Book Review: The Audacity of Hope

This book was hard for me. I was an avid opponent of Barack Obama during the campaigns. (I was an even bigger opponent of Joe Biden, but I’ll discuss that later.)

As I read his book written when he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois, I couldn’t help but connect with him. The more I read the more I realized why he was so popular. He’s a very likable guy. He is also a wonderful orator (I first listened to the book on CD before reading it). As he discussed the evils of bipartisan politics I totally agreed with him. He mourned the difficulties and hardships his family had to endure during his career. He spoke of the dishonesty in politics and the need for change. One of my favorite quotes was:

“I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.”

Some things he spoke of I agreed with and found rather humorous, such as:

“When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses.”

Some things were surprising to see admitted by a politician:

“I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times.”

“Politics today is a business and not a mission, and what passes for debate is little more than spectacle.”

It was shocking to see how much money is needed for a successful campaign, even a local or state campaign. It’s simply ridiculous. How I wish it could be like the days of John Adams when he never solicited a single vote, kissed a single baby, or spoke at a single rally. He let his name speak for itself. Those times are gone, but the longing for them is not.

As a conservative, I found myself noting the passages in his book where he was hypocritical. I laughed sometimes at what he wrote and scorned in his book, because he has since become the object of his own scorn.

Example 1:
He discusses the time when the republicans were trying to get appellate court judges appointed, and the democrats in congress were holding them up. The republicans threatened to use a few tactics to which he said:

“Still, I remember muffling a laugh the first time I heard the term ‘nuclear option.”

I find this funny since that’s exactly what happened recently with the democrats in power and their tactics to pass the health care bill.

Example 2:
He mentions his first meeting with Senator Robert Carlyle Byrd, and mentions the great advice he was given:

“He told me I would do well in the Senate but that I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush – so many senators today become fixated on the White House, not understanding that in the constitutional design it was the Senate that was supreme, the heart and soul of the Republic.”

Once again, I find this funny since he spent only ½ of a term in the senate, and resigned in order to run for President.

My end impression is that he has changed with time. He was always liberal, and will likely never change from his core beliefs. Even though I vehemently disagree with his positions, I can respect a decent and honest man fighting for what he believes in.

My question is now – What is he fighting for? Is it what he believes in, or what he’s told to believe in?

I think President Obama is a good loving father and husband. He is religious, he is educated, and he works harder than the average American. He is very engaging, has a sense of humor, and I would love to have dinner with him and chat. It would be a priceless experience.

He mentions in his book how he knows he has changed. The further you get in politics the easier it is to take the private jet, and accept the big check from the interest group. It’s so much easier than going door to door and driving hours in your car to solicit small donations from individual citizens. I understand the reason politicians change, it’s very hard not to. Unfortunately I believe this hard working man of ideals has let himself go to party politics.

I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing – but that’s why I’m not a politician.


Here are some of my favorite quotations from his book:

“I exercised and read novels, and came to appreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went without any particular exertions on my part.”

“Whether people were friendly, indifferent, or occasionally hostile, I tried my best to keep my mouth shut, and hear what they had to say.”

“Whether we’re from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor, and common sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a continuous menu of false or cramped choices.”

“I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times.”

“I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.”

“When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses.”

“What’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.”

“Democrats aren’t happy with the current situation, since for the moment at least they are on the losing side, dominated by republicans who, thanks to winner take all elections, control every branch of government and feel no need to compromise.”

Speaking of political parties –
“Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes – and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.”

“Politics today is a business and not a mission, and what passes for debate is little more than spectacle.”

Speaking of his college days –
“I stopped thinking and slipped into cant; the point at which denunciation of capitalism and American imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy and religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.”

“After Reagan the lines between Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, would be drawn in more sharp ideological terms.”

“I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose.”

“Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists are more spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular culture allows.”

Speaking of “the values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.”
“These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will – a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth.”

“I offered the further observation that a popular show targeted at teens, in which young people with no visible means of support spend several months getting drunk and jumping naked into hot tubs with strangers, was not ‘the real world.’”

“We long for that most elusive quality in our leaders – the quality of authenticity, of being who you say you are, of possessing a truthfulness that goes beyond words.”

“No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.”

“For in the end laws are just words on a page – words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meaning are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.”

“Still, I remember muffling a laugh the first time I heard the term ‘nuclear option.”

“I doubted that our use of the filibuster would dispel the image of democrats always being on the defensive – a perception that we used the courts and lawyers and procedural tricks to avoid having to win over popular opinion.”

“What the framework of our Constitution can do is…force us into a conversation, a “deliberative democracy” in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others to their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent.”

“Whether we are for or against affirmative action, for or against prayer in schools, we must test out our ideals, vision, and values against the realities of a common life, so that over time they may be refined, discarded, or replaced by new ideals, sharper visions, deeper values. Indeed, it is that process, according to Madison, that brought about the Constitution itself.”

“It is an American tradition to attribute the problems with our politics to the quality of our politicians.”

“What every Senator understands is that while it’s easy to make a vote on a complicated piece of legislation look evil and depraved in a thirty-second television commercial, it’s very hard to explain the wisdom of that same vote in less than twenty minutes.”

SENATOR ROBERT CARLYLE BYRD:
“He told me I would do well in the Senate but that I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush – so many senators today become fixated on the White House, not understanding that in the constitutional design it was the Senate that was supreme, the heart and soul of the Republic.”

SENATOR DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN:
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts”

RONALD REAGAN:
Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR:
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."