Barack Obama: The opacity of hope

[Beacool]

In "The Bridge," a biracial dreamer in post-Reagan America becomes the first black president. Then things get tough

By Joan Walsh

Reading David Remnick's "The Bridge," it's astonishing all over again that we elected as president not just an African-American by the name of Barack Hussein Obama Jr., but a relative political newcomer we knew comparatively little about.

Throughout the book I found myself marveling at the blanks and partial stories about the president that Remnick fills in: about his parents, and whether "Kenya and Kansas" factored into the person he became. How was he shaped by Indonesia and Hawaii, Occidental College and Harvard Law School, idealism, left-wing theory and it-ain't-beanbag Chicago politics? When did Barry become Barack? Maybe most compelling: When did he become the Barack Obama, charismatic, charming, über-calm and confident; first among men; an inevitable future president?

Remnick ably answers all of those questions, though he qualifies the scope of his work by calling it "biographical journalism." (He also chases away all the insane conspiracy theories, not by confronting them directly, but with facts.) If you care about American politics, you have to read "The Bridge." One of its contributions is defining Obama as part of a demographic I hadn't thought much about: the post-civil rights movement do-gooder, leaving college and entering the workforce in the 1980s, under a depressing cloud of Reaganism (it happens to be my demographic as well). Watching the future president move through the dusty halls of well-intended but often ineffectual nonprofits, before (and even after) he finds his way to Harvard Law School, I had a new understanding of the way coming of political age in the '80s, caring about social justice but struggling to find a way to make change, shaped this particular historic change agent. Almost as much as being biracial, the pragmatic, incremental approach of post-movement left-liberal politics helps explain the cautious, conciliating president he's become.

http://www.salon.com/books/nonfiction/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/04/05/david_remnick_the_bridge

Interesting column and the book appears to be a good read.

:-)