Biden Should Have Said Obama Is Articulate for a Politician
A clear and engaging memoir, Dreams From My Father reads nothing at all like the writing of a man running for the Presidency. Obama has a talent for being simultaneously plain-spoken and erudite; this comes through his prose as well as his oration. I confess I’ve become a bit of a fan of his podcast because I enjoy listening to him. He unravels controversy without didacticism and whether speaking from the heart or the mind he displays uncommon sense. Right or wrong, the man is coherent.
This is the book to read if you want to get to know something about the man, but not if you want to know how he would lead. This is all about his American experience and while there’s quite a bit to point in the direction of his policy leanings, it’s much more personal, the story of a man finding his place in America, in the world, in his culture, his race, his family and his self. I get the impression of a man who understands the America that isn’t strictly American, the melting pot that never gets fully blended but leaves us connected even as we are apart. This is neither the immigrant America nor the homesteader America. I think it may be the real America, the one that is both but never either.
Of special note is the family history as related by his grandmother. Over the course of some thirty pages near the end we’re given an outline of Barack’s African lineage. The story has enough context to inform our understanding of history. Sometimes stories from the past seem as though they are happening now but with an antiqued backdrop, other times history overpowers the personal. Even better though, when we get to see the continuity, how the times affect the people who affect the atmosphere that the next generation will breathe. I found this to draw some of Obama’s connections in a way that I’ve been experiencing while reading Freedom and Unity, the Vermont Historical Society’s history of Vermont. I’ll go into that more later, but now I’ll just say that I appreciate the connection to place and what comes along with the stories of those who came before.
