A Promised Land

I don't know how to fully separate my opinion on Obama from my review of the book, so I'll just state for the record that I am a lifelong Democrat who cried when Obama was elected but ended up disappointed in some of his actions while president. His autobiography is long but worth the time investment. I learned a lot about political situations that I hadn't paid much attention to at the time and came away with a better sense of the incredibly complicated deal-making that is required to get anything done in Congress, even when your party is in the majority.

I'm not sure I learned anything about Barack Obama as a human being that I didn't know already. He is intelligent, thoughtful, and willing to admit mistakes - up to a point. I wish there had been more examples where he said, “I really screwed this up and it had significant ramifications for our country.” But no, the health care deal was the best he could manage, closing Gitmo turned out to be impossible, going after the Wall Street bankers would never have worked, etc. etc. I guess he has to protect his presidential legacy, and maybe ten or twenty years from now he will have enough perspective to be more critical regarding his actions. But he's still a breath of fresh air compared to 45 when it comes to being able to wrestle with the impact of his decisions, even if he is loathe to admit he did anything but the best he could at the time.

Obama acknowledges that there was no way he could have lived up to the expectations everyone projected on him (all of that “hope and change” stuff), but he still did more good than any Democratic president in my lifetime (sadly that only includes Carter and Clinton). It will be interesting to see if the tone of his follow up book will be different as more time elapses from his tenure in office.