![]() ![]() In office, then, he wanted to temper visions of American manifest destiny with a "humility about our ability to remake the world in our image". He was not opposed to all wars, he said, but, against the weight of political and public opinion at the time, including most in his own party, he had had been brave enough to worry aloud about a US occupation of "undetermined length, with undetermined costs and with undetermined consequences". Obama’s rise had gained new momentum when in 2002, during his term as an Illinois State Senator, he had spoken out against the Iraq war in a speech of moral courage and simple wisdom. It is telling that the sheer madness of the Trump-led "birther" conspiracy reaches its peak as Obama deliberates on whether to send in the Navy SEALS to eliminate Osama bin Laden. The country was "still a symbol abroad", he writes, still receiving the "rituals of tribute to an empire". If America was becoming even more riven at home, played out here in his recounting of toxic debates over how to staunch the fiscal bleed from the Wall Street Crash, healthcare, the fate of the auto industry along with tax and immigration reform, America’s image overseas was a different story. Obama stoked those embers of fear and anger himself when he once remarked that people in the small towns of Pennsylvania "cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people that aren’t like them".īarack Obama acknowledges his supporters after announcing his campaign for the presidency in Springfield, Illinois on February 10, 2007. They might have been straight from Billy Joel’s 1982 song Allentown: "killing time, filling out forms, standing in line" in the places where the "restlessness was handed down". ![]() He recognises that Sarah Palin’s nomination as Vice-President provides a "template for future politicians", calls the rise of the Tea Party a "new and suddenly potent force", but concedes the working and middle-class whites gravitating towards it "had suffered for decades from sluggish wages, rising costs and the loss of the steady blue-collar work that provided secure retirements". Obama knows the history of "how this post war consensus broke down", from LBJ’s loss of the South following the Civil Rights Act, through Vietnam, feminism, Roe v Wade, busing, gay rights, Newt Gingrich and the Clinton impeachment. The resilience of his optimism rarely falters. Still, Obama wanted to believe the "ability to connect was still there". He recognises, too, the fear and anger in what he calls the "meat and potato folks", many of whom "didn’t trust a word" he said. That his story about what Americans "might be" was only ever a short-term break from an unrelenting cynicism towards politics and institutions that had already tapped deep roots in the country. His memoir becomes a study in the gradual recognition that the politics he believed in, founded on a common humanity, would struggle to heal the country’s deep divisions. Obama knows, even if he finds it painful to admit, that the uplift he gave the country was "fleeting". It becomes a powerful metaphor for his presidency. He recalls the feeling then that "we would catch lightning in a bottle and tap into something essential and true about America". Looking back to early 2007 and the beginning of his presidential campaign on that cold day in Springfield, Illinois, in the land of Lincoln, he cannot help but allow nostalgia to take hold. Credit: APĪnd Obama provides the answer, even if it is the spectre haunting this historical feast. Barack Obama knows, even if he finds it painful to admit, that the uplift he gave the US was ‘‘fleeting’’. ![]()
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