The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama.
One speech at the Democrat’s 2004 national convention stood out. Barack Obama tapped into a source of political power that few politicians manage to do: the desire of Americans to be reaffirmed as to who they are and what they stand for, to be reminded that despite our differences we are one people, worth valuing. It was a speech powerful enough to introduce Mr. Obama to the country, and give him a shot at becoming President.
Mr. Obama had written a book before the convention speech called Dreams from my Father: a Story of Race and Inheritance, covering his early life. After the convention speech he published The Audacity of Hope, describing his views on America, on politics, and on the leadership he would like to bring to the country.
This is a review of The Audacity of Hope. I have sought to describe what I learned from the book concisely and completely. I do not intend to rehash what is commonly known about Mr. Obama or argue for or against his presidential candidacy.
Obama’s Ambition
Abraham Lincoln once stated, “every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.” I suppose most politicians who are introspective on their own motives would find solace in a similar ambition. And a politician like Barack Obama, who is clearly an admirer of Lincoln, must be aware of that statement.
In trying to make sense of his own political persuasion and personal beliefs, Mr. Obama observes that his own satisfaction, “seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I’ve been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity.” His perception of the importance of human dignity is illustrated by his tendency to embrace rather than dismiss people who have differing beliefs than his own, as illustrated in his famous speech at the Democratic national convention that launched him into national prominence, and his speech on respecting a doctor who believes abortion should be illegal. However, while a belief in human dignity is critical to having a polite discourse, it is not a particularly good guide to what political beliefs a person has, since the dignity conferred by a particular political policy is often in the eye of the beholder.
Government’s Role in Society
A better handle on his political policies can be obtained by examining Mr. Obama’s opinion on the role of government. He looks first to “Lincoln’s simple maxim: that we will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do as well or at all individually and privately.” Mr. Obama paraphrases this statement by saying, “We should be guided by what works.”
Many Republicans and most Libertarians would conclude that Mr. Obama’s statement should lead to a very limited role for government. Many people’s experience with the Department of Motor Vehicles or public schools are not very favorable. Critics of government argue that government is like a privately held company without competition and without a need to actually serve its customers; it tends to become complacent and inefficient. Critics also argue that in a democracy representatives chosen by the majority of voters end up passing laws on all citizens and allocating the funds of all taxpayers, regardless of whether the voters in the minority disfavor a particular decision or expenditure, and therefore even a democratically elected government is prone to violating the liberty of its members.
Mr. Obama doesn’t perceive government as usually incompetent. He sees in history strong leaders who took positive government action. He cites Abraham Lincoln, who pushed for a transcontinental railroad, incorporated the National Academy of Sciences, passed the Homestead Act of 1862 (turning over vast amounts of public land to settlers), and created a system of land grant colleges to instruct farmers how to do agriculture more efficiently. Mr. Obama feels government is good at making needed investments that private enterprise can’t or won’t make on its own, and in dealing with market failures, whether by Teddy Roosevelt (trust busting), Woodrow Wilson (federal reserve to manage money supply and cure periodic panics), consumer laws (Pure Food and Drug Act, Meat Inspection Act), Franklin D. Roosevelt (SEC, FDIC, counter cyclical fiscal and monetary policies), the Social Security Act of 1935 (a safety net that lifts almost half of all senior citizens out of poverty, provides unemployment insurance to those who’ve lost their jobs, and modest welfare payments to the disabled and poor).
However, Mr. Obama is also not one of those Democrats or Greens who feels a strong disdain for capitalism. Mr. Obama perceives in both Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln a governmental role that encourages and facilitates, rather than supplants, a vibrant free market. Mr. Obama states in his book that upward mobility is part of America’s promise since its founding, and ownership of private property is at the heart of our system of liberty. According to Mr. Obama, “Even our poor take for granted goods and services .. that are still unattainable for most of the world.” Mr. Obama credits Alexander Hamilton in particular for a number of fundamental insights that set America on the right course: “Alexander Hamilton … recognized the vast potential of a national economy – one based not on America’s agrarian past but on a commercial and industrial future.” and he understood that “only through the liberation of capital from local landed interests could America tap into its most powerful resource – namely the energy and enterprise of the American people.”
Mr. Obama understands that some inequality will be necessary in a system of social mobility. “This idea of social mobility constituted one of the great early bargains of American capitalism; industrial and commercial capitalism might lead to greater instability, but it would be a dynamic system in which anyone with enough energy and talent could rise to the top.” Mr. Obama also finds a faith in capitalism in the words of Lincoln. “For Lincoln, the essence of America was opportunity, the ability of “free labor” to advance in life. Lincoln considered capitalism the best means of creating such opportunity, but he also saw how the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society was disrupting lives and destroying communities.”
Mr. Obama also does not feel a knee jerk disdain for the rich. “I admire many Americans of great wealth and don’t begrudge them their success in the least.” … “I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligation of ensuring every American child has a chance for that same success.”
Mr. Obama is a big fan of Warren Buffett, quoting from him heavily. Mr. Obama points out that Warren Buffett has said, “The free market’s the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use. The government isn’t particularly good at that. But the market isn’t so good at making sure that the wealth that’s produced is being distributed fairly or wisely.” Mr. Obama feels that some wealth has to be plowed back into education, infrastructure, and a safety net.
Mr. Obama also approves of Warren Buffett’s statement, “When you get rid of the estate tax you’re basically handing over command of the country’s resources to people who didn’t earn it. It’s like choosing the 2012 olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games,” and points out the importance of environment in anyone’s success, by citing Warren Buffett for stating, “I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into.”
Mr. Obama does feel that some important social issues may require strong cultural leadership, coupled with a governmental role that may vary by the issue. He states, “To say that a value is important is not to say that it should be subject to regulation or that it merits a new agency. Conversely, just because a value should not or cannot be legislated doesn’t mean it isn’t a proper topic for public discussion.”
However, Mr. Obama is not against influencing culture by using the power of governmental action. He states, “Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture in shaping that culture for the better-or worse. … Sometimes we need both cultural transformation and government action – a change in values and a change in policy – to promote the kind of society we want.”
Values
So what kind of society does Mr. Obama want? Perhaps we should look first to his values.
Mr. Obama says he sees the Golden Rule (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) as not just a call to sympathy or charity, but “as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes.” Mr. Obama credits his mother for asking a powerful question whenever he behaved wrongly: “How do you think that would make you feel?” Mr. Obama learned at a young age what some never learn, that sometimes abiding by another’s rules costs us little, but means a lot to them, and he explains how he stopped being difficult on things that didn’t matter to him when he came to such a realization.
Mr. Obama’s mother was an atheist who he describes as the “most spiritually awakened person i’ve ever known: kind, charitable, and loving.” He feels his mother instilled in him powerful values: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, hard work, rage at poverty/injustice, scorn those who are indifferent to both, and a sense of wonder.
Mr. Obama is therefore well aware that having good values does not require religious belief. Nonetheless, he states he made a strong religious conversion, albeit one where he still retains some doubt. As he states, “Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts.”
His reasons for why he feels others adopt religious beliefs are interesting. He finds the root cause in people deciding their work, possessions, diversions, and busyness are not enough. He feels people desire a sense of purpose, narrative arc, a relief to chronic loneliness, a feeling that somebody out there cares about them, a feeling that somebody out there is listening, and a desire not just to travel toward nothingness.
As for himself, he states, “I came to realize that without a vessel for my own beliefs, without an unequivocal commitment to a particular community of faith, I would be consigned at some level to always remain apart, free in the way that my mother was free, but also alone in the same ways she was ultimately alone.” Mr. Obama appears by his upbringing to have always felt an outsider, but by his choice of religious faith to have found a community. Yet he found more in his faith than community, but also a step towards bringing dignity to people. As he states, “…I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world. … maintain hope and dignity in the direst circumstances.”
Mr. Obama feels expressions of faith are very useful in the cultural dialogue, but if left as mere expressions of faith make for bad politics. As he states, “scrub language of all religious content and we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.” He points out Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Madison were Deists (believers in a supernatural deity but not in the standard Christian god) who argued for separating church and state. Mr. Obama also notes that Baptists and other evangelicals provided the popular support needed to get the Constitution of the United States ratified because they believed “religious vitality inevitably withers when compelled or supported by the state.”
To Mr. Obama, “What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason.” He is therefore more willing to set public policy based on science than on a religious belief alone, since to Mr. Obama, “faith and reason operate in different domains and involve different domains and involve different paths to discerning truth. Reason – and science – involves the accumulation of knowledge based on realities that we can all apprehend. Religion, by contrast, is based on truths that are not provable through ordinary human understanding – ‘the belief in things not seen.’ ”
The Political Parties
Mr. Obama points out the single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.
He first observes the Democrats as a party are more splintered regionally, ethnically, and economically than Republicans. As a result, he feels radical Republicans have an easier time obtaining power than radical Democrats. He feels the Democrats have become a party of reaction, and given their non-polarized electorate, Democrats must avoid either/or thinking, or they will lose.
He points out the Democrats need to raise money from economic elites. Mr. Obama describes these backers as smart, rich (top 1% of the income scale), interesting, knowledgeable, liberal, who just want their opinions heard for their checks. He states that most of the financial backers of the Democratic party believe in the free market and an educational meritocracy, have difficulty imagining a social ill that can’t be cured by a high SAT score, have no patience for protectionism, find unions troublesome, are not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives are upended by global capital movements, are adamantly prochoice and antigun, and vaguely suspicious of deep religious sentiment.
According to Mr. Obama, Republicans in contrast have a grassroots base of white evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. Mr. Obama talks about how the Republican party today is still living out Ronald Reagan’s legacy. To Mr. Obama, Ronald Reagan’s policies were too harsh, but he does admire the political skill with which Reagan framed the debate. He states that Reagan spoke to America’s longing for order, our need to believe we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism and faith. He states that Reagan created a narrative which has been very durable, that we should side with those who work hard, obey the law, care for their families, and love their country, and against those who are out of touch, tax and spend, blame America first, politically correct elites.
Mr. Obama feels that the younger generation of conservative operatives who rose to power in the Republican party were true believers in Reagan’s narrative (even to an extent Reagan wasn’t), with rigid doctrines, a slash and burn style, and an exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved. The younger generation of conservatives consolidated and institutionalized the conservative movement, leveraged the resources of corporate sponsors and wealthy donors to create a network of think tanks and media outlets, centralized power in the House of Representatives in order to enhance party discipline, and polarized the electorate.
Mr. Obama cites Bill Clinton approvingly for seeing the danger of Reagan’s labels, both politically and to address problems. Mr. Obama finds in Bill Clinton someone who used government spending and regulation as ingredients of rather than inhibitors to growth, someone who found markets and fiscal discipline could promote social justice, and who felt both a societal and personal responsibility to combat poverty. Mr. Obama feels that Bill Clinton tapped into a pragmatic, non-ideological attitude held by the majority of Americans.
In Mr. Obama’s opinion, Republicans are fighting the last war, the war they waged and won in the 1980’s, while Democrats today are still fighting a rearguard action, defending the New Deal programs of the 1930’s.
Personally, I have always found it of some interest how politicians, and party followers, find it so easy to subordinate their own particular political views to the orthodoxy of their political party. It was therefore with some particular interest I read Mr. Obama’s words on the matter, since he is turned off by facile analysis and usually remarkably open about how he feels about what he’s discussing. Mr. Obama is clearly troubled by the demands of party life, but also accepting of it.
Mr. Obama finds solace in “…Lincoln, who like no man before or since understood both the deliberative function of our democracy and the limits of such deliberation. … his presidency was guided by a practicality that would distress us today, a practicality that led him to test various bargains with the South in order to maintain the Union.”
From Mr. Obama’s perspective, Lincoln never abandoned conviction for the sake of expediency. Rather, he balanced two ideas: that all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side, and yet at times we must act nonetheless as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence. Mr. Obama states, “we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay.”
Mr. Obama restates the conflict between the need to understand uncertainty, and the need for action in another way. As he states, “Politics, like science, depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. Unlike science, politics involves compromise. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible.” Yet Mr. Obama also admits, sometimes just being reasonable isn’t the right answer, since “it has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty.” As he quotes another, “…power would concede nothing without a fight.”
Partisanship
So why does it seem like the political parties are now so much at war with each other?
Mr. Obama notes that the reason politics used to be less partisan were that (a) the world war two generation politicians had the war in common, (b) there was broad agreement on external threats, (c) America had unthreatened economic dominance, and (d) the parties were separated more by pocketbook issues (with the Democrats favoring the new deal, and Republicans favoring free markets and fiscal restraint) rather than moral issues. Mr. Obama observes the 1960’s upended the parties, to the point they are less defined now by class than by attitude.
Yet to Mr. Obama, all is not lost. As Mr. Obama states, “… our history has vindicated one of the Founders’ central insights: that republican self-government could actually work better in a large and diverse society, where, in Hamilton’s words, the “jarring of parties” and differences of opinion could “promote deliberation and circumspection.” “ As he explains, “What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future…” and “…offers us the possibility of a genuine marketplace of ideas…”, leading to deliberation and circumspection which expands our perspective, and possibly changes our minds.
Mr. Obama restates the cause of partisanship as follows. “So if we all believe in individual liberty and we all believe in these rules of democracy, what is the modern argument between conservatives and liberals really about? If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that much of the time we are arguing about results- the actual decisions that the courts and the legislature make about the profound and difficult issues that help shape our lives.” … “We want to get our way, but most of us also recognize the need for consistency, predictability and coherence.”
As Mr. Obama notes, “…my students often felt they knew the Constitution without having really read it. They were accustomed to plucking out phrases that they’d heard and using them to bolster their immediate arguments, or ignoring passages that seemed to contradict their views.” He cites the wisdom of the founders and Washington in particular, in this regard. As Mr. Obama states, – “…one impulse shared by all the Founders, it was a rejection of all forms of absolute authority…” and “…one of the surprising things about Washington is the amount of time spent arguing not about what the law should be, but rather what the law is.”
Mr. Obama puts forward some ways to improve the political process. Nonpartisan districting (which is very difficult to actually implement, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is well aware), same day registration, weekend elections, public financing or free television and radio time, and changing the rules of Congress to empower the minority party, increase transparency, and encourage more probing reporting. My own take is that people do not understand how much Barack Obama would like to change the transparency with which government works. He would likely bring the internet and video recording to bear on many governmental decisions. (see my post examining how technology will change government, particularly in an Obama administration: The Coming Digital Presidency)
Politicians
Mr. Obama makes a number of very interesting observations about the practical matter of being a politician.
He describes the advantages of politicians who already hold a political office as being: (a) name recognition, (b) a fund raising advantage, (c) gerrymandering (where the already elected representatives redraw their districts to in effect choose their voters), (d) most politicians are pretty likable, and (e) the already established support of grass roots organization (which is as important as cash). Mr. Obama interestingly states that these advantages of incumbent politicians push rival candidates to look for the support of the opposing political party. What do the political parties bring to a candidate? Organization. They own the list of donors, of voters, of volunteers. They can help with raising funds, finding the right voters to hear a message, or even crafting the right message to tell. For Democrats organization means unions, environmental groups, and prochoice groups. For the Republican party organization means the religious right, local chambers of commerce, the NRA, and anti-tax organizations.
He describes the power of media by stating that even a very active senatorial candidate can have at most direct contact with maybe 100,000 constituents by election day. Yet a 3 minute story on the lowest rated local news broadcast reaches 200,000 people. He concludes all politicians are entirely dependent on media to reach constituents. He notes that repeated narratives become a reality, lodging themselves into the brain without examination, and that such spin is palatable to reporters and casual news consumers who are just looking for an interesting story to tell and listen to. Mr. Obama points out there is no longer an authoritative central figure we trust to sort out claims, and there is no great reward in store for those who speak the truth, particularly when it’s complicated. Yet Mr. Obama feels that “… because those of us in public life have become so scripted, and the gestures that candidates use to signify their values have become so standardized … it becomes harder and harder for the public to distinguish between honest sentiment and political stagecraft.” He therefore concludes “… we long for that most elusive quality in our leaders – the quality of authenticity.”
Some of his most interesting observations are about the nature of Senators. Mr. Obama states they are (a) people with a fanatical single-mindedness about the goal of becoming a Senator, (b) who are motivated most strongly by the fear of complete humiliation, since a lost election brings the feeling one has been personally repudiated by the entire community, (c) who have the need not just to win, but the need not to lose, and (d) who court money not to get rich but to maintain status, power, scare challengers, and fight off the fear of losing. Mr. Obama states that although money can’t guarantee victory, without it you lose, due to an inability to get your own message directly to voters through the media. Mr. Obama states that absent great personal wealth, you must ask rich people for the money. He states that he personally has learned to skip the banter and small talk that accompanied soliciting a call. He notes that the longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions; your schedule dictates you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent.
On the business of actually being a Senator, Mr. Obama often sounds disenchanted. He notes that to a Senator a single bad remark is more dangerous than many bad policies. He finds the legislative process thoroughly unsatisfactory, due to the mixed content of bills that leave one with remorse regardless of how one votes. He indicates there are several thousand votes a term, but just about twenty-four important bills, each easier to attack then explain. He also states that most Senators enter the Senate with their mistakes trumpeted, words distorted and motives questioned, which haunts them during each vote.
Pleasant Surprises
Mr. Obama made a number of statements in his book that surprised me both for their perceptiveness and candor.
First, Mr. Obama holds a nuanced point of view on the 1960’s. As he describes it, “My rejection of authority spilled into self-indulgence and self-destructiveness … I’d begun to see how any challenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and orthodoxy.” I have long noted that once you care about a cause, religion or person, you are very willing to stop thinking negatively about them. Mr. Obama notes a similar phenomenon, stating that he, “stopped thinking and slipped into cant”, that “denunciations of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily”, that “freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints”, and that the “role of victim was too readily embraced”. Interestingly, Mr. Obama finds the young conservatives of Ronald Reagan’s time, whose policies and means he strongly dislike, hold a rigid self belief eerily reminiscent to Mr. Obama of the new left’s leaders during the 1960’s. In general, Mr. Obama disdains unthinking orthodoxy, even if it is from his own political party, which I find to be a very admirable trait.
Mr. Obama also makes interesting observations about President George W. Bush, stating, “I had found the President to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections.” He clearly does not hold with the political belief popular in his party that Bush is a simpleton puppet of the Vice President, even to make a joke. In fact, Mr. Obama generally avoids making negative jokes about political opponents in his book.
Mr. Obama is even more willing than I thought to look for common ground. He states, “I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. … No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.” and points out lawyers and political operatives are “professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.” As he intelligently remarks, “I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values-indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.” Thinking the other side is influenced by evil or bad thoughts is, I think, one of the stupider things humans do. Most people think they are doing things for noble and necessary reasons, and Mr. Obama to his credit appears to understand this.
Mr. Obama has a reputation for having great judgment when as an Illinois state senator he voiced his concern that waging war against Iraq would be a great folly. Yet in the book he has remarkable candor about his inability to predict the future, stating that he was surprised by both how swiftly Afghanistan and Iraq fell and also thought he might have made the wrong call on Iraq when Bush proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” after the Iraq invasion.
Mr. Obama credits Reagan for seeing what Democrats didn’t see. “Reagan’s central insight – that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than growing the pie-contained a good deal of truth. Just as too many corporate managers, shielded from competition, had stopped delivering value, too many government bureaucracies had stopped asking whether their shareholders (the American taxpayer) and their consumers (the users of government services) were getting their money’s worth.”
Mr. Obama also does not appear to fear globalization in the way that some parts of the Democratic and Republican party fear it. As he states, “a strategy of doing nothing and letting globalization run its course won’t result in the imminent collapse of the US economy.” He has a more nuanced perspective, seeing as the pros of globalization that it has (a) lowered prices on goods once considered luxuries, (b) increased purchasing power of low income (and all other) Americans, (c) kept inflation in check, (d) boosted returns for investors, (e) allowed China and India to dramatically reduce poverty, and (f) for those with unique skills and talents and those who facilitate their work the potential rewards have never been greater. He also sees the cons as (a) increased economic instability, and (b) those with skills that can be automated, digitized, shifted are in dire trouble.
Unpleasant Surprises
However, there is a second category of surprises, where in my opinion Mr. Obama despite his strong powers of self perception failed to take notice of his own inconsistencies.
The first is that Mr. Obama has a simplistic way of categorizing interest groups. He distinguishes between (1) those who use their economic power to magnify political influence far beyond their numbers (“subvert democracy”), and (2) those who pool their votes to sway their representatives (“essence of democracy”). Yet as he himself notes, interest groups aren’t searching for the most thoughtful, well qualified or broad minded candidates, they have an ax to grind and want you to help them grind it, if you get a few answers wrong, the endorsement, workers and mailing list go to the other guy in the primary, and there is great pressure to end up voting the same way you checked the interest group’s questionnaire. That doesn’t sound like the essence of democracy to me, regardless of whether an interest group is representing large numbers of people accurately or not.
As intelligent as Mr. Obama was in his analysis of globalization’s effects, he is rather hypocritical in his response to it. Mr. Obama states that although he has been told by his constituents that, “Retraining is a joke. What are you going to retrain for when there aren’t any jobs out there?”, he favors more effort on retraining. Jobs are created by entrepreneurs or people seeing a need and organizing people to meet it. It’s hard if not impossible for a government run training program to predict what skills those entrepreneurs will want the work force to have. Mr. Obama notes that the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a law allowing more open trade and investment with poor countries like Honduras and the Dominican Republic, was “overall … probably a net plus for the US economy,” but that any effect it did have would be minimal since the countries effected by the trade agreement in combination don’t have an economy the size of Connecticut. Yet he voted against it because labor unions hate it. As Mr. Obama wisely notes, unions argue for (a) stronger labor protections in countries that trade with the US, (b) rights for foreign workers to unionize, (c) bans on child labor, (d) improved environmental standards, (e) an end to unfair government subsidies, (f) stronger protection for US intellectual property, and (g) an end to artificially devalued foreign currencies, but Mr. Obama observes none of the measures requested by labor unions change the “underlying realities of globalization.” As he states, “work in a dirty factory or overheated sweatshop is often considered a step up on the economic ladder”, “… when all is said and done, China will still have more surplus labor in its countryside than half the entire population of the United States.”, and “the basic debate surrounding free trade has hardly changed since the early 1980s, with labor and its allies generally losing the fight.” As Mr. Obama states, it is “hard to even imagine, much less enforce, an effective regime of protectionism.” Despite all these observations, he voted against a law that would benefit society. Yet Mr. Obama is correct that those political realities are hardly unimportant. As he states, “Unless … a strong signal [is sent] to American workers that the federal government was on their side, protectionist sentiment would only grow.” The issue he faces is that no credible policy has been put forward to address people’s fears, by himself or others.
Mr. Obama to his credit favors increasing the earned income tax credit, but also favors increasing the minimum wage. The earned income tax credit is supplementary income that is given to people with a very low income. The minimum wage law is a requirement that employers pay all of their employees, even if they are a high school student from an affluent family, a particular minimum wage. Mr. Obama states, “It maybe true – as some economists argue – that any big jumps in the minimum wage discourage employers from hiring more workers, but when the minimum wage hasn’t been changed in nine years and has less purchasing power in real dollars than it did in 1955, so that someone working full time today in a minimum wage job doesn’t earn enough to rise out of poverty, such arguments carry less force.” Actually most economists point out that any amount of an increase in the minimum wage will discourage some employers from hiring workers who are not sufficiently skilled to merit that increase, and unemployment is now much lower than it was nine years ago. When you have a solution that could directly address the needs of the poor (the earned income tax credit) why rely on the force and power of governmental law to require employers adopt a policy that may have them offering less jobs to the poor?
Mr. Obama states, “The middle-class tax revolt became a permanent fixture in national politics and placed a ceiling on how much government could expand.” That’s not actually true. The middle-class tax revolt placed a ceiling on how fast a responsible government would let its spending grow. Government historically isn’t very responsible (spending more than it takes in) and has no upper limit on the absolute limit on the amount it can expand. It arguably does have something of a political pressure limit on its rate of expansion.
Mr. Obama agrees that on the subject of primary school education liberals are defending an indefensible status quo, insist more spending alone will improve educational outcomes. He correctly diagnoses that the way many public schools are managed poses at least as big a problem as how well they’re funded. His solution is (a) a more rigorous curriculum, (b) emphasis on math/science/literacy skills, (c) longer hours, (d) more days, (e) early childhood education, (f) meaningful performance based assessments, (g) more effective teachers, (h) higher paid teachers, (i) more support for teachers, (j) changes to the certification process, (k) pairing recruits with master teachers, (l) giving proven teachers more control, and (m) more accountability for teacher performance. Mr. Obama expresses some confusion about who should judge the performance (principals, teacher’s peers?, other authorities?). The irony is that Mr. Obama is trying to fix a national primary school problem through command and control changes of the particular type he says doesn’t work well for other sectors of the economy. He mentions that the conservative solution is to break up the government’s education monopoly by handing out vouchers, but dismisses it without any analysis, even though such a change would bring competition into the educational marketplace. To my opinion, Mr. Obama’s failure to even consider the pros or cons of bringing greater competition to the public school system is a violation of his elsewhere expressed interest in thinking through both sides of any issue. Of course teachers unions are a powerful interest group that support Democratic candidates.
Mr. Obama states he is in favor of marriage being between a man and a woman, but then goes on to state that he could see some future time in which a lesbian friend may come to him and ask why she should not also get married, and he is unsure how he would answer. This is a topic on which I felt Mr. Obama appears to be following the path previously trod by President Lincoln, hinting that he would, if societal attitudes change, be willing to revisit his own position, but fully aware that getting too far ahead of the nation’s electorate will damage more pressing ambitions.
Conclusions
On the whole I found Mr. Obama’s book to be very perceptive. I admired his candor and nuanced perspectives, which he applied to many (but not all) subjects. I was sometimes disappointed when he would not follow his own keen and usually balanced observations about the world to the ends that they most logically lead to on some matters, as I have described above. I also found myself wishing he had a more full understanding of economics (although he now has an excellent economist as a principal adviser) (6/17/08: he has also done an interview with the WSJ on his economic policies) (6/18/08: and despite prior rhetoric he’s for free trade), and had discussed in greater detail his own attitudes about the powerful arguments put forward by libertarians for limiting governmental involvement in social affairs.
I hope this review of Senator Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope helps you come to a better understanding of the man.
Update 10/21/08: You may find of interest my observations on the far reaching implication of Obama’s use of Internet technologies in politics or my critique of his dislike of Walmart and love of Google.
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