A book divided into seven parts and 27 chapters running into nearly 700 pages and the next 200 pages dedicated to photograph and acknowledgements, with each part having 3 to 5 chapters, is a book send to me by Payal, and was sitting with me for more than a year. Thanks to the book Club started by her, was compelled to make this a priority. Let's call this 28th of 2022, though it could be 30th as well.
Part 1 : The Bet
The book begin with the famous walk down the Colonnade, through all seasons. Gardner, Malia, Sasha, Bo, Michelle, Maya, grandparents, parents and Barry, sometimes shortened as Bar pronounced as 'Bear' (Guess who is that?) all follow in quick succession.
It was as if, because of the very strangeness of my heritage and the worlds I straddled, I was from everywhere and nowhere at once, a combination of ill-fitting parts, like a platypus or some imaginary beast, confined to a fragile habitat, unsure of where I belonged. And I sensed, without fully understanding why or how, that unless I could stitch my life together and situate myself along some firm axis, I might end up in some basic way living my life alone. Oh, how earnest I was then—how fierce and humorless! When I look back on my journal entries from this time, I feel a great affection for the young man that I was, aching to make a mark on the world, wanting to be a part of something grand and idealistic, which evidence seemed to indicate did not exist.This was America in the early 1980s, after all.
If I were to travel back in time, I might urge the young man I was to set the books aside for a minute, open the windows, and let in some fresh air (my smoking habit was then in full bloom). That uncertainty, that self-doubt, kept me from settling too quickly on easy answers. I got into the habit of questioning my own assumptions, and this, I think, ultimately came in handy, not only because it prevented me from becoming insufferable, but because it inoculated me against the revolutionary formulas embraced by a lot of people on the left at the dawn of the Reagan era. I heard in church basements and on bungalow porches the very same values—honesty, and hard work, and empathy—that had been drilled into me by my mother and grandparents, I came to trust the common thread that existed between people.
On every issue, it seemed, we kept bumping up against somebody—a politician, a bureaucrat, some distant CEO—who had the power to make things better but didn’t. And when we did get concessions from them, it was most often too little, too late. The power to shape budgets and guide policy was what we needed, and that power lay elsewhere.
Far from the center of the action, I watched this drama unfold and tried to absorb its lessons. I saw how the tremendous energy of the movement couldn’t be sustained without structure, organization, and skills in governance. I saw how a political campaign based on racial redress, no matter how reasonable, generated fear and backlash and ultimately placed limits on progress. And in the rapid collapse of Harold’s coalition after his death, I saw the danger of relying on a single charismatic leader to bring about change.
Harold gave people hope. The way Black Chicagoans talked about him in those years was reminiscent of how a certain generation of white progressives talked about Bobby Kennedy—it wasn’t so much what he did as how he made you feel. Like anything was possible. Like the world was yours to remake. For me, this planted a seed. It made me think for the first time that I wanted to someday run for public office.
Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies, I tell my daughters. The doubts arose from having to prove, no matter how well you did, that you belonged in the room—prove it not just to those who doubted you but to yourself.
“Have you ever noticed that if there’s a hard way and an easy way, you choose the hard way every time? Why do you think that is?”
First announcement, of entry into politics was on September 19, 1995, at the Ramada Inn in Hyde Park, with pretzels and chips and a couple hundred supporters. I was trying to deliver a lot of things to a lot of different people. I was taking the hard way, I thought now about the promise I’d made to myself after Malia was born; that my kids would know me, that they’d grow up knowing my love for them, feeling that I had always put them first.
I tell my audience, to the unpredictable nature of politics, and the necessity for resilience. What I don’t mention is my dark mood on that flight back. I was almost forty, broke, coming off a humiliating defeat and with my marriage strained. I felt for perhaps the first time in my life that I had taken a wrong turn; that whatever reservoirs of energy and optimism I thought I had, whatever potential I’d always banked on, had been used up on a fool’s errand. Worse, I recognized that in running for Congress I’d been driven not by some selfless dream of changing the world, but rather by the need to justify the choices I had already made, or to satisfy my ego, or to quell my envy of those who had achieved what I had not.
In other words, I had become the very thing that, as a younger man, I had warned myself against. I had become a politician—and not a very good one at that.
10 June 2001, Sasha was born. I experienced a great clarity—not so much that I would win, but that I could win, and that if I did win, I could have a big impact in the US Senate Race. First TV campaign started ending with the tagline “Yes we can.” There was no looking back, Michelle unbelievably asked, was it real, and he said - 'Magic Bean Baby, magic bean.'
I had made a bet a long time ago, and this was the point of reckoning. I was about to step over some invisible line, one that would inexorably change my life, in ways I couldn’t yet imagine and in ways I might not like. But to stop now, to turn back now, to lose my nerve now—that was unacceptable. I had to see how this whole thing played out.
Part 2: Yes We Can
Need for fundamental change; the need to tackle long-term problems like healthcare and climate change; the need to move past the tired Washington partisan divide; the need for an engaged and active citizenry. They were into campaigning 2 years, and now 11 months for filing, flying between NW , Chicago, L.A., Dallas, fundraising, learning, missing family, head crammed with too many facts.
In presidential politics, the best strategy means little if you don’t have the resources to execute it, and this was the second thing we had going for us: money; there was fights and differences of opinions - with Hillary Clinton and others, question about drugs. Initially he was David in the fight, after the victory in Iowa he became Goliath.
“THERE IS NOT a Black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America. There’s the United States of America.” It was probably the line most remembered from 2004 convention speech. Entering the campaign's first order of business was unifying the Democratic party. Convincing Joe to be the VP , had it's own challenges and agreements. He understood that if had to be a president he had to acted like one. His assortment of charms grew steadily, with well wishers gifting it.
Part 3: Renegade - As US Senator had visited White house, but it was only after winning, he could enter the oval office. The room is awash in light. Then began appointment of the team. Expectations for inauguration—scheduled for January 20, 2009—were high. It was less a transformation than an amplification, her essential “Miche-ness” burnished to a high shine. But for all her growing comfort with being in the public eye, behind the scenes Michelle was desperate to carve out some zone of normalcy for our family, a place beyond the distorting reach of politics and fame. Inauguration day, first time in 'The Beast', First week in the White House, everything is new.
Part4: The Good Fight
Part 5: The World as it is
Part 6: In the Barrel
Part 7: On the High Wire
Rahul Gandhi has “a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.” Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh both come across as having a kind of impassive integrity.
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