Robert Henderson, Special to AR News, March 27, 2009
This appraisal of Mr. Obama’s character is based on his two books, Dreams From My FatherThe Audacity of Hope(AOH). The advantage of relying on these sources is that they are notonly Mr. Obama’s own words but his considered words. He cannot claimthat were written hastily and without reflection. (DMF) and
It is also worth bearing in mind that the first book, DMF, waswritten in 1995 when Mr. Obama was a married man in his mid-thirties.Hence, it reflects his mature views, not those of a giddy teenager. Inaddition, Mr. Obama agreed to the republication of DMF in 2004 when hewas already an established politician, so his 1995 views cannot bewritten off as something that do not represent his present thinking.Together with The Audacity of Hope, written in 2006,these two books give us a picture of Mr. Obama before he started hispolitical career and after he became a politician.
Shaping the Past
Both books are filled with great swathes of what appears to bereported speech. These are ostensibly conversations from Mr. Obama’searly childhood onwards. In the case of DMF, a casual reader couldeasily think he had picked up a novel.
Mr. Obama says coyly in the introduction to DMF that “although muchof my book is based on contemporaneous journals or the oral historiesof my family, the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what wasactually said or relayed to me.”
Approximation is putting it mildly because Mr. Obama “recalls”astonishingly vast tracks of dialogue from all stages of his life.There are many pages of almost continuous dialogue, and when he meetshis Kenyan half-sister Auma for the first time we get a monologue thattakes up almost seven pages. (DMF pp. 212–219.) As for contemporaneousjournals, nowhere does Mr. Obama mention keeping such records or referto journals kept by others. As he is the protagonist in almost all thedialogue, he is presumably relying almost entirely on “oral history,” anotoriously unreliable source.
Mr. Obama’s writing veers even further into fiction because, as hewrites, “For the sake of compression, some of the characters thatappear are composites of people I’ve known, and some events appear outof precise chronology.” The books are often vague about evenapproximately when an event occurred. Mr. Obama then tops all thisimprecision by telling the reader, “With the exception of my family anda handful of public figures, the names of most characters have beenchanged for the sake of their privacy.” This sounds like a device tomake sure nosey journalists ask no awkward questions and that thepeople he writes about raise no objections.
The use of invented dialogue, fictional names, composite characters,and a vague chronology means we cannot tell whether Mr. Obama isputting his own views into other characters’ mouths or whether theyspeak for themselves. For example, take this rant against whiteoppression from an old black friend from his childhood whom he callsFrank: