When choosing which book I wanted to read next, I decided on “The Audacity of Hope,” by Barack Obama, mainly because by the time I come back from Spain it will be sorely outdated.
“The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” is Obama’s second novel, the first of which (“Dreams from my Father”) I blogged about earlier in the summer.
It is a book of thoughts about various aspects of American living, such as values, family, politics, faith and opportunity.
The main tenet of this book has to be Obama’s prevailing sense of idealism. He has brilliant ideas, beautiful ideas, but for the most part they are the ideas of an idealist. He offers no realistic way to achieve those ideas, to put them into action. Examples are in each chapter; on each page.
On controlling the cost of college: “And students can insist that their institutions focus their fund-raising efforts more on improving the quality of instruction than on building new football stadiums.” My first thought was Yeah, right. We can insist? It would take a whole lot more than students insisting. It is common knowledge that a school is going to build what will bring in more money and more students–once they have a student, they most likely have them for the a full four years and are not going to make much effort to retain them.
On creating a better system than the 2-party: “I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point.” Yes, there are a whole bunch of people who aren’t Democrats nor Republicans. I guess we’ll just have to ….wait.
Although I do not appreciate the idealism, Obama did make a number of good points on different issues, some of which I have been forming in my mind for a while but haven’t had the ability to put into words.
- “It’s not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit.” Our attitude that ‘as long as we work hard we will succeed’ has serious consequences for people who fall behind.
- “What’s missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.” He says this about the education system and how it is broken and is only getting more broken–no one is trying to fix it, and no one seems to care.
- “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur? Are our goals in Iran regime change, the dismantling of all Iranian nuclear capability, the prevention of nuclear proliferation, or all three? Are we committed to use force whenever there’s a despotic regime that’s terrorizing people–and if so, how long do we stay to ensure democracy takes root?” The U.S. invades where it is advantageous for itself, not for others. This is a disgusting facet of our foreign policy, and I don’t doubt why other countries have ill will toward us.
It is clear with his second attempt at novels that Obama is trying to remain a person and not a politician, even though in this book all his ideas are politicized. He wrote this before he was running for president, and I do appreciate his efforts to be the person and author Barack Obama instead of the politician Barack Obama.
“How long before you start sounding like a politician?” he questions. The answer I would give him is not long, but people will be able to tell when you are fighting the tide and when you letting it pull you. People can tell when you are being real with them or simply going with your political persona. I think Obama has done a good job of retaining his personality.
And he truly loves all of America, not just the top 5% of the income bracket. He closes his book with, “My heart is filled with love for this country.” Let the idealist become a realist without forgetting about his dreams.