Comedown After the Euphoria: Rethinking Barak Obama

If it were not for Barak Obama’s skill in delivering speeches, I could not have brought myself to buying his book.  There are three things wrong with the cover to start with.  First, the photograph makes him look like he’s sitting on Oprah’s couch—that Mecca of clichés and truisms—smiling to the camera as if fading out to an advertising break.  Second, Oprah’s words are actually on the cover, floating to the right of Barak’s head, as if she were a sublime presence that cannot be with us in body, leaving us only with the words, ‘I do believe he’s the one.’ The third reason is the title, The Audacity of Hope—a title so corny that I can’t imagine attributing it to anyone else but Oprah.  But having read the book, I forgive him for his political populism, even feel obliged to apologise to Oprah for what I’ve already said, and as corny as it sounds, I now think ‘audacity’ is, well, not a good word, but a fitting one to describe hope.

When Obama writes about politics, it might seem he really is a guest on the Oprah show (sorry Oprah, I can’t help it).  He takes us through what we already know, how politics is dominated by special interest groups, how the need for campaign finance and the need to mobilize numbers pushes politicians into unholy alliances that compromise ideals, how all of this becomes rationalised in time as a matter of “learning the ropes”, where one learns to put aside the motivations that first led to public life until the battle to win is won, only to be faced with another battle, this time the never-ending battle not to lose.  He tells us similar forces are at work in the media, where pressures on the bottom line translate into a focus on scandal, on outrage, on shallow reporting that is quick to write and appealing to short attention spans.  With fewer journalists pushed to produce more content, what we the public end up with is a mere juxtaposition of opposing views.  The political parties tell stories contradicting each other, each cite studies and statistics that support their views, and news programs feature analysts who do the same.  The real story is not the issue or the policy, but the dispute between the parties.  Its essence is the soap opera.  The public “can conclude that Republicans and Democrats are just bickering again and turn to the sports page, where the story line is less predictable and the box score tells you who won.”