With the current presidential nomination process under way, Barack Obama's second book, the Audacity of Hope, might help shed light on who the junior senator from Illinois and the Democratic Party's presidential contender really is and what he stands for.
His 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, written before Mr. Obama entered politics, provided a revealing, introspective account of his efforts to trace his family's intricate roots and his attempts to come to terms with his absent father, who left the family early. That book did a good job of conjuring the author's multicultural childhood: his parents hail from Kenya and Kansas, young Barack grew up in Hawaii and spent a few years in Indonesia as a young child.
His new book, whose catchy title was coined at Mr Obama's 2004 DNC keynote speech, lays out his positions on a multitude of issues. Writing in a manner that reminds us of his rhetorical style, Mr. Obama tries to avoid the simplistic bipolar language that has come to inform political discourse, and he rejects what he sees as the "either-or" formulations of his elders who came of age in the 60's. Instead Obama stresses the common ground Americans share, appealing to the country's unity despite its division into 'red' and 'blue' states.
His thoughts on domestic and foreign policy try to hew to this consensus-building line. Some of his recommendations devolve into little more than fuzzy statements of the obvious: i.e., that America's "addiction to oil" is affecting the economy and undermining national security, or that the education system needs to be revamped and improved. Others echo Bill Clinton's "third way," methodically triangulating between traditionally conservative and traditionally liberal ideas.
He even uses the Bush administration's tough language to talk about national security in the age of terrorism, but adds, crucially, that "once we get beyond matters of self-defense," he calls for multilateral actions in America's own strategic interest.
Overall, Mr Obama tends, at times, to seek approval from too many diverging electoral groups, by remaining as ambiguous as possible, while sounding nice in the process.
Thus, he advocates a quick withdrawal from Iraq, yet thinks America absolutely needs to go into Darfur and make things right, and has recently even called for a possible US invasion of Pakistan.
He assails President Bush for promoting an "Ownership Society" that "magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today's winner-take-all economy." Yet he also takes the Democrats to task for becoming "the party of reaction", reacting to every issue put forward by the Republicans, from the war in Iraq to market solutions to pressing problems.
However, the book is definitely worth reading, if only to witness how Obama is able to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense, while articulating these ideas in level-headed, nonpartisan prose. That, in itself, is something unusual, not only in these venomous pre-election days, but also in these increasingly polarized and polarizing times.
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