Sasha Abramsky's new book, Inside Obama's Brain (Portfolio Books), offers a thoughtful analysis of Obama through the eyes of his friends and colleagues interviewed by Abramsky. If Abramsky does not quite get us inside Obama's brain, he does allow us to explore some of the nearby territory.
There is nothing earth-shattering in Abramsky's book, no politically salacious detail that explains who Obama is and why he has governed this country in the past year the way he has. But the book does offer a lot of insights about Obama that serve as an important antidote to the wailing of complaints that occupy the responses to the news of the day. A year after Obama's inauguration, Abramsky gives us back some of the hope that has dissipated in the face of practical politics.
To some on the left, Inside Obama's Brain might seem like a historical artifact by this point, written as it was in the late stages of Obama's 2008 campaign and the early months of his presidency, when so many people had high hopes and, Abramsky wrote, "Obama seemed largely to be retaining his appeal."(218) However, these dark days of populist, anti-incumbent anger during the depth of the Bush recession are likely to dissipate this year as the economy recovers. And when the pundits have proven wrong again, Abramsky's book will offer a lot of insights about Obama.
The author may strike some on the left as naïvely donning several pairs of rainbow-colored glasses. But this picture of Obama, if sometimes gauzy, is an important story to remember when so many progressives and independents get caught up in the political moment, when compromise is inevitable and high-minded ideals fall a long distance before the power of sleazy senators. Abramsky is not naive. In many ways, this book is a biography of Obama's idealism rather than his pragmatism, although it recognizes both sides of the man.
In trying to understand Obama, Abramsky occasionally strains to make his argument. At one point, Abramsky interprets the body language of Obama in a photo of an important meeting during the 2008 economic crisis, positing that Obama's alleged aloofness is "the distance of the sage." It seems less like being Inside Obama's Brain and more like reading a horoscope.
And Abramsky devotes three pages to the important role of Bettylu Saltzman in championing Obama to David Axelrod and others, but never mentions her most important contribution: asking Obama to speak at a 2003 rally in Chicago against the war in Iraq. Without a trusted friend like Saltzman in charge, it's unlikely that Obama would have risked coming out to speak at a left-wing rally, and without that speech, Obama would not have been able to trumpet his politically courageous opposition to the war years later, when it became a decisive factor enabling him to defeat Hillary Clinton.
But omissions like that are rare. Abramsky offers an unparalleled collection of interesting stories, some of them never told anywhere before, about many of the interesting moments in Obama's life and career.
Obama is a careful and cautious man, who doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve. We never quite get the "peeling back of the veneer"(10) Abramsky promises us, but he offers a much more enlightened picture of Obama than all of the "insider" accounts of the 2008 election ever have. Abramsky effectively shows the role University of Chicago, Hyde Park, and Chicago played in shaping Obama's approach to policy and politics.
For Obama fans, Inside Obama's Brain is a heartwarming story of idealism punctuated with anecdotes that will make you smile. And for the disillusioned cynics, it's a reminder of the vast potential Obama has, and may yet realize, if the progressive movement helps him.
John K. Wilson is the author of President Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union (Paradigm Publishers, 2009). Crossposted at DailyKos.
