Normally, I would never read a politician’s memoirs. Many to me seem to be the author’s attempts to cement a legacy and create a more heroic image of him or herself for the reader. Most memoirs do that anyway, as only the rare few will come out to deliberately make the author look like an asshole. It’s not even necessarily a conscious thing for many people I would imagine. Why, then, would I read Barack Obama’s presidential memoir? I didn’t read anyone else’s, even his wife’s.
I have two reasons. The first is Obama once gave an interview as a newly-elected Senator where he outright said all successful politicians, himself included, create a public persona in order to get votes and win elections, a moment of honesty I don’t think most politicians actually get to. Second, honestly, I have always liked the way Obama used words in his speeches and off-the-cuff answers, so I figured even if the book was at least somewhat there to cement his legacy, it would perhaps be a well-written attempt to cement a legacy. And, quite frankly, that’s good enough for me.
Obama opens his book with a bit about his early life, working through his childhood, his education, how he met and romanced Michelle, and then had his two daughters. If anything, he probably covered a lot of that stuff in some of his pre-presidential books, so he doesn’t say a lot there, but I actually liked the more candid stuff he talked about like that than a lot of the other things he wrote about. From there, he started running for office, always needing to convince Michelle that it was a good idea, and then on to the presidency. That takes up the bulk of the book, and by the time I got to the end of this 700+ page volume, he hadn’t even begun running for re-election yet. He goes from the start of his presidency to the Bin Laden raid, and he doesn’t shy away from times when he wasn’t able to get much done and got a lot of heat for it regardless.
Now, I am certain Obama is writing this in part to explain and maybe even justify his decision-making process. I wouldn’t expect any less. But he still does have that gift with words. I am also fairly aware Obama is unlikely to win over detractors with this book, but I doubt too many of those folks would read it anyway. What he does do is tell his story with a bit of humor and insight. I did tend to pay a bit more attention anytime Joe Biden got mentioned since he’s the president as I type this, and it is interesting to see some of the conflicts behind the scenes even if my own life tells me how things turned out. I know, for example, that Robert Gates stayed on as Secretary of Defense and Hilary Clinton became Secretary of State, but what I didn’t know is Obama had a somewhat easier time convincing Gates to stay than for Clinton to sign on.
There’s also Obama’s idealized goals crashing with reality. Obama wanted to be an inspiration for a lot of people like himself to do what they could to maybe get as far as he did in life, but over time, he does start to realize that reality often makes it harder for a lot of people to do just that. That sense of frustration is there, and at least early on, he doesn’t really criticize others so much as say that was how it was and there was only so much even a person in his position could do. He never outright attacks anyone directly so much as point out foibles and the like, noting how little Mitch McConnell was going to help him with anything or that his Russian counterpart was probably in Putin’s pocket anyway. He even reframes from full-on attacking Donald Trump late in the volume even as Trump was loudly pushing birtherism as, from Obama’s standpoint, the problem was less Trump amplifying a conspiracy theory for his own benefit as the news media giving Trump a free platform to do it on.
Obama’s book, ultimately, is the readable volume I had thought it would be. Heck, he even managed to make the Bin Laden raid a bit suspenseful, and again, I knew how that one turned out. While I am sure Obama was at least a little self-serving to write it, that didn’t mean he didn’t make it something I enjoyed reading.
Grade: A-
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