Review: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

I meant to read this a while ago, but I guess better late than never? This book is an interesting mix of Obama’s personal and family history, his beliefs, US history and policy, and the platform he would use to run for president. It’s well written, logical, inspiring, and feels honest—basically, everything the president as of 2018 is not.

A few of the key points that stuck out to me from the book:

1. The US people and government are more divided today than ever before. Political discourse has shifted from a discussion of trade-offs (policy X offers A, B, and C, whereas policy Y offers D, E, and F) to a discussion of morality (policy X is evil and policy Y is good). Compromising with the other party therefore becomes nearly impossible, as it means sacrificing your values. Obama tried to change that, but unfortunately, the situation only got worse after his time in office.

2. Becoming a politician changes the type of people you spend time with (e.g., you’re forced to spend more and more time with rich donors), the economics of how you talk to the electorate (e.g., town hall meetings let you reach a few hundred people at a time, whereas TV let’s you reach hundreds of thousands or millions), and perhaps even who you are. The way special interest groups work with politicians (e.g., requiring them to fill out a pledge to unconditionally vote for all their pet issues), the way fundraising works, and the ways bills get tons of small amendments (so even the most abhorrent bill includes something good, and when you vote against it, all the sound bites focus on the one good part) is sad and broken. I appreciated a politician calling this out explicitly, but it’s not clear that it has gotten any better.

3. Obama warns of the coming racial strife, mistreatment of immigrants, and isolationist policy that today, we see Trump’s administration implementing. It’s a huge mistake and will cost the US dearly.

4. Obama is a legal scholar and his take on how government works, the US constitution, the history of this country, and the role of law in family and religion were all fascinating. How the hell did we go from someone who is well-educated, has a deep understanding of how US politics and economics works, and genuinely tried to make the country better (even if not always successfully), to the clown show in office today?

Overall, worth reading; perhaps being hopeful today is more audacious than when Obama wrote this book.

As always, I’ve saved a few of my favorite quotes:

“Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal.
And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach.
…Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we’re in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it’s precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It’s what keeps us locked in “either/or” thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace “socialized medicine”. It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. “

“America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.”

“The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high– whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward– that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives– professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values– indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.”

“At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

“In a country as diverse as ours, there will always be passionate arguments about how we draw the line when it comes to government action. That is how our democracy works. But our democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect: if liberals at least acknowledged that the recreational hunter feels the same way about his gun as they feel about their library books, and if conservatives recognized that most women feel as protective of their right to reproductive freedom as evangelicals do of their right to worship.”

Rating: 4 stars