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A Promised Land

by Barack Obama, 2020

Review is copyright © 2021 by Wil C. Fry.

Published: 2021.01.24

Home > Book Reviews > Barack Obama > A Promised Land

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2020

★★★★ (of 5)

(* 701 not including preface, acknowledgements, index, etc.)

 

Summary

Highly anticipated before its release, and quickly rising to the top of bestseller lists afterward, A Promised Land is Barack Obama’s memoir, or part of it. It covers his early life and family history, education, community organizing, entry into politics, campaign for the presidency, and part of his first term. A followup second part is expected at some point.

Though much of Obama’s pre-politics life was covered in his 1995 book Dreams From My Father, he covers that ground again here, moves swiftly through his early political career (Illinois State Senate, U.S. Senate), and then spends the bulk of this book on his first term as president. (It ends just after Obama ridiculed Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 30, 2011, and the killing of bin Laden on May 2, 2011.) In the preface, Obama says he expected to say all he wanted to say “in maybe five hundred pages” and “I expected to be done in a year.” Instead, it took him three years to get this into print and used more than 700 pages, and this is only the first half.

(According to Wikipedia, “every American president since Calvin Coolidge has released a presidential memoir within a few years of leaving the White House” — I assume they don’t include John F. Kennedy in “every”. It is noted that Obama’s took longer to write than any of the previous memoirs.)

 

Praise

I liked that Obama doesn’t write like a stilted politician (I’ve read books by LBJ and JFK, for comparison). He freely acknowledges his self-doubt and admits errors, both of judgment and behavior. Rather than insisting he knew (or knows) his own motivations, he owns that snap decisions in the past are often inscrutable and subject to misremembering (“I told myself then — and tell myself still...” — page 16).

Despite the first 200 pages covering much of the same ground as his earlier Dreams From My Father and much of the book going over the same territory as his wife’s 2018 memoir Becoming, Obama manages to hit points that the earlier books missed or emphasize details that took a back seat in the other books, so that this retelling seemed both fresh and new. (And, obviously, it’s coming from an Obama who’s 25 years older than the one who wrote his previous book, and so likely to have a different perspective on some things.)

Perhaps the most impressive thing is how well he grasped the numerous factors that bear on every bill or policy decision. At least it seemed impressive as I read this just after four years of a president who (apparently) understood nothing. Even on the (numerous) issues on which I disagreed with Obama or the way he handled things, I must admit he showed just cause for doing what he did or for when waiting when he waited. It’s easy to sit in the blogger’s chair and criticize a president for doing too little or bending the wrong direction, but Obama shows here how very often a president’s hands are tied by circumstance and other powers that be.

On pages 304-5, there’s a long section about his second thoughts on the financial collapse and how he handled it. For the critics who said Obama didn’t go far enough in upending the financial order, he admits that “the thought nags at me” and “I understand such frustrations... I share them.” He double-checks his thinking, second guesses his decisions, and wonders what would have been the outcome if he’d done things differently. In the end, he admits he was simply a “reformer”, not a revolutionary, and that “whether I was demonstrating wisdom or weakness would be for others to judge.” This intrinsic drive to overthink and second-guess oneself is one of the things I’ve always liked about Obama, even when I disagree with him. It is a far cry from the overt “I am right” vibe I’ve always gotten from other people in his position.

 

Points Off For...

I couldn’t find much to criticize. One thing that kept rubbing me the wrong way was the apparent lack of a style guide for using people’s names. (I’m most accustomed to the newspaper format of using someone’s title and full name on first mention and then just the surname for subsequent mentions.) For some people, he uses their first name throughout, which makes sense for his wife and friends (Michelle, Rahm, Reggie, etc.) but less so for his secretary of state and former primary opponent (“Hillary”). For other people, he tends to use the last name only (McConnell), and others get the full name treatment in most mentions (John McCain). “Hillary” is the one I noticed the most, because I’d already noticed it during previous campaigns — the men were always Sanders, or Trump, or Romney, but Clinton was always “Hillary”. It seemed condescending (despite Obama’s ongoing praise for her acumen and dedication) to almost always use only the first name for a former first lady, former U.S. senator, and his own secretary of state.

(For all I know, Obama used the preferred naming conventions for each person. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton actually preferred being called by her first name.)

 

Interesting Quotations

“Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiences.”

—page 19

“It felt sometimes as if I’d been caught in a tide, carried along by the current of other people’s expectations before I’d clearly defined by my own.”

—page 73

“I did know how differently Black and white folks still viewed issues of race in America, regardless of how much else they had in common. For me to believe that I could bridge those worlds had been pure hubris...”

—page 141

“Whether because of his respect for the institution, lessons from his father, bad memories of his own transition... or just basic decency, President Bush would end up doing all he could to make the eleven weeks between my election and his departure go smoothly.”

—page 207

“...because of my own background in legal and academic circles... I’d met my share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons...”

—page 389

“I realized that for all the power inherent in the seat I now occupied, there would always be a chasm between what I knew should be done to achieve a better world and what in a day, week, or year, I found myself actually able to accomplish.”

—page 516

Personal Connection

If you’ve lived mostly in big cities, you might not be familiar with the phenomenon of being on the lookout for a mention of one’s hometown in books, shows, or movies — all of which seem to constantly mention New York City, Los Angeles, etc. But having spent most of my life in medium or small towns, I can tell you it’s a thing. (In Oklahoma, we were alert to any mention of the state.) So it was a weird feeling when this book mentioned my current hometown of Killeen, Texas. Sadly, the mention was made only because of the 2009 terrorist attack at Fort Hood, which now seems like a million years ago.

 

Conclusion

This is a detailed, heartfelt, vulnerable account of the years in question, especially Obama’s first presidential campaign and first term in office. I found it more honest than defensive, more willing to admit mistakes and failures than one would expect. More than anyone, Obama is aware of his critics on both the left and the right, and he seems to keenly understand the criticisms from both directions. Here, he doesn’t cast judgment on those critiquing him, but rather simply offers his experience: This is what I did, and the reasons I did it: make of it what you will.

I do wonder how much of my enjoyment of this was due to the four years that transpired just after Obama left office. The stupidity, incompetence, belligerence, and hate that oozed from the White House from 2017 through early 2021 was mentally and emotionally traumatizing. And this book took me back in time to a period when almost none of that was on the horizon yet. It was, as the Eagles sang in the year of my birth, a peaceful, easy feeling.

I can’t wait to read the second installment.

 





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