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BEYOND RACE BUT NOT OUT OF IT

I have just finished David Remnick's fine biography

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

Remnick takes a sideway's view of the life we have already heard so much about from Obama's equally fine memoirs and from several other biographies and analyses of the remarkable election that made him President.

It is so early in the game. Did Obama waste his first year? I do not think so. Gary Wills in the sited review does. Remnick does not do that kind of analysis. He tells the story. He lets us draw our own conclusions.

What he does focus on is the remarkable story that Obama has to tell as well as the many friends and associates who were around him from the very beginning. Some of them are still close and involved.

As an unrepentant and still faithful fan of Obama, I enjoyed the book very much. I learned a lot. Not one thing changes my opinion of the man. I never thought that he was/is a savior nor did he promise to be. His brand of change and hope was universal and in the implementing of it there are many people who see a difference from their dream and his reality.

This is OK. I think that it is all needed.

We can understand from this book why and how Obama became a conciliator and a man of the middle. More than a pragmatist, he is a fixer and a leader of change as it is understood by the people he works with.

The jibe that he is "just" a community organizer fails to see the point that this is the point. He is an organizer and a facilitator for the abilities and goals of the people who follow him.

He is not an ideologue which disappoints many of my friends on the left. He disdains the negative thus enraging his enemies on the right.

The book is easy to read. It has the great style of the man who edits The New Yorker for his day job. He is a reporter par excellence.

Get it. I think that it will be in paperback quite soon. Not yet.

Labels: Administration Obama, Barack Obama