Completed: 12/10/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody...saw it, requested it from the library. Of course, everyone knows about it.
Words for which I sought help:
abnegation -- the act of renouncing or rejecting something
manichean -- an adherent of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark, matter being regarded as dark and evil.
Review:
This is a long book. It is also a lot of material. This is the first book by Obama that looks back instead of looking forward. It was a little odd to hear him read it--that created an odd sort of intimacy as he talked about his own life. One of the things that he mentioned was that he "lost" his first name when he became president. Most people addressed him as "Mr. President" or "sir." As a result, while I listened to this book, I thought of him as Barack and would say to my wife that I was listening to Barack. So, in my own way and surely inappropriately, I tried to give him his first name back.
It was interesting to hear him describe how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came to be (I have always seen it as a compromise bill that could not illicit the compromise it sought, so we ended up with a compromise bill when it would have been just as easy to pass a single payer plan). The actual reasons for the compromises I saw were more complex then simply trying to get a few Republican votes and it was good to hear more about the details and reasoning behind some of the compromises. I honestly had forgotten the many steps he had to take to shore up the economy in his first year in office and how doing so had taken up most of his time.
I was aware that the job of president was all-consuming and this is a small part of why I had not been interested in pursing it despite my mother's insistence that I would. To hear the mechanics of how being president was so exhausting for Obama helped explain the gray hair that every president sports at the end of his first term (even Trump's wig got gray).
Obama's range of knowledge is amazing and his depth of understanding is truly impressive. It feels like there is no topic where he would not be able to engage. While there are several areas where I feel he did not really do what he campaigned on doing (he felt like a conservative in many ways to me while in office, not a progressive) he does a decent job of explaining some of the trade-offs he faced in his first term.
This book ended with the killing of Osama Bin Laden which I felt was a high point when it happened. Obama's solemn description of the process he went through (I've read of the details of the raid elsewhere), his anxiety for the men he put in harm's way, and what appears to be the relief (not joy or any thread of happiness) that he experienced when the job was done is palpable.
I respect Obama and his leadership. I did not agree with him on everything, but I felt comfortable with the idea that he was likely taking into consideration things which I couldn't possibly know about and it was good to hear him describing just that.
I also liked hearing more about his stand on principle with regard to Libya. The manner in which Gaddafi died was so horrifying to me that it overshadowed the terror Gaddafi instilled in his lifetime until I read about Obama's steps to turn back his army at Benghazi. I knew, in concept the terrible things Gaddafi had done, but I actually saw him being killed, so his death was more graphic and immediate to me then the many, many people he had killed. Hearing about Obama's actions reminded me of the much broader picture then the few minutes that ended Gaddafi's life and reminded me of just how awful he was. I had a similar, though shorter lived, experience with Saddam Hussein after seeing a video of his death.
No comments:
Post a Comment