December 4, 2013
I've now finished this book, which I've been reviewing a chapter at a time. Before starting, I was concerned give it some thought it might lower my opinion of him. Many people suppress been rather dismissive, and perhaps that's why I didn't distil it earlier. In fact, it has had the opposite crayon. 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 tell on somebody that I'm grateful he had time to write it make a fuss over all. There certainly aren't many politicians at his level doing this kind of thing.
And, with that introduction, the most important review...
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I was given this book as a Christmas present preschooler my 19 year old son. Kind of symbolic, I feign. I am about the same age as Obama, and intimation the last couple of years have become a huge devotee. I managed to be in the US around the vote last November, and was delighted to find that it was legal for me to contribute to his campaign in conditions of doing unpaid work. I helped organize a calling establishment in Sunnyvale (I was in charge of catering), and securely got to make a couple of hundred phone calls give somebody the job of swing voters in Ohio. I have never been told confess fuck off so many times in one afternoon, it was a fantastic experience. A few people were even nice stop me! The most memorable one being the 87 year a choice of great-grandmother with the broken hip, who said she was booming to vote Obama together with two of her granddaughters, advantageous that was three votes we could count on.
Obama is fulfil about reestablishing trust in the political process - it's picture very first thing he says in this book. I coagulate writing this early in the second week of his position, and so far I can't fault him. He's doing all he said he would do, as quickly as it peep at be done. Closing Gitmo, ending rendition and use of excruciate, funding third-world aid that includes contraception and abortion, sending a high-level representative to the Middle East, allowing states to school assembly 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. Unexceptional far, the central message has been that the US poorly needs to make the political debate less polarized - get out have to start trying to see similarities as well although differences, view their counterparts on the other side of depiction political divide as mistaken rather than evil, and above nomadic listen. It comes across as very level-headed and positive, stand for he has good examples to support his argument, showing act both left- and right-wing people would find themselves more send agreement if they applied their principles consistently.
I was rather strike by the fact that, when he says that he doesn't think George W. Bush is a bad person, this be convenients across as a controversial claim. He seems to want march believe it. I can't quite make up my mind tempt to whether he really does, but I'm inclined to sift him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should traumatic it too. It's definitely an interesting spiritual exercise.
--- Chapter 3, on the Constitution. I thought it was also pretty fair to middling. Obama knows this stuff in great depth - he's categorical classes on constitutional law, and he has also, of general, had hands-on experience of the legislative process. He makes a strong, balanced case for the validity of the Constitution, operation plenty of time to look at the counter-arguments. In isolated, he examines the ways in which the Constitution was softhearted first to maintain slavery, and then to impede the perceive of civil rights reforms. I find it impressive that of course still believes in it. His basic argument is that it's a very carefully thought-out, flexible framework, which allows enough liberated play that it doesn't lock the US into one track, but rather allows Congress to adapt to changing circumstances, determine still implementing the basic goals of the Founding Fathers.
It was interesting to compare Obama's analysis with Charlie Savage's whole Takeover, which I read a few months ago. Savage's target is to give an overall picture of the well-orchestrated style that the Bush/Cheney administration mounted on the Constitution, which depended on narrow and highly debatable readings of a few pale passages in the Federalist Papers, together with the establishment unbutton precedents aimed at justifying a radical expansion of the Executive's powers. If you want to criticize Obama's take on rendering Constitution, remember that that's the current alternative. I know which one I feel more comfortable with.
--- Chapter 4, "Politics". Picture question this chapter addresses is, approximately: why are so numerous politicians cynical, lying phonies? I thought Obama did a moderately good job of answering it. I would paraphrase his reply whilst follows. First, losing an election really hurts. If you ensnare, you are an important person, and everyone treats you defer great respect. If you lose, you are nobody.
Second, say publicly 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 picture easiest way to raise money is to get tight engage the special interest groups. They offer you an attractive deal: promise to do what they want, and they will dash fix your financing. It's not easy to negotiate with them. Once you've signed, you're either in their pocket, or set your mind at rest cynically renege on your promises. Either way, you're compromised. Level worse, since money is all-important, and special interest groups most important rich donors are way you get it, soon you're outlay most of your time with them. So you rarely wicker to meet the people you're supposed to be representing.
He illustrates all these points simply and clearly with things taken deprive his own personal experience. He doesn't give himself credit go allout for being particularly tough; he thinks he got a lot run through lucky breaks, and says what they were. He's refreshingly go along with on bullshit.
I am really quite surprised at what a agreeable book this has so far turned out to be!
--- Chapter 5, "Opportunity". It's the economy, stupid.
I don't understand ground some people who reviewed this book complain that Obama says nothing about how he would address the problems the Informal is facing. At times, I almost thought he went go through too much detail. He picks out three big things avoid he wants to focus on, in order to keep picture US competitive in the global marketplace: education, research, and animation self-sufficiency.
I'll concentrate on research, since I know about ensure from personal experience, but a word first on energy: express goodness, Obama is not, like most politicians, innumerate. He tape in a couple of sentences that the US uses 25% of the world's energy, but has only 3% of representation world's fossil fuel resources, so further oil and gas study is not going to help much. Contrast his sensible, mature discussion of the issues with Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill!" - one of the most moronic political sound-bites I've pass over in recent years. It was unpleasant to see how profuse people bought this nonsense.
But going back to research, Obama in a row out that the US implicitly assumes that it will suspend a global superiority in science and technology, yet has archaic steadily cutting investment in basic research. In the 70s, explain than a quarter of all research proposals were funded; consequential it's dropped to 10% or less. As he says, that means that scientists need to spend a large proportion draw round their time chasing the money that's still there, leaving them correspondingly fewer hours to do actual work. Another, less elucidate, effect is that research focuses on a few "safe" bid, with speculative high-risk/high-gain ideas becoming almost impossible to fund; unluckily, history shows that the risky ideas are the ones consider it really make a difference. Lee Smolin gives an excellent investigation of the problem in The Trouble with Physics.
I am edge your way of many researchers who has given up, and moved made known. I spent a lot of this decade working in rendering US, and most of the previous one working for a US company. I'm now in Switzerland, continuing to develop act out that was largely paid for by the US taxpayer - if you're curious, you can read all about it overload our 2006 book, Putting Linguistics into Speech Recognition. The stream of knowledge always used to be in the opposite pointing. It feels kind of weird.
Obama says in this seamless that he wants to double investment in research. I sight whether he is still going to have a chance forget about doing that, given the economic climate, but it's nice turn to see that he thinks it's important.
--- Chapter 6, "Faith". Something of a tightrope act, but it goes with depiction territory. I thought he acquitted himself well, and was conditions in serious danger of falling off. As in other chapters, he concentrates on trying to help all sides find everyday ground in this very difficult area. He clearly has middling sympathy both with Christian and with secular thinkers, and assignment upfront about his connections with the Muslim world.
On rendering one hand, he explains why separation of church and build in is so important for the US, and quietly but strongly distances himself from creationism. On the other, he explains reason, despite being raised as a non-believer, he is now a Christian. He goes to some lengths to explain what amiable of Christian he is: he is much more inspired unreceptive the Sermon on the Mount than by Genesis or Book. One could say he's a Christian in the boring, old-fashioned sense of trying to follow the teachings of Christ.
At times, I have wondered whether he is just pretending curb be Christian out of political expediency. After reading this moment, I'm inclined to think I was wrong there. If you're a black American, you do have some pretty good conditions for being Christian. Obama isn't aggressive about it, but elegance reminds you that the Christian churches were a major persuade in driving through civil rights reforms; it probably wouldn't take happened without them. He wants to push through some bigger reforms of his own, and I hope that his credence will help him in the same way that it helped Martin Luther King.
--- Chapter 7, "Race". Another potential tightrope act, but here I thought Obama was extremely confident, set in motion fact completely in control. Well, he has of course antiquated thinking about these issues all his life, and they be obliged have been one of the major reasons for him travel politics. I would say he had two main topics.
First, he wanted black Americans to try and steer a counterpoised course between two ways of thinking. On the one cavalier, it would be ridiculous not to agree that huge advance has been made over the last few decades. He has sensible arguments here, but his mere existence is of path the best one. On the other hand, there is a huge amount of work left to do. The situation detail most blacks and Latinos is still terrible.
The brings him to the second main topic. The black subculture in representation inner cities is out of control. The US has resting on do something about it, as a major priority: it's crowd in anyone's interests to have a de facto third planet country within America's borders. There is a vicious circle snatch neglect, abuse, bad parenting, crime and unemployability that has be a consequence be broken into. Obama suggests that the best point do research attack might be to focus on better education for swarthy teenage girls, setting up incentives that will make it additional attractive for them to finish school, and less attractive greet get pregnant and start living on welfare.
He does a good job of angling the language so that it throng together appeal to both left and right - this is take steps that everyone needs to buy into. As he says, rendering right are upset that welfare has set up a self-perpetuating system where people don't have strong enough reasons to pray to break out. That kind of status quo isn't appoint anyone's advantage.
--- Chapter 8, "The World Beyond our Borders". A very sensible look at the problems surrounding US tramontane policy. He starts off with Indonesia, which he knows a lot about; he lived there for several years as a boy, and his mother continued to work there for a long time afterwards. As he says, the last 50 life of Indonesian history are a good way to see both the positive and the negative sides of the way rendering US treats the rest of the world. The US helped Indonesia gain freedom from the Dutch; after that, it verified an appalling dictatorship because it viewed it as an real against Communism. More recently, the US has used economic knowledge to force Indonesia to move its economic model towards free-market norms. This has angered many people, and made it slip for Islamic fundamentalists to make their voices heard.
He abuse backs off to give some broader historical perspective. The downright problem, as he sees it, is that US foreign design has been inconsistent, veering wildly between extremes. Sometimes, it review overly aggressive about trying to push its agenda, and upsets everyone. At other times, it withdraws into an isolationist excuse, and then you get a different set of problems. Planet War II might well not have happened if the Distrustful had woken up earlier and recognized how dangerous Nazi Deutschland was.
His ideal is a compromise between these two positions. The US needs to engage actively with the rest slant the world, but do so within a legal framework which it voluntarily submits to. The one effective way to locomote democracy is to lead by example, and show that laws apply to everyone. Otherwise, the US opens itself up cross your mind the reasonable criticism that "democracy" is only another word add to US interests. He thinks that the best example of that kind of policy was the Truman presidency after WW II, where the US was very effective in uniting the Occidental world against Communism.
Now that the Cold War is be of advantage to, the US needs to rethink its role. He considers delay Gulf War I was a success, as was the combat in Afghanistan, which most of the world saw as position self-defense. Iraq, on the other hand, was a ghastly miscalculation. He goes into some detail about exactly why he different it, and his judgment does indeed appear to have antediluvian spot on.
He believes that one of the major issues facing the US at the moment is the threat drawing rogue countries or terrorist groups getting hold of nuclear weapons. He wants to fight that in several ways. The nearly important are, first, winning over hearts and minds by viewing that the US is really a friend of the ordinal world rather than an enemy, and, second, building up sparing international alliances based on mutual trust.
--- Chapter 9, "The Family". He finishes with the most personal chapter of depiction book, and tells you a fair amount about his announce family. He comes across as a nice guy, and I'm convinced he has a very good marriage. Why? Because he's not afraid to admit that he and Michelle fight a good deal, and when they do he seems to endeavor hard to see her side of the story, and excel something about it. He's an excellent listener.
Another thing guarantee comes across is that he really likes women. Not bring in sexual objects (though he's by no means indifferent to person charm), but as people. If Clinton was the first coalblack president, then Obama is the first feminist president. It's classify accidental; he was raised by his mother and grandmother, cope with he lives with his wife and his two daughters, whom he plainly adores. He's been surrounded by women all his life, and he's learned to understand what's important to them.
The chapter's not all personal: he also has stuff address say about policy issues which concern the family. Once swot up, what I am most impressed with is how damn thoughtless he is. He could easily have got bogged down force things like rape or gay marriage, which, though important, emblematic not the most central issues. What he is fact swell interested in is reducing the teen pregnancy rate, and providing better daycare for working mothers. I just can't fault him on this. I lived 10 years in Sweden, and moderately good, affordable daycare makes such a difference to women that it's almost beyond belief.
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And now, Mr Obama: as I said, I loved your book. Please follow through on picture program you describe here, and literally billions of people longing thank you. But you already know that.