false974203072376999780307237699123462628The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dreamhttp://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255619255m/9742.jpg
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9742.The_Audacity_of_Hope_Thoughts_on_Reclaiming_the_American_Dream
6356Barack Obama275816148
Read the chapter on foreign relations.
02009-02-03T13:57:11-08:003432323252009-02-03T13:57:11-08:00
Read the chapter on Race.
02009-02-02T12:13:03-08:003385212702009-02-02T12:13:03-08:00
Read the chapter on Faith.
02009-02-01T07:54:34-08:003338832252009-02-01T07:54:34-08:00
Finished the chapter on Opportunity.
02009-01-31T11:01:23-08:003313311952009-01-31T11:01:23-08:0002009-01-31T11:01:05-08:003313301952009-01-31T11:01:05-08:00
Finished the chapter on Politics. This is surprisingly good stuff!
02009-01-28T13:49:33-08:003209871352009-01-28T13:49:33-08:00
Just read the chapter on the Constitution.
02009-01-28T08:51:59-08:003197401002009-01-28T08:51:59-08:0002009-01-28T02:53:51-08:00318798652009-01-28T02:53:51-08:0002009-01-27T05:11:42-08:00314753252009-01-27T05:11:42-08:0002009-01-27T03:29:30-08:00314605102009-01-27T03:29:30-08:00410falseWed Feb 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009Tue Jan 27 03:09:26 -0800 2009Wed Feb 04 06:01:12 -0800 2009 Before starting, I was concerned that it might lower my opinion of him. Many people have been rather dismissive, and perhaps that's why I didn't read it earlier. In fact, it has had the opposite effect. It's well thought out and convincing, and I respect him more. The one major criticism I have is that it's stylistically unimpressive; you can see that it would have benefited from another revision pass. He is however so insanely busy that I'm grateful he had time to write it at all. There certainly aren't many politicians at his level doing this kind of thing.
I was given this book as a Christmas present by my 19 year old son. Kind of symbolic, I guess. I am about the same age as Obama, and over the last couple of years have become a huge supporter. I managed to be in the US around the election last November, and was delighted to find that it was legal for me to contribute to his campaign in terms of doing unpaid work. I helped organize a calling party in Sunnyvale (I was in charge of catering), and even got to make a couple of hundred phone calls to swing voters in Ohio. I have never been told to fuck off so many times in one afternoon, it was a fantastic experience. A few people were even nice to me! The most memorable one being the 87 year old great-grandmother with the broken hip, who said she was going to vote Obama together with two of her granddaughters, so that was three votes we could count on.
Obama is all about reestablishing trust in the political process - it's the very first thing he says in this book. I am writing this early in the second week of his presidency, and so far I can't fault him. He's doing everything he said he would do, as quickly as it can be done. Closing Gitmo, ending rendition and use of torture, funding third-world aid that includes contraception and abortion, sending a high-level representative to the Middle East, allowing states to set tougher emissions targets. Please, please continue with that.
--- Now a couple of chapters in. The style is not brilliant, but I think he is saying interesting and important things. So far, the central message has been that the US badly needs to make the political debate less polarized - people have to start trying to see similarities as well as differences, view their counterparts on the other side of the political divide as mistaken rather than evil, and above all listen. It comes across as very level-headed and positive, and he has good examples to support his argument, showing how both left- and right-wing people would find themselves more in agreement if they applied their principles consistently.
I was rather struck by the fact that, when he says that he doesn't think George W. Bush is a bad person, this comes across as a controversial claim. He seems to want to believe it. I can't quite make up my mind as to whether he really does, but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should try it too. It's definitely an interesting spiritual exercise.
--- Chapter 3, on the Constitution. I thought it was also pretty good. Obama knows this stuff in great depth - he's taught classes on constitutional law, and he has also, of course, had hands-on experience of the legislative process. He makes a strong, balanced case for the validity of the Constitution, taking plenty of time to look at the counter-arguments. In particular, he examines the ways in which the Constitution was used first to maintain slavery, and then to impede the progress of civil rights reforms. I find it impressive that he still believes in it. His basic argument is that it's a very carefully thought-out, flexible framework, which allows enough free play that it doesn't lock the US into one course, but rather allows Congress to adapt to changing circumstances, while still implementing the basic goals of the Founding Fathers.
It was interesting to compare Obama's analysis with Charlie Savage's book Takeover, which I read a few months ago. Savage's goal is to give an overall picture of the well-orchestrated attack that the Bush/Cheney administration mounted on the Constitution, which depended on narrow and highly debatable readings of a few key passages in the Federalist Papers, together with the establishment of precedents aimed at justifying a radical expansion of the Executive's powers. If you want to criticize Obama's take on the Constitution, remember that that's the current alternative. I know which one I feel more comfortable with.
--- Chapter 4, "Politics". The question this chapter addresses is, approximately: why are so many politicians cynical, lying phonies? I thought Obama did a good job of answering it. I would paraphrase his reply as follows. First, losing an election really hurts. If you win, you are an important person, and everyone treats you with great respect. If you lose, you are nobody.
Second, the difference between winning and losing depends very largely on having enough money to buy TV advertising. It's all about name recognition and getting your message across.
Third, by far the easiest way to raise money is to get tight with the special interest groups. They offer you an attractive deal: promise to do what they want, and they will quickly fix your financing. It's not easy to negotiate with them. Once you've signed, you're either in their pocket, or you cynically renege on your promises. Either way, you're compromised. Even worse, since money is all-important, and special interest groups and rich donors are way you get it, soon you're spending most of your time with them. So you rarely get to meet the people you're supposed to be representing.
He illustrates all these points simply and clearly with things taken from his own personal experience. He doesn't give himself credit for being particularly tough; he thinks he got a lot of lucky breaks, and says what they were. He's refreshingly low on bullshit.
I am really quite surprised at what a good book this has so far turned out to be!
--- Chapter 5, "Opportunity". It's the economy, stupid.
I don't understand why some people who reviewed this book complain that Obama says nothing about how he would address the problems the US is facing. At times, I almost thought he went into too much detail. He picks out three big things that he wants to focus on, in order to keep the US competitive in the global marketplace: education, research, and energy self-sufficiency.
I'll concentrate on research, since I know about that from personal experience, but a word first on energy: thank goodness, Obama is not, like most politicians, innumerate. He notes in a couple of sentences that the US uses 25% of the world's energy, but has only 3% of the world's fossil fuel resources, so further oil and gas exploration is not going to help much. Contrast his sensible, adult discussion of the issues with Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill!" - one of the most moronic political sound-bites I've seen in recent years. It was unpleasant to see how many people bought this nonsense.
But going back to research, Obama points out that the US implicitly assumes that it will maintain a global superiority in science and technology, yet has been steadily cutting investment in basic research. In the 70s, more than a quarter of all research proposals were funded; now it's dropped to 10% or less. As he says, this means that scientists need to spend a large proportion of their time chasing the money that's still there, leaving them correspondingly fewer hours to do actual work. Another, less obvious, effect is that research focuses on a few "safe" directions, with speculative high-risk/high-gain ideas becoming almost impossible to fund; unfortunately, history shows that the risky ideas are the ones that really make a difference. Lee Smolin gives an excellent analysis of the problem in The Trouble with Physics.
I am one of many researchers who has given up, and moved elsewhere. I spent a lot of this decade working in the US, and most of the previous one working for a US company. I'm now in Switzerland, continuing to develop stuff that was largely paid for by the US taxpayer - if you're curious, you can read all about it in our 2006 book, Putting Linguistics into Speech Recognition. The flow of knowledge always used to be in the opposite direction. It feels kind of weird.
Obama says in this book that he wants to double investment in research. I wonder whether he is still going to have a chance of doing that, given the economic climate, but it's nice to see that he thinks it's important.