Barack Obama's Memoirs

[lpetrich]

The first volume of the two planned volumes has come out. Titled "A Promised Land", it has already sold better than his wife Michelle Obama's memoirs "Becoming" (2018).

• Barack Obama's memoir 'A Promised Land' releases today
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – memoir of a president | Books | The Guardian
• Readers Have Been Eagerly Waiting for Barack Obama’s New Memoir. Struggling Booksellers Have, Too. - The New York Times
• Book Review: ‘A Promised Land,’ by Barack Obama - The New York Times
• Book Review: ‘A Promised Land,’ by Barack Obama - The New York Times
• Intercept bureau chief: Obama memoir is a 'rationalization for why more wasn't possible' | TheHill - that's Ryan Grim

This first volume of his memoirs goes from his early years to his meeting with the Navy SEALs who were involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

He has written two other books, "Dreams from My Father" (1995), and "The Audacity of Hope" (2006).

Ryan Grim takes him to task for complaining that he does not have the votes in Congress to do this or that, but RG points out that LBJ did much more than JFK despite having similar compositions of Congress. That's because LBJ was much more willing than JFK to do what it takes to get votes, like (metaphorically) twisting arms.

 

[zorq]

Ryan Grim takes him to task for complaining that he does not have the votes in Congress to do this or that, but RG points out that LBJ did much more than JFK despite having similar compositions of Congress. That's because LBJ was much more willing than JFK to do what it takes to get votes, like (metaphorically) twisting arms.

It's worth considering for a moment that today, LBJ is reviled by the left nearly as much as he is by the right. It's also worth considering that the current sitting Senate majority leader considers successfully obstructing Obama to be his single greatest lifetime achievement.

 

[lpetrich]

Obama Says Trump Is 'Denying Reality' By Failing To Concede To Biden : NPR

Obama said Trump's behavior marks a total departure from how he and his staff were treated by the last Republican president to exit the White House, George W. Bush, following Obama's victory in the 2008 election.

"For all the differences that I had with George W. Bush, he and his administration could not have been more gracious and effective in working with us to facilitate a smooth transition," Obama said. He said his ability to get "immediately briefed" by top administration officials on everything from the financial crisis to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "meant we hit the ground running and allowed us to be more effective in our responses."

...
Asked whether bipartisanship is a fool's errand, Obama said that absent a supermajority in the Senate to break filibusters, "Joe Biden is going to have to work with some Republican colleagues."

"There is a way to reach out and not be a sap," he said. "There's a way of consistently offering the possibility of cooperation but recognizing that if Mitch McConnell or others are refusing to cooperate, at some point you've got to take it to the court of public opinion."

Obama said that what he failed to recognize, particularly at the start of his presidency, is that "an obstructionist strategy oftentimes is not punished by voters in the polls." He said his advice, "not just for Democrats, but anybody who just wants to see a functioning, effective government, is you're going to have to stay involved."

Obama spoke ahead of the Tuesday release of his new memoir, A Promised Land, which traces his ascent to the White House and concludes with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. A second volume covering the remaining years of his presidency is scheduled to follow.

...
Obama also said he draws inspiration from a younger generation that is more open when it comes to attitudes on not just race, but also gender and sexual orientation.

He said this is the generation he wrote the book for — to show that there are two competing visions for the world: one where "we are a collection of tribes and we are inevitably at war and it's a zero-sum game" and another that says "for all our differences, there is a common humanity and it is possible for us in a multiracial, multiethnic, highly diverse country and world, it is possible for us to see each other, understand each other, respect each other and work together."

 

[lpetrich]

Transcript: NPR's Full Interview With Former President Barack Obama : NPR

And the success of that — not, not in their decision-making now, but the success of that strategy being the "party of no," as was so commonly said.

When I look back, it was interesting, while I was writing the book. I mentioned this in certain passages. In my first couple of years in office, I think I had a unwarranted faith that if we did the right thing and implemented good policies, then people would know. And we didn't sell it hard enough. Now, part of it I have to cut myself and my team a little bit of slack — we had so much stuff coming at us at one time. Right? We had the worst financial crisis in history. We have the banks about to go under, we had the auto industry about to go under, we had two wars, we still had a very active Al-Qaida. And so, as we used to call it, we're drinking from a firehose. And so we didn't have time to do a bunch of victory laps or carefully stage PR campaigns around what we did.

He conceded that his admin failed to advertise his Recovery Act well enough, not showing that it was keeping people they know at work. That made it easy to dismiss as "pork".

So I guess one piece of advice that I would give Joe that I think he will internalize 'cause he was there and helped preside over the Recovery Act is there is no such thing as building a better mouse trap and people will suddenly show up. You have to constantly market and explain what you are doing, and we figured that out but a little bit later than we probably should have.

I agree.

 

[lpetrich]

Barack Obama Tells 'Fresh Air': Democracy Is 'Strained' Not 'Broken' : NPR

"We just had record turnout," Obama says of the election. "Despite what the president is saying, you're seeing state officials run an orderly process, and even Republican officials who are responsible for counting votes [are] doing so in a way that reflects their integrity."

But, Obama adds, "There is no doubt that [democracy's] been strained."

Though Obama sees Trump as a major source of that strain, he notes that the problem is larger than one man: "What I was surprised by over the last four years is the complicity of other Republican elected officials and their unwillingness to call [Trump out] when he was breaking norms or straining some of our democratic institutions."

...
On his decision, as president, to not watch news coverage and not see how he was being portrayed in the media

For my own mental health, and I advised my family members to follow this same practice, I just didn't watch broadcast news of any sort or cable news of any sort. Very rarely did I watch it. ...

Probably there was a little bit of a disadvantage for me in not following as carefully what was going on on television. ...

Barack Obama seems very thoughtful. He may not be some Marcus Aurelius or Thomas Jefferson, but he is still very good by the standards of our nation's Chief Executives. He also concedes that he did not do enough to oppose Republican obstructionism.

On why he titled his book A Promised Land after the African American spiritual

Dr. King has a very famous speech where he talks about Exodus and Moses getting to the mountaintop and he can see in the distance that promised land, but he never gets there. And the Israelites wander for 40 years in the wilderness. And Exodus has always been central to the African American experience, naturally, given the bondage that they were experiencing, this idea that somehow, some way, we're going to get there.

And that's how I think about America, not just for the African American experience, but for the country as a whole. That there is this extraordinary promise, this possibility of a more perfect union and each generation does its part to travel a little further down that road, to get a little bit closer, and inevitably we're going to fall short and there's still going to be racism and there's still going to be gender discrimination and inequality and suffering and pain that's unnecessary. But if we embrace the journey, if we embrace the possibility that we can better see each other as having common fears and common dreams and being one people, that we can get a little closer to that promised land.

 

[lpetrich]

Democrats should ditch ‘defund the police’ and give Ocasio-Cortez a bigger platform, Obama says. - The New York Times

During an appearance on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America” show, the former president called on progressives to ditch catchphrases like “defund the police” — while, moments later, chiding party elders for not spotlighting young stars like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

He seems to agree with the intended meaning of "defund the police", while thinking that it is an awful slogan.

“The Democratic National Convention I thought was really successful considering the pandemic, and really used technology wisely,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.

“But, you know, the fact that an A.O.C. only got, what? Three minutes or five minutes? When she speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don’t agree with everything she says,” he added.

“You give her a platform, just like there may be some other young Democrats who come from more conservative areas who have a different point of view. But new blood is always good,” Mr. Obama said.

 

[Swammerdami]

From the N.Y. Times book review:

He periodically reminds us how he inherited a state of emergency. As one of his friends said after Obama’s historic win in 2008, when the economy was getting devoured by the Great Recession: “Two hundred and thirty-two years and they wait until the country’s falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!”

Once in office, Obama sought the help of experienced insiders instead of “fresh talent,” deciding that the dire circumstances “demanded it.” Obama says he had ambitious ideas for structural change, but that his team insisted that any attempts to mete out some “Old Testament justice” to the banks whose avarice and recklessness had pushed the financial system to the brink would send skittish markets into a full-blown panic.

But quelling markets did little to quell anger and fear — something that conservatives, Obama noticed, were quick to seize on and use to their advantage, while the president deemed it perilous to tap into such incendiary emotions.... What could have been politically beneficial to him, Obama takes pains to spell out, would have risked degrading the institutions that needed to be repaired, not demolished.

There’s a dynamic that Obama describes again and again in “A Promised Land”: establishment Republicans shrewdly finding ways to appropriate and exploit the feelings of helplessness and resentment that their own deregulatory policies had helped to bring about in the first place.... He recalls a Republican senator telling him, “I hate to say it, but the worse people feel right now, the better it is for us.”

 

[TomC]

He periodically reminds us how he inherited a state of emergency. As one of his friends said after Obama’s historic win in 2008, when the economy was getting devoured by the Great Recession: “Two hundred and thirty-two years and they wait until the country’s falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!”

Ha ha ha!

This reminds me of a favorite political cartoon from Nov 2008.
I don't think it even had a caption. It just showed the White House bashed up and smoking. Bush is running out the backdoor. Up to the front door marches Obama, carrying tools and cleaning equipment.
Tom

ETA ~Maybe it was captioned. Something like "Leave it to the black man."~