Gledhill, by way of review of Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, reveals a man who should never have been elected, or even be electable, in the first place. He concludes with this:
Dreams from My Father reveals Barack Obama as a self-constructed, racially obsessed man who regards most whites as oppressors. It is the work of a clever but shallow thinker who confuses ideological cliché for insight — a man who sees U.S. history as a narrow, bitter tale of race and class victimization. The Barack Obama presented in these pages is not electable to national office. No wonder that Obama, aided by a compliant media, has created a new self for public view, one the Obama of Dreams wouldn’t recognize and probably would disdain.
That isn't wrong, but it's far from the whole of the book. Gledhill does not account for its appeal; it's not a polemic. The most damning aspect of the book is its self-apotheosis, if I may invent a clumsy term. Obama constantly recreates himself; he has no loyalty to anyone (other than Rev. Wright, his surrogate father) or any institution.
ReplyDelete"Self-apotheosis"? I like it. Sounds like a Supreme Court ruling of fairly recent vintage.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think that I'll have to read "Dreams of My Father" after all.
Heretofore, I thought Obama's being a liberal Democrat was reason enough not to vote for him.