzword of today, such as “Values” or “Our Constitution” or “Faith” or “Race.” And for each chapter, Obama then begins to write in, as the blog Defective Yeti describes, “the ‘Cowardly Journalist,’ on-the-one-hand, on-the-other style of using a lot of words to say very little.” I prefer to call it “the world is not as complex as you think” style. Obama takes the time to explain both sides of the story, and though never hiding his preference for Democrats, tries his hardest not to end up writing another smear campaign on a dead tree like those who practice virulent “journalism” - the Hannitys, Limbaughs, Coulters and O’Reillys. For example, “no longer is environmental policy a matter of balancing sound stewardship of our natural resources with the demands of a modern economy,” he writes. “You either supported unchecked development, drilling, strip-mining, and the like, or you supported stifling bureaucracy and red tape that choked off growth.” Or take the idea that “we know that the battle against international terrorism is at once an armed struggle and a contest of ideas, that our long-term security depends on both a judicious projection of military power and increased cooperation with other nations, and that addressing the problems of global poverty and failed states is vital to our nation’s interests rather than just a matter of charity. But follow most of our foreign policy debates, and you might believe that we have only two choices - belligerence or isolationism.” He gives nobody any excuse for simplistic, ideological fanaticism, when he writes paragraphs such as:

“In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of each other. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes - and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”

From time to time, I became frustrated, wanting to shake the man himself and demand why he doesn’t defend my pet issues and why he doesn’t just come out and say why the other side is obviously wrong. But that is what I admire most about the book. Obama doesn’t offer solutions - he never says he would. He only attempts to awake the awareness that both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, red states and blue states, have something good to offer to the nation, to cut through the polarizing lies and try to unify the country together.

His writing is educated, his storytelling skills superb. Anyone can tell that this junior senator possesses an uncanny amount of intelligence and perception of what’s going on in the country today, and a refusal to get caught up in the ideological wars that the two parties brutally wage today. Each chapter act more as mini-essays about the various subjects that dominate the current political discourse. Throughout his assertions that not every issue has an easy way out and that both sides of the political spectrum must come together to solve them, he peppers the writing with stories, from his touching experiences with Senator Robert Byrd to his job as a grass roots organizer and his interactions with people while campaigning as a politician. It’s a masterful weave as he explains his ideas and values through relatable tales from the road that shaped his way of thinking.

After reading this book, it’s no wonder why Obama has such an appeal to so many independents and the younger generation. Independents are who they are mostly because they are disgruntled by the winner-takes-all, partisan politics that dominate our political arena. And the younger generation, as they become more educated and aware of the world around them connected by the internet, realize that problems are not solved by 30 second sound bites and taglines used to death since the 1960s. The reason why nothing ever changes in politics, one blogger argues, is because it wins votes. If Obama wins this presidential election, he holds the potential to reshape how politics is done for a rapidly changing demographic. At the very least, it would be nice that after eight years of a head strong “my way or the highway” administration, we could have a president who understands that there rarely is one perfect, right answer to our problems.