A Promised Land — Presidential Memoirs by Barack Obama : The Agonies, the Ecstasies & the Audacity of Hope !
I hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office — not just a historical record of key events … -Barack Obama
More than anyone, this book is for those young people — an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us — Barack Obama
I spent the Thanksgiving day 2020 with President Barack Obama, of course not in a spatial sense, but virtually ! These are the voyages of … well you know what follows !
When the book ended, I felt like a good friend has left the building (for a long trip ! — as we have the Vol. 2 coming up). Obama’s style — respectful yet candid, detailed at the same time succinct, a chronicled narrative but embedded with pensive insights, thoughtful still impulsive — captures the reader into his world on a ring side tour through his presidency ! Thank you President Obama & looking forward to Vol.2 !
What I really liked about Obama’s memoirs is that he explains all the major initiatives very well — the lay of the land, initial assumptions, the players, of course, the politics and most importantly, a ring side seat to the consensus building and how they unfold to the finale … we are there with him feeling what he feels …
- For example the narrative of the G20 summit at London is so good that we feel that we are there in London instead of Barack Obama ! His write-ups on the world leaders give us an inside view, which we rarely get !
This intimate, clear and concise closeup at that level is the hallmark of the whole book, and that is why the book is so good !
His meeting Václav Havel at Prague is illuminative — watching President Obama maintaining his moral compass … we get a glimpse of the thoughts that run in his mind …
The parting words from Havel were a fitting epilogue to Obama’s presidency suggesting that by raising expectations, he was doomed to disappoint them- Havel said to President Barack Obama “You’ve been cursed with people’s high expectations,” he said, shaking my hand. “Because it means they are also easily disappointed …”
Vol. 1 ends at Obama’s 1st term (he has just announced his candidacy for the 2nd term) and I expect Vol. 2 to start from there. It is good that the memoirs is a 2 volume effort — otherwise the book would have ended with a last chapter on the current politics (up to the election and the Covid peak)
I want to read a postmortem of the last 4 years, and inside into the 2020 election & a vision, a prologue for the Biden term — the things President-elect Biden should focus on & the future of the country. I hope there is at least 2 chapters on those two very important topics …
The book ends suddenly, without any preview of what comes next — which makes me think that rest of the chapters are closer to be ready … probably published in a few months … I hope they have the time to add the post-election chapters
I hope Markus Dohle, Madeline McIntosh & the team @PenguinRandomHouse hears me ;o)
I am getting ahead of myself, let me start at the beginning …
I got to walk a mile in his shoes, … actually a lifetime on his shoulders — Barack Obama’s book “A Promised Land” is a great read and it gives you a ring side seat.
Barack Obama “ .. hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office — not just a historical record of key events” and he succeeded very well
The book is ~850 pages, in 7 parts — I.The Bet / II.Yes, We Can / III.Renegade / IV.The Good Fight / V.The World as it is / VI.In the Barrel / VII.On the high wire .
Binge reading is the only way to finish it — if you really want to understand and be inspired by this great person. As you can tell, I enjoyed the book immensely and hope you do too. … And, the book is Vol 1 of 2 !
Prologue
We have our own tiny share of anecdotes — when Kaushik was born, we did receive a birthday card from the then First Family — Bill and Hillary Clinton. Usha applied and got her US Citizenship just to vote for Barack Obama ! She was ambivalent till then (after being in the country for 10+ years) but Barack Obama really inspired her to become a US Citizen — something worth her homage !
Of course, we followed the 2004 campaign very closely; and it is extremely interesting to read the backstories from President Barack Obama’s POV. Especially the primary with Hillary Clinton — the quick talk at the tarmac before Iowa caucus, the mtg at Barbara boxer, Bill’s remarks, finale at the DNC, the victory, the teetering economy, the foreign policies, the healthcare reform from it’s nascency to the final bill, …Oh,… the agonies & the ecstasies … you can read them all !
For the rest of the blog, I will give you a glimpse of the book part by part. This is more of a note for me than anything else. You should, definitely, rush to the nearest store or to a computer with fastest internet & order one !
Part One : The Bet
We get a glimpse of the young Obama — in his own words “… I feel a great affection for the young man that I was, aching to make a mark on the world, wanting to be a part of something grand and idealistic …”
His patriotism and love of America, the future comes out very well — Barack writes :
- “The conviction that racism wasn’t inevitable may also explain my willingness to defend the American idea:.. the pride in being American, the notion that America was the greatest country on earth — that was always a given…. “
- “… The America Tocqueville wrote about, the countryside of Whitman and Thoreau, with no person my inferior or my better… “
- “… It was the America of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and Jane Addams toiling in a Chicago settlement home, and weary GIs at Normandy, and Dr. King on the National Mall summoning courage in others and in himself”
- “.. It was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, crafted by flawed but brilliant thinkers who reasoned their way to a system at once sturdy and capable of change”
Now I understand where “Yes, We can come from”, sorry I am compelled to quote half a page … This was Barack Obama in 1983
Emil Jones, “Barack’s different,” he once told a staffer. “He’s going places.” — in 1995 or so !
Chapter 3 describes politics very well in terms of a goal “a bridge-building politics politics that bridged America’s racial, ethnic, and religious divides”
Finally Barack meets David Axelrod — “Wait till Rich Daley retires and then run for mayor,” Axe concluded, wiping mustard off his mustache. “It’s the better bet” was the advise Obama got ! Axelord was not sure, ultimately a few weeks later, he called to say that after talking it over with his business partners and his wife, Susan, he’d decided to take me on as a client. Before I could thank him, he added a proviso.“Your idealism is stirring, Barack…but unless you raise five million bucks to get it on TV so people can hear it, you don’t stand a chance.”
Wise words from Ted Kennedy when Obama approached him whether to run for the presidency “But I can tell you this, Barack. The power to inspire is rare. Moments like this are rare. You think you may not be ready, that you’ll do it at a more convenient time. But you don’t choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by”
Trivia : Obama ’s younger sister is Maya, so is Kamala Harris’s sister !
Part Two : Yes, We Can
Barack Obama captures the moment the best — I don’t think I can improve it in any way — so let me quite the then Senator Obama “On a bright February morning in 2007, I stood on a stage before the Old State Capitol in Springfield — the same spot where Abe Lincoln had delivered his “House Divided” speech while serving in the Illinois state legislature — and announced my candidacy for president — kick-starting a magical ride; that over the course of two years we would catch lightning in a bottle and tap into something essential and true about America”
Younger organizers and younger voter have a big part in Obama’s win in the primary and Obama gives them credit throughout the book. For example “The race was close, clearly (later polls would put me right back in third place), but there was no denying that our Iowa organization was having an impact, especially among younger voters. You could feel it in the crowds — in their size, their energy, and, most important, the number of supporter cards and volunteer sign-ups we were collecting at every stop. With less than six months to go before the caucus, our strength was only building” and “… there were the field organizers in Iowa — To this day, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for those kids”
Candidate Obama at Iowa —”Right there, in that high school in the middle of the country on a cold winter night, I had witnessed the community I had so long sought, the America I imagined, made manifest. I thought of my mom then, and how happy she would have been to see it, and how proud she would have been, and I missed her terribly, and Plouffe and Valerie pretended not to notice as I wiped away my tears”
After Iowa and NH, Obama portrays the South Carolina primary very well those were the pivotal days. The fears, the triumphs, the polls all are there. Afer the win, the Kennedy’s endorsed Obama, as Obama eloquently says “The Kennedy endorsement added poetry to our campaign and helped set us up for Super Tuesday, on February 5”
Obama gives credit to “the growing role that technology played in our victories and the energy and creativity of our internet-savvy volunteers” …. I had written blogs about the Data Science — All The President’s Data Scientists and All The Presidents DevOps.
Trivia : Campaign misires — “One pilot landed us in the wrong city not once but twice. … Another tried to jump-start the plane’s battery with an extension cord plugged into a standard socket in the airport lounge!”
I didn’t realize his choice for the VP were Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senate colleague Joe Biden of Delaware. While Obama chose Joe, Tim became Hillary’s VP choice in 2016.
Insightful comment — “Inequality also had a way of compounding itself.”
Obama’s position on the current state of affairs very interesting —” Beyond any specific policy, I wanted to restore in the minds of the American people the crucial role that government had always played in expanding opportunity, fostering competition and fair dealing, and making sure the marketplace worked for everybody”.— It is relevant then and more relevant now …
Interesting to see Obama mention — “Fortunately, our team had recruited (for debate prep) a pair of lawyers and political veterans — Ron Klain and Tom Donilon”— now in Biden cabinet !
Part Three : Renegade
Trivia : President Obama was given the code name “Renegade” by the secret service who guard him and his team. In his own words “There were times when I went stir-crazy, … that I would up and take off, … sending the agents scrambling to catch up, whispering “Renegade on the move” into their wrist mics”
“The bear is loose!” Reggie and Marvin would shout a little gleefully during such episodes.
Part Three starts the historic presidency-lots of interesting anecdotes how President Obama selected his team, the rationale, the response from the team members and how they all came together. Good read, good insights that we can’t get from anywhere else !
The country was facing the financial crisis then — and we get a detailed inside scoop into how it was tackled. The origin of the Stress Test is interesting — “Not because it was great — not even because it was good — but because the other approaches were worse” !
Reading the book in Nov 2020 is interesting, as the Biden admin is about to transition and we have another crisis - the pandemic !
An interesting writeup about Brian Deese, who was a young and brilliant policy specialist (“The youngest member of the task force”) — Brian is nor at Blackrock and slated to be part of Biden’s cabinet ! The right time to read the book as we will see how many of the members then and now
Trivia : PDB a.k.a. President’s Daily Brief — a leather binder ~10–15 pages “to provide the president a summary of world events and intelligence analysis, particularly anything that was likely to affect America’s national security.”
In many ways, Obama has a no-nonsense, tight ship and maintain high standards, good-government safeguards approach and a disdain to earmarks and egregious wastes of money — but the normal politics do get in the way.
Trivia : a First Family pays out of pocket for any new furniture, just as it does for everything else it consumes, from groceries to toilet paper to extra staff for a president’s private dinner party
An excellent insight into our troops and positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He clearly describes how the various points of view and the administration own view molded into a cohesive strategy — “I didn’t like the deal. But in what was becoming a pattern, the alternatives were worse.”
President Obama’s pride in our military in all their operations — “a melding of advanced technology, logistical precision, and highly trained and dedicated people, the kind of thing that the U.S. military does better than any other organization on earth” comes through very well — this one during a visit at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Part Four : The Good Fight
The stage is set for the Obama administration — the economy collapse has been averted, the Iraq/Afghanistan strategy is set and the London G20 is about to start — and that sets the stage for Part Four — The Good Fight; and we are about half way through the book !
Obama’s trip to London and Prague, meeting Václav Havel, his visit to Saudi Arabia and the speech at Cairo, all are here, in detail !
His writeup on the healthcare is very passionate and we get a ringside seat as it transitions from a set of goals and ideas to the final bill. The agonies are real, the ecstasies are far in between, the obstacles numerous and hard to overcome. “In other words, both the politics and the substance of healthcare were mind-numbingly complicated.” As Rahm says “Making sausage isn’t pretty, Mr. President,And you’re asking for a really big piece of sausage”
“What we face,” he’d written, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” — Posthumous letter from Ted Kennedy to Barack Obama about healthcare reform
Part Five : The World as it is
Part Five starts after the Healthcare Reform was passed. Very interesting read — as I said earlier, we rarely get to see the inside scoop — again the theme agonies and ecstasies holds good here ! Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo
Presidential Wisdom : “… that my heart was now chained to strategic considerations and tactical analysis, my convictions subject to counterintuitive arguments; that in the most powerful office on earth, I had less freedom to say what I meant and act on what I felt than I’d had as a senator — or as an ordinary citizen”
The international scene from Iran to Russia is very well described — we get a good picture.
Trivia : Obama mentions Madison’s “Federalist №10” in the context of Iraq. Interesting paper to read — in fact there is also a Data Science trivia about the Federalist papers — it is an interesting Machine Learning/NLP problem [Here, Here and Here] , ,
The Kyoto Agreement at Copenhagen is a gem to read — the prelude, the positions of the EU, China, BRICS, and finale at the summit where Obama and team crashes the meeting between China and the rest - Obama was able to get an agreement ! In the words of Reggie, “I gotta say, boss,” he told me, “that was some real gangster shit back there” !
Part Six : In the Barrel
We start Part six just after the interesting episodes at Copenhagen and move to more initiatives incl. a visit to London, the Greece Financial Crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (establishing the equivalent of “better building codes, smoke detectors, and sprinkler systems”), repealing DADT, the DREAM act (though it failed in the senate and became a presidential order)
BTW, “In the barrel” is the reference to the “daredevils (and fools) of old at Niagara Falls — you find yourself trapped in the proverbial barrel, tumbling through the crashing waters, bruised and disoriented, no longer sure which way is up, powerless to arrest your descent, waiting to hit bottom and hoping, without evidence, that you’ll survive the impact”
On the eve of his visit to India Obama writes (I couldn’t resist to blog this ;o)) “I’d never been to India before, but the country had always held a special place in my imagination. … Maybe it was because I’d spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahābhārata, or … because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends who’d taught to me to cook dahl and keema and turned me on to Bollywood movies. …” <ks> I would have added Rafi and Kishore Kumar songs and Kamal movies to this list ! </ks>
Part Seven : On the high wire
This is a relatively short Part, starts with the midterm where the Democrats lose the house (-63 seats!) and maintain a razor thin senate majority. A lot about the “The world as it will be” — the team faces the the Arab Spring and other international crisis. The title “On the high wire” is in reference to Obama’s mental high wire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, having given the go ahead for the Operation Neptune’s Spear ! Very good read.
There is a collection of photo inserts at the end of the book — very nice and nostalgic
Epilogue
As I mentioned, the book ends just at the end of the chapter without any preview of what comes next.
I want to read a postmortem of the last 4 years, and inside into the 2020 election & a vision, a prologue for the Biden term — the things President-elect Biden should focus on & the future of the country.
I hope Markus Dohle, Madeline McIntosh & the team @PenguinRandom House hears me ;o)
