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.”

The story of the media, Barak tells us, is that of the loss of objectivity.  It’s hard to tell what caused what, but whatever the path that led here, the result is the erosion of our trust in the authority of the media.  He mourns the loss of figures like Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow.  He observes that there is a greater spread of centres – more blogs, more partisan media, more radio shock jocks.  He doesn’t say these are things to feel bad about in themselves – although it may seem that he is saying precisely that – what he mourns is the splintering of communities, a reversal of that great hope to join the whole world in peace and understanding – a community based on common ideals between diverse peoples.  In a sense it was good to peer into the captain’s quarters and see him puzzling over a map, but now we all reach for the wheel and the ship splinters into little islands of subjectivity, and we are lost.

It’s a small step from Barak’s remarks about the media to our own reflections on the state of society.  Without trusted institutions, all are kept busy arguing with each other about the truth.  We feel so sure that we are right when we are telling someone else that they are wrong that we don’t leave time for ourselves to put our own ideas under scrutiny.  Do we believe our own conclusions?  Do we have any conclusions?  Or do we find that our only stance is Anti?  As rational as reasoning may seem, it seems it is fuelled by a murky sensation – a sensation of power and righteousness, an invigoration at feeling one’s identity crystallising.  And like a drug, we find that to achieve this crisp sensation of self, our politics turn more extreme.  We have to shout louder and hate more fiercely and turn our enemies into beasts and demons.  It seems that our enemies become more solid as we become more invisible to ourselves.

If society feels betrayed and cynical, how do they look at the politician?  The same way they look at the captain after they’ve lost confidence in him.  Every decision is scrutinised, every thought analysed, and we apply the standards of machinery in our evaluation of people.  In wanting to be sure, we lose sight of the whole, and focus instead only on the parts.  We isolate and test, we magnify and probe, and finally we dissect.  We are Othellos, infected with doubt, and we murder our faithful Desdemonas.  Barak, a Christian, reflects on being tagged as having “voted to deny lifesaving treatment to babies born alive.”  That’s one way to put it, and perfectly valid if you’re looking at an isolated part.  But the fuller picture of that story, he tells us, was that the bill, sponsored by anti-abortion activists, proposed something that was already law (mandating the provision of lifesaving measures for babies born premature), but had also “extended ‘personhood’ to pre-viable foetuses, thereby effectively overturning Roe v Wade”.  So it seems that the bill had nothing to do with providing or denying lifesaving treatment to babies – this was already law.  It was engineered to be effective at bullying politicians fearful of the public into voting for a bill that was unconstitutional.  It wouldn’t be long before a real person would be affected by this, and it wouldn’t be long before someone challenged the law as unconstitutional and maybe it would be a good season to open up the abortion issue in the Supreme Court.  Maybe that’s why the bill was drafted in the first place.  This is a far cry from fighting for the provision of lifesaving treatment to babies born alive.  Reflecting on the peril of the vote, Barak quotes JFK:

Few, if any, face the same dread finality of decision that confronts a Senator facing an important call of the roll.  He may want more time for his decision – he may believe there is something to be said for both sides – he may feel that a slight amendment could remove all difficulties – but when that roll is called he cannot hide, he cannot equivocate, he cannot delay – and he senses that his constituency, like the Raven in Poe’s poem, is perched there on his Senate desk, croaking “Nevermore” as he casts the vote that stakes his political future.

The fear is not just in losing a race or taking a stumble in one’s career, “but of losing favour in the eyes of those who sent them to Washington – all those people who have said to them at one time or another:  ‘We have great hopes for you.  Please don’t disappoint us.’”

I began with Oprah as a way of suggesting that the book is in some way related to the regurgitation of truisms.  It is easy after having read the book to be overcome with a kind of post coital depression, a feeling of having somehow participated in a righteous orgy of indignation, as if all that’s left to do is to put on our clothes and get back to the real world.  What is the value of telling us what we already know?  It may just be that Barak is very well schooled in the art of political speech.  As we’ve heard in the political commentary following his oratory performances, he has been taught to take abstract issues and ground them in personal stories.  But I want to suggest that Barak is doing this so well he is doing something different.  What he is revealing is not a position, not a stance, not really a manifesto – what he reveals in his book is himself.  He tells us what we already know to remind us of what we already know and see this reflected in Barak.  We see him, a man facing conflict, and through him we might imagine the other politicians as being like that, and in their conflict and uncertainty, we might recognise ourselves.  He writes:

The longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions.  You may fight it, with the town hall meetings and listening tours and stops by the old neighbourhood.  But your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent.

And perhaps as the next race approaches, a voice within tells you that you don’t want to have to go through all the misery of raising all that money in small increments all over again.  You realize that you no longer have the cachet you did as the upstart, the fresh face; you haven’t changed Washington, and you’ve made a lot of people unhappy with difficult votes.  The path of least resistance—of fund-raisers organised by the special interests, the corporate PACs, and the top lobbying shops—starts to look awfully tempting.

This admission is audacious.  We recognise it as a truth, but it can just as forcefully be used as an attack on the speaker.  We could cite it and use it to humiliate him, to say that he has buckled before he has even stepped into the White House.  And assuming that he isn’t Jesus, this book will stand as a testament of failure to whatever the outcome is of his presidency.  The story will be complex, the characters finite, and time will roll on with indifference.

Many would have heard of the stories of the Christmas Truce in the trenches during the Great War.  German troops had decorated their trenches and sang Silent Night.  Hearing this, Scottish troops responded by singing their own carols over the trenches.  The exchanges built up and at some point, one of them decided to take that step into no-man’s-land.  The rules of the game had been to shoot, but something happened on that day, when their uniforms became coats to keep warm under, and soldiers became men – cold, and tired of fighting.  That first step is the audacity of hope.  It is the heroism of a man, not a soldier.  It is the courage to do what’s right without assurance of victory, leaving your survival in the hands of others.

I think the election of Barak Obama is a lot like that Christmas in 1914.  Something happened that day, but we know we have to go back to war, and we don’t know how not to do it, we don’t know how to make Christmas last.  But something happened, and we remember that day and we know in our hearts that for a while at least we can change even a battleground into home.

Photo source: Royalty free Obama Photos

1. President Obama is related to Dick Cheney and George Bush:

President Obama is the eighth cousin of former Vice President Dick Cheney through Mareen and Susannah Duvall, 17th century immigrants from France and tenth cousin of former President George Bush through a 17th century Massachusetts couple, Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole.
 
President Obama is also distantly related through his mother to US President Harry S. Truman and Wallis Simpson (who married King Edward VIII of England).

2. Obama’s ancestors owned slaves:

Photo source: Wikimedia commons

A distant cousin from his mother’s side, Gabriel Duvall, a Supreme Court Justice and a member of the US House of Representatives, from the second district of Maryland was also a friend of Thomas Jefferson and the owner of 37 slaves

3. His maternal grandparents liked to move around:

Born in Kansas, Obama’s maternal grandparents lived in four states before settling in Hawaii.

4. Obama’s great-uncle liberated a Nazi concentration camp:

Charles T. Payne, served in the U.S. Army 89th Division and helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

5.  Obama has highly educated family members

Father Barack Hussein Obama got a Master degree in economics from Harvard University, Mother Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro got a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawai, Half-sister Auma Obama got her PhD from the University of Heidelberg.

6.   Obama’s Grandmother was a bank president

Barack Obama’s maternal grandmother was a bank vice president in Hawaii.

Image via Wikipedia

7.   His wife was assigned to be his mentor

In 1989 Michelle Obama was asked to mentor a summer associate from Harvard name Barack Obama. Michelle Robinson initially brushed off advances from Barack because he was an intern, and she was higher up the law firm’s hierarchy as an associate.

8.  Obama has won two major media awards

Obama has won two Grammy Awards. First for Best Spoken Word Album in 2005 for the audio book edition of “Dreams From My Father” (2004), and again in 2007 for the audio book edition of The “Audacity of Hope” (2006).

9.  Gandhi is Obama’s hero

His heroes are Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Pablo Picasso and John Coltrane.

10. Who would Obama choose to play Obama in a movie?

Obama has said that he would like Will Smith to play Obama in a movie.

11. Obama is the Fourth US president to get the Nobel Peace Prize

•  
  • Theodore Roosevelt won it in 1905 for helping to end the Russo-Japanese War.
  • Woodrow Wilson won it in 1919 for helping with the League of Nations.
  • Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 (out of office) for humanitarian efforts.
  • Barack Obama won it in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”.

12. Obama has struggled with chain smoking yet passed the strongest anti-smoking bills in US history

Though struggling since his teens with not being able to quit chain smoking, he passed the strongest anti-smoking bill in US history, persistently refused by his predecessor, George W. Bush.