12/25/2022 0 Comments Obama the world after america![]() His first campaign for political office confirmed what he already knew about himself - “that whatever preference I had for fair play, I didn’t like to lose.” But as always, there is a clinical clarity to his approach to politics, and his sense of timing and political momentum is unerring. As Emil Jones, in the Illinois legislature put it, “Barack’s different, He’s going places.” The personal drama of this part comes from the constant examination of his own motives for going into politics and doubling down on it, especially against Michelle Obama’s scepticism. Though there are a share of disappointments early in his political career, there never seems to have been any doubt about his trajectory. The account of his political rise is probably the strongest and most self-reflective section of the book, more so than his time as president, when the weight of history and the Official Secrets Act takes over. The first half of the book is a riveting account of a fairy-tale political career that sees Obama move from a state legislator to the president. US President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle Obama, Narendra Modi and formar prime minister Manmohan Singh at the At Home ceremony of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday. Once Toot was gone, there would be no one left who remembered that life, or remembered me in it.” Modest and without consequence to the rest of the world. He looks back to his own childhood with her - “Another time, another life. He writes “in tough spots, I tend to channel my grandmother.” But it would be a heartless soul whose eyes do not well up with tears at the paragraphs describing her last days, and what she meant to him as a moral lodestar and as a witness. The high point of the narrative thread in this story is Obama’s relationship with his grandmother, who had raised him in Hawaii. His admirably warm interest in people of all kinds, in their individuality, is remarkable. It is a wonderful story of family relationships, the occasional strains and tensions but also the boundless love. But before we get to the political story, it is worth emphasising the poignancy of Obama’s human story, made vivid by novelistic writing. ![]() It is a chronicle of what it is like to be the president. It attempts to be an “honest rendering” of Obama’s time in office. The book has many purposes and many pleasures. But A Promised Land, a beautifully written, poignant and measured presidential memoir, one of the best in that distinctive American genre, often reads in the overall arc of its narrative, as an answer to the weight of expectations that Havel talks about. Here is a politician with a resplendent personality: a sparkling intelligence that shines in almost every utterance, an unusual degree of emotional intelligence that allows him to size up people and situations, enviable powers of articulation, and a character that has remained remarkably unsullied for someone in politics. ![]() In the case of Obama, expectations from his tenure were unusually high. ![]()
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