Between Kindle and Audible I was just able to complete Barack Obama's lengthy book covering his rise to the presidency and his first couple of years in office. I was reluctant to take up a book recanting an inspirational leader from a more optimistic time. Nonetheless, Obama's voice comes through, not just on Audible, and the spirit of "Yes we can" remains. I miss the intellectual statesman that carefully read the PDB's and sought consensus from his capable cabinet before making the hard decisions. As he explains, decisions that reach the president are never easy and often require the least worst option. Barack's human caring side comes through from his regular visits to Walter Reed to townhall meetings with young people all over the world. He was, and still is, the ambassador of the "Promised Land.", and that "America's democratic, rights-based, pluralistic system, could still deliver on the promise of a better life." I felt that Obama wanted to set the historical record straight. Upon reflection, he also provides some warning and prophecy. "Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance, the all-to-human desire to beat back our uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others, were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain." Can America rekindle the audacity of hope?
