Elisabeth Beattie's book review of Sen. Obama's Audacity of Hope.
In his new book, the junior Illinois senator and potential upcoming
Democratic contender for president, Barack Obama, defines "the best of
the American spirit" in this way: "[H]aving the audacity to believe
despite all the evidence to the contrary that we [can] restore a sense
of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that
despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the
family or a childhood mired in poverty, we [have] some control -- and
therefore responsibility -- over our own fate."
This belief, from which Obama derives the title for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,
serves as the essence of his articulate, thoughtful and honest
discussion of family, politics, faith and race and of how those topics
relate to values, opportunities, Republicans and Democrats and the
world beyond the United States.
What's refreshing about Obama's book is the author's ability to target
the essence of an argument and to assess it in language that is clear,
eloquent and often amusing. In pointing out that "sometimes our
ideological predispositions are just so fixed that we have trouble
seeing the obvious," the senator states, "Once, while still in the
Illinois Senate, I listened to a Republican colleague work himself into
a lather over a proposed plan to provide school breakfasts to
preschoolers. Such a plan, he insisted, would crush their spirit of
self-reliance." Obama continues, "I had to point out that not too many
five-year-olds I knew were self-reliant, but children who spent their
formative years too hungry to learn could very well end up being
charges of the state."
