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arvind123 's review for:
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
"I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide. In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed."
Barack Obama is one of my heroes. Partly, it's because his American experience mirrors my own - "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too." He is the last prominent politician in modern America who made more than a perfunctory effort to imbue unity and hope in the masses, to remind us that we agree far more often than we disagree. Over the past few months, I've read many members of the commentariat minimize Obama's legacy. He was not legislatively successful, and the end of his presidency inaugurated Donald Trump's rise in American political life and all the division and nastiness that followed. To a large extent, these failures are of no fault of his own. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for only the first two years of his Presidency, a period that was consumed by managing the financial crisis that he inherited from George W. Bush. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner ensured that passing major legislation was impossible while Republicans controlled Congress. To me, what made Obama such an amazing President are more intangible qualities. I would describe Barack Obama in the same way that he describes Chicago Mayor Harold Wilson - "it wasn't so much what he did as how he made you feel. Like anything was possible. Like the world was yours to remake."
A Promised Land is not like most political memoirs, with wide margins, large fonts, and a regurgitation of talking points. Obama is thoughtful and humble, reflecting on how Presidential campaigns can glorify candidates, his fears that he would let down his supporters, and the loneliness he felt holding the nation's highest office. He is as eloquent in his prose as he is in his public speaking. The story he tells is insightful, no matter what your politics are. I can't wait for the second volume.
Barack Obama is one of my heroes. Partly, it's because his American experience mirrors my own - "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too." He is the last prominent politician in modern America who made more than a perfunctory effort to imbue unity and hope in the masses, to remind us that we agree far more often than we disagree. Over the past few months, I've read many members of the commentariat minimize Obama's legacy. He was not legislatively successful, and the end of his presidency inaugurated Donald Trump's rise in American political life and all the division and nastiness that followed. To a large extent, these failures are of no fault of his own. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for only the first two years of his Presidency, a period that was consumed by managing the financial crisis that he inherited from George W. Bush. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner ensured that passing major legislation was impossible while Republicans controlled Congress. To me, what made Obama such an amazing President are more intangible qualities. I would describe Barack Obama in the same way that he describes Chicago Mayor Harold Wilson - "it wasn't so much what he did as how he made you feel. Like anything was possible. Like the world was yours to remake."
A Promised Land is not like most political memoirs, with wide margins, large fonts, and a regurgitation of talking points. Obama is thoughtful and humble, reflecting on how Presidential campaigns can glorify candidates, his fears that he would let down his supporters, and the loneliness he felt holding the nation's highest office. He is as eloquent in his prose as he is in his public speaking. The story he tells is insightful, no matter what your politics are. I can't wait for the second volume.