Financial Times 书评： The thrill of the journey Equal parts amusing and exasperating, former US president Barack Obama’s limpid memoir is a blast until he reaches the White House, writes Edward Luce A Promised Land by Barack Obama Viking £35/Penguin Random House $45 768 pages Barack Obama’s presidential memoir can be split into two narrative styles. The first chronicles his almost cinematic life story up to his January 2009 inauguration. The rest is devoted to the first two and a half years of his presidency. Though they are in the same memoir they read at times like different books. Obama’s limpid prose, which shot him to fame in the mid-1990s with his precocious autobiography, Dreams From My Father, is alive and well in the way he describes his pre-presidential days, including his historic 2008 campaign. It is easy to see why Penguin Random House gave him and Michelle Obama a combined $65m — an advance to which none of his predecessors have come close. Once he reaches the White House, however, Obama’s storytelling arc hits a plateau. Some of the life drains from the writing. Though A Promised Land concludes with the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, his account of that dramatic moment feels almost anticlimactic. It is hard to shake the feeling that Obama preferred the thrill of the journey to the destination. And who can blame him? His ride to the top was a blast. In 2000, almost broke, and at the nadir of his political fortunes as an Illinois legislator, Obama wasn’t able to gain entry to the floor of the Democratic presidential convention in Los Angeles. His credit card also bounced, which prevented him from hiring a car at the airport. Four years later, he gave an electrifying speech to the 2004 Democratic convention, which catapulted him to national fame. Four years after that he became America’s first non-white president. There is no political ascent to compare. By contrast, the account of his presidency feels workmanlike. On the opening page, Obama promises “an honest rendering of my time in office”, which sounds revolutionary by today’s standards. When Donald Trump’s memoir eventually comes to be ghostwritten, we should anticipate a dishonest rendering. Obama offers the truth and nothing but the truth. But his account of the White House years stops consistently short of the whole truth. His rare score settlings are for the most part mild. The characters who come off worst are Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, who spouted “nativist bile” and “had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about”. But we knew that already. John Edwards, his former rival for the Democratic nomination, also gets rough treatment — at least by Obama’s standards: “His newly minted populism sounded synthetic and poll-tested to me, the political equivalent of one of those boy bands dreamed up by a studio marketing department.” Of Hillary Clinton, whose primary campaign tactics against Obama grew increasingly desperate as her fortunes waned, he offers nothing but sympathy. Some of her allies’ behind-the-scenes tactics prefigured the more overt nativism that Palin and later Trump would adopt (among the unsourced rumours in circulation were claims Obama had been schooled in an Indonesian madrassa; had worked as a gay prostitute; and fathered many children out of wedlock). But Obama is serene. “Honestly, who wouldn’t be aggravated?” he asks of Clinton’s reaction to a man, 14 years her junior, coming from nowhere to take the prize. George W Bush, meanwhile, merits only sympathy. On their journey together to the US Capitol for Obama’s inauguration, the incoming president spots demonstrators accusing the outgoing president of being a war criminal. “I felt quietly angry on his behalf,” writes Obama. “To protest a man in the final hour of his presidency seemed graceless and unnecessary.” The enduring theme of A Promised Land is Obama’s inner monologue — the continual self-questioning of motives that leaves the impression of profound ambivalence. Of the big events — passage of the $787bn fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, the Tea Party’s rise and foreign policy — we learn little that is new. About others, Obama is mostly perfunctory. Rahm Emanuel, his first White House chief of staff, is “short, trim, darkly handsome, hugely ambitious and manically driven”. Henry “Hank” Paulson, Bush’s Treasury secretary, is “tall, bald, and bespectacled, with an awkward but unpretentious manner”. His observations can also be amusing. For Lawrence Summers, his legendary economic adviser, “qualities like tact and restraint just cluttered the mind . . . his haphazard approach to shaving often resulting in a distracting patch of stubble under his nose.” For the most part, however, Obama’s character portraits are inward looking. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after becoming president, he asks, “For what?” On hearing the news, Michelle, the equally ambivalent First Lady, responds, “that’s wonderful honey,” then rolls over to get some more sleep. Having self-schooled in the political need to avoid showing anger, even when he was the target of overt racism, Obama finds the habit has been learned too well. His ability to put himself in other people’s shoes — even those treating him with open contempt — is admirable. He would make a world-class Supreme Court justice. But these are not necessarily the qualities you want in an activist president. The Tea Party’s opposition to anything Obama wanted to pass — the goal of making him a one-term president come what may — is treated almost like an abstract chess move: “a cleaving of America’s political sensibilities that we are still dealing with a decade later”. That is one way of putting it. Another would be to trace the line from Palin to Trump and ask whether the US republic can get out of this intact. Friends of Obama will find A Promised Land equal parts amusing and exasperating. As a young man, he was a “dedicated partyer” with a “preference for navel-gazing over action”. He would read Marx, Marcuse, Foucault and Fanon to try to impress the opposite sex. “As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he confesses. It is disconcerting that this amusing aside has been picked up by social justice warriors on Twitter over the past few days as evidence that Obama is a “predator”. No charge could be less merited. Obama’s deficiency is that he is too reasonable, almost to the point of detachment. He watched Washington tear up the premise on which he was elected — that there was no blue or red state America, only a United States of America — and was left feeling almost indifferent. “The jury is still out on whether America can live up to the meaning of its creed,” Obama writes. That, like so much else in this frustrating memoir, qualifies as an understatement.
奥巴马时代的外交，美国才是被全世界笑话吧。还记得他被老习在全世界面前当众羞辱的经典画面吗。老习这件事做得太棒了。 “The US president was denied the usual red carpet welcome and forced to ‘go out of the ass’ of Air Force One, Barack Obama ''''deliberately snubbed'''' by Chinese in chaotic arrival at G20”
他的书谁要看。一个完全失败的总统，还是当演员合适。出那么多稿费给他，很可能是种洗钱手段。 原来不相信他是穆斯林兄弟会的卧底，他当了几年总统后，信了。明明是被黑人爸爸抛弃，富裕白人外婆养大，却对美国和白人苦大仇深，天天挑拨离间种族，关心的都是裤裆里的事，不能理解。He can talk the talk, but he can’t walk the walk.
我反感奥巴马也是因此，作为黑人总统，他没干啥帮助黑人的实质性措施，反而把国家拉入种族对立的深渊 历史学家Mr. Siegel: By 2012, when he voted for Mitt Romney, Mr. Siegel had developed an exceedingly low opinion of President Obama, whom he describes as “a faux intellectual with preacher’s cadences and an academic veneer.” In his opinion, “the worst thing” about Mr. Obama was “his effect on race relations. We couldn’t have the cold civil war we have now without Obama, because he, in a very cunning way, exacerbated all of our racial tensions.”
我反感奥巴马也是因此，作为黑人总统，他没干啥帮助黑人的实质性措施，反而把国家拉入种族对立的深渊 历史学家Mr. Siegel: By 2012, when he voted for Mitt Romney, Mr. Siegel had developed an exceedingly low opinion of President Obama, whom he describes as “a faux intellectual with preacher’s cadences and an academic veneer.” In his opinion, “the worst thing” about Mr. Obama was “his effect on race relations. We couldn’t have the cold civil war we have now without Obama, because he, in a very cunning way, exacerbated all of our racial tensions.” dragonfire 发表于 2020-12-05 09:13
Wow such acumen: a faux intellectual with preacher’s cadences and an academic veneer.
回复 62楼Livewell的帖子 你12年在美国吗，知道那个Zimmerman 的事情吗？还有之后的Michael Brown 的事情。因为出生证的事情，Obama请个喜剧演员当众在白宫嘲笑Trump，这个怎么看都不是一个decent的人。 leselaji 发表于 2020-12-05 10:43
are you talking about seth meyers' white house correspondents dinner? Don't think that is Obama's fault even though I do think Seth personally pushed Trump to run for president.
are you talking about seth meyers' white house correspondents dinner? Don't think that is Obama's fault even though I do think Seth personally pushed Trump to run for president. yolandos 发表于 2020-12-05 13:27
是的，一直觉得他很有charisma，但是做为总统，做得真不咋地
The thrill of the journey
Equal parts amusing and exasperating, former US president Barack Obama’s limpid memoir is a blast until he reaches the White House, writes Edward Luce
Obama’s limpid prose, which shot him to fame in the mid-1990s with his precocious autobiography, Dreams From My Father, is alive and well in the way he describes his pre-presidential days, including his historic 2008 campaign. It is easy to see why Penguin Random House gave him and Michelle Obama a combined $65m — an advance to which none of his predecessors have come close.
Once he reaches the White House, however, Obama’s storytelling arc hits a plateau. Some of the life drains from the writing. Though A Promised Land concludes with the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, his account of that dramatic moment feels almost anticlimactic. It is hard to shake the feeling that Obama preferred the thrill of the journey to the destination. And who can blame him? His ride to the top was a blast.
In 2000, almost broke, and at the nadir of his political fortunes as an Illinois legislator, Obama wasn’t able to gain entry to the floor of the Democratic presidential convention in Los Angeles. His credit card also bounced, which prevented him from hiring a car at the airport.
Four years later, he gave an electrifying speech to the 2004 Democratic convention, which catapulted him to national fame. Four years after that he became America’s first non-white president. There is no political ascent to compare. By contrast, the account of his presidency feels workmanlike. On the opening page, Obama promises “an honest rendering of my time in office”, which sounds revolutionary by today’s standards.
When Donald Trump’s memoir eventually comes to be ghostwritten, we should anticipate a dishonest rendering. Obama offers the truth and nothing but the truth. But his account of the White House years stops consistently short of the whole truth.
His rare score settlings are for the most part mild. The characters who come off worst are Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, who spouted “nativist bile” and “had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about”. But we knew that already. John Edwards, his former rival for the Democratic nomination, also gets rough treatment — at least by Obama’s standards: “His newly minted populism sounded synthetic and poll-tested to me, the political equivalent of one of those boy bands dreamed up by a studio marketing department.” Of Hillary Clinton, whose primary campaign tactics against Obama grew increasingly desperate as her fortunes waned, he offers nothing but sympathy.
Some of her allies’ behind-the-scenes tactics prefigured the more overt nativism that Palin and later Trump would adopt (among the unsourced rumours in circulation were claims Obama had been schooled in an Indonesian madrassa; had worked as a gay prostitute; and fathered many children out of wedlock). But Obama is serene. “Honestly, who wouldn’t be aggravated?” he asks of Clinton’s reaction to a man, 14 years her junior, coming from nowhere to take the prize. George W Bush, meanwhile, merits only sympathy. On their journey together to the US Capitol for Obama’s inauguration, the incoming president spots demonstrators accusing the outgoing president of being a war criminal. “I felt quietly angry on his behalf,” writes Obama. “To protest a man in the final hour of his presidency seemed graceless and unnecessary.”
The enduring theme of A Promised Land is Obama’s inner monologue — the continual self-questioning of motives that leaves the impression of profound ambivalence. Of the big events — passage of the $787bn fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, the Tea Party’s rise and foreign policy — we learn little that is new. About others, Obama is mostly perfunctory.
Rahm Emanuel, his first White House chief of staff, is “short, trim, darkly handsome, hugely ambitious and manically driven”. Henry “Hank” Paulson, Bush’s Treasury secretary, is “tall, bald, and bespectacled, with an awkward but unpretentious manner”.
His observations can also be amusing. For Lawrence Summers, his legendary economic adviser, “qualities like tact and restraint just cluttered the mind . . . his haphazard approach to shaving often resulting in a distracting patch of stubble under his nose.”
For the most part, however, Obama’s character portraits are inward looking. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after becoming president, he asks, “For what?” On hearing the news, Michelle, the equally ambivalent First Lady, responds, “that’s wonderful honey,” then rolls over to get some more sleep.
Having self-schooled in the political need to avoid showing anger, even when he was the target of overt racism, Obama finds the habit has been learned too well. His ability to put himself in other people’s shoes — even those treating him with open contempt — is admirable. He would make a world-class Supreme Court justice. But these are not necessarily the qualities you want in an activist president.
The Tea Party’s opposition to anything Obama wanted to pass — the goal of making him a one-term president come what may — is treated almost like an abstract chess move: “a cleaving of America’s political sensibilities that we are still dealing with a decade later”. That is one way of putting it. Another would be to trace the line from Palin to Trump and ask whether the US republic can get out of this intact.
Friends of Obama will find A Promised Land equal parts amusing and exasperating. As a young man, he was a “dedicated partyer” with a “preference for navel-gazing over action”. He would read Marx, Marcuse, Foucault and Fanon to try to impress the opposite sex. “As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he confesses.
It is disconcerting that this amusing aside has been picked up by social justice warriors on Twitter over the past few days as evidence that Obama is a “predator”. No charge could be less merited.
Obama’s deficiency is that he is too reasonable, almost to the point of detachment. He watched Washington tear up the premise on which he was elected — that there was no blue or red state America, only a United States of America — and was left feeling almost indifferent.
“The jury is still out on whether America can live up to the meaning of its creed,” Obama writes. That, like so much else in this frustrating memoir, qualifies as an understatement.
从现在看来，毁掉美国的可不是OBAMA。。。
除了trump，谁配这个头衔
他可不是没钱白女抚养大的，是他的银行家白外婆抚养大的。如果只靠他那个写人类学博士论文写了二十年的白左妈妈，估计他连大学都没得上
现在这种bLM横行天下的时候，谁敢批评他？就凭他的肤色，可以凌驾一切批评之上。
他家境比TRUMP差多了，再加上还是黑人，小时候还在亚洲生活。
他的成长环境，也比我们小时候好多了，至少是个上中产
我也从未喜欢过他
这个说TRUMP也合适，不过他没有魅力。TRUMP 就是个利用穷白人怨气的，实际上帮的是他的阶层，有钱白男。我本来也不赞同OBAMA，但是他比TRUMP有深度的多，这跟他的智商，国际化的成长环境和少数民族背景。TRUMP就是个富二代花花公子，从小就不需要努力，没受过挫折。虽然他有一些好的看法却没办法想有效解决方式。主要是他能力有限。这里人支持trump的和Obama共同点更多一点，确站在一个一口一个China virus的人。怪不得印度人比中国人成功的多。
黄左要是跪舔起来，比白左还可怕啊。这可是白左媒体NPR拍的，把奥巴马称为 America‘s Great Divider.
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黄鼬又失心疯了比极端白右可怕多了
奥巴马时代的外交，美国才是被全世界笑话吧。还记得他被老习在全世界面前当众羞辱的经典画面吗。老习这件事做得太棒了。 “The US president was denied the usual red carpet welcome and forced to ‘go out of the ass’ of Air Force One, Barack Obama ''''deliberately snubbed'''' by Chinese in chaotic arrival at G20”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/04/barack-obama-deliberately-snubbed-by-chinese-in-chaotic-arrival-at-g20
连白左媒体NPR在你们黄左眼里都成白右了吗？黄左太可怕了。要不在看看你们跪舔的偶像当时是怎么被包子羞辱的，从飞机的ass 爬出来，确实被整的有点惨啊，不过活该啦，包子这件事做得确实爽啊。
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完全赞同！他的思想太超前，美国的社会现状还根本跟不上他的步伐，同理Andrew Yang也一样，美国还不deserve他们！
Andrew Yang 是华人里少数有魅力的。
他的思想超前??!!!
怎么感觉他是中间派啊
他相比 欧洲的左派 太右太右了
所以这些黄左们觉得美国人民不配拥有奥巴马和杨安猪这么优秀的领导，要不一起打包给你们欧洲吧。
我反感奥巴马也是因此，作为黑人总统，他没干啥帮助黑人的实质性措施，反而把国家拉入种族对立的深渊
历史学家Mr. Siegel:
By 2012, when he voted for Mitt Romney, Mr. Siegel had developed an exceedingly low opinion of President Obama, whom he describes as “a faux intellectual with preacher’s cadences and an academic veneer.” In his opinion, “the worst thing” about Mr. Obama was “his effect on race relations. We couldn’t have the cold civil war we have now without Obama, because he, in a very cunning way, exacerbated all of our racial tensions.”
我其实很怀疑的，以至于我对与是不是有所谓历史的真相存在也产生怀疑，因为目前看，学界对奥巴马的评价并不低
糊弄不了跟我一样只看action不听words only的人
今年看川普表现看， 他绝对是200斤派来， 给他稳固政权的，
Wow such acumen: a faux intellectual with preacher’s cadences and an academic veneer.
200斤的战略中心的主任已经辟谣了，解释为什么川普必须死。还是奥巴马听话，让从飞机屁股爬出来，就从屁股爬出来，一个屁都不敢放，200斤喜欢。
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帽子扣的挺溜啊
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现在TRUMP总统的美国还没被中国笑够？
Obama那8年你不在美国吧，或者只呆了几年？
在啊，所以对比强烈。OBAMA政治正确没错，但是他是政客要讨好他的base。他是黑人，最大的支持只能是黑人，他做的表面工作比TRUMP这个草包做的实际破坏小多了。
川普比较能代表以前德国人的精神， 当然那个德国人就是希特勒
是吗，中国也让川普从飞机的ass爬出来了？
谢谢回帖。作为理工科出身的，对喊口号不感兴趣。不喜欢非黑即白的比较
魅力能当饭吃？
你12年在美国吗，知道那个Zimmerman 的事情吗？还有之后的Michael Brown 的事情。因为出生证的事情，Obama请个喜剧演员当众在白宫嘲笑Trump，这个怎么看都不是一个decent的人。
全世界的人民都赞美曼德拉，真的是他多好？出卖南非利益而已
除了第一句同意每个字 马克下这个贴 会不会移版
共和党太落后和保守了
对，但就是一堆华而不实的东西
全世界赞美曼德拉，因为他和平结束了南非的种族隔离制度。我和台湾人聊过，也非常佩服蒋经国，因为他和平过渡到选举制度。
认识的人说 奥巴马走进房间 一分钟不到就吸引全体人员的注意力 自带光环的charming
美国的分裂始于他 2016年民主党丢了blue wall states 也是他的功劳
are you talking about seth meyers' white house correspondents dinner?
Don't think that is Obama's fault even though I do think Seth personally pushed Trump to run for president.
上次选举的时候看了那个片段，当时挺替Trump打抱不平的，经过这次选举，觉得Obama干的好。
请仔细说说他代表哪些美国精神了？他上贵族学校和他自身努力有多大关系？连我拉丁裔和白人的同学都说我们亚洲人要是改一身黑皮在美国都会所向无敌。就算他不是AA受益的，他上台后使劲挑拨种族矛盾，只要有黑人被怎样，他首先跳出来不分青红皂白干预司法。这叫美国精神吗？他做的那些烂事，几天几夜都说不完。
Dinech DSouza 说的是这个刚拍了 Trump Card 的印度人吗？写书批评奥八，被奥八找了个政治捐款非法的由头给判了刑的
民主党都是这种手段简直是得到CCP真传