NewMexiKen has just read Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
I am not entirely a fool. I recognize a campaign book when I read one. Even so, this is a remarkable person. I can’t say he’d be a excellent president or even a good one. I can say he’d be a positive one.
Americans are willing to compete with the world. We work harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We are willing to tolerate more economic instability and are willing to take more personal risks to get ahead. But we can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance—and if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall.
In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As the child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN General Assembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.
You should read this book, long-winded as a few parts of it can be.
It’s a wonderful book.
I started praying he’d someday make it to the White House after reading Dreams of My Father. Another wonderful book. Obama is an amazing human being.
I am almost through reading this book. It’s quite good. Though it is a “campaign book,” Obama isn’t afraid to be honest about the issues and he outlines a lot of good ideas on how to change the U.S. for the better.