Obama’s reading (and writing) list
This WaPo article from last Sunday describes the reading habits of former presidents, including the much-maligned Bush who was apparently a voracious reader, and President Obama who sometimes mentions books he’s reading and is presumed to be one.
It’s always difficult to know whether a president is actually reading a book he says he’s reading, especially if the reading of said book would send some message the president wishes to convey. But the next time Obama mentions a book he’s reading or has read, I would dearly love to see the interviewer actually ask him a few penetrating questions about it and see what answers he gives.
Would they be very general—sort of like in a school book report when the student writes, “I liked this book; it was very good”? Or would they show that he’s actually read and thought deeply about it? My guess is that the man doesn’t read nearly as much as he claims he does, although perhaps that’s true of most politicians.
That’s not to say (as Bush’s critics falsely claimed of Bush) that Obama lacks the basic intelligence to do so. I have always believed Obama to be an intelligent man in the academic sense (yes, he was magna cum laude at Harvard Law, which does mean something), although certainly not the super-genius he’s purported to be.
It’s not been my impression that Obama is especially interested in most books, though, except for political strategy books, or books about other matters highly relevant to his goals and agenda. That perception of mine is based on his interviews; he almost never makes a literary reference in passing conversation, only when directly asked about his reading tastes, and then his remarks about the books he’s read seem to be rather general.
In researching this post, I kept coming up with articles such as this. They mention how obviously erudite and bookish Obama is (after all, he wrote the great Dreams From My Father!), and then deal with lists he’s provided of influential books in his life. But I haven’t yet found any links to an interview in which he’s asked more detailed questions, and discourses at length on just what passages he liked or what he thought was so fine about it. Perhaps such interviews exist; if so, feel free to provide a link in the comments section, and I’ll take a look.
What I found instead was the curious assertion that Obama didn’t really take up book reading until college. This is not usually the case for writers, and makes me even more suspicious of the provenance of Dreams. Speaking of which:
Apparently, Obama’s childhood was not particularly bookish but his love of literature was sparked at Occidental College in California where he admitted to reading “tons of books”. In December 1997, he even reviewed a book for the Chicago Tribune ”“ William Ayers’ A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of the Juvenile Court.
Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say (there, that’s a literary reference from one of my favorite works; it just slipped out. Book aficionados usually are first and foremost avid readers, ordinarily from early childhood, and we’re always quoting this and that author or poem.)
And now that I’ve said that, I’m trying to think of a good literary quote to end this post—and of course I’m having trouble doing so. So I’ve turned to trusty Google and I get this:
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. ~G.K. Chesterton
[NOTE: The blogger “zombie” has done some research on that Obama book review of Ayers’s work. It’s not a full review, but was part of a feature in the Tribune called “Mark My Word,” in which “Chicago notables praise their favorite current books.” So we can conclude that, despite the fact that the Ayers book does not appear on any present-day list of Obama’s favorite literary works (pity, that), in the year 1997 it headed the pack.
Here’s the review in full, as far as I can see:
A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.
I assume it was in the nature of an “you scratched my back, I’ll scratch yours” thank-you note to Ayers, although for what I can hardly say. Perhaps for the campaign kick-off party for Obama in 1995. Or maybe for the help in writing Dreams, if Jack Cashill is correct.
A guest blogger at Michelle Malkin’s dug up another nugget, this time from Ayers’s book A Kind and Just Parent itself. On page 82 Ayers wrote of his Hyde Park neighborhood [emphasis mine]:
Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama.
At that point in time (1997), “writer” was certainly not Obama’s most salient characteristic—unless for some reason Ayers wanted to emphasize it. You can draw your own conclusions about that. But Obama had started his political campaign in 1995 (right around the same time as the publication of Dreams) and had been elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, before Ayers wrote A Kind and Just Parent. Obama’s biggest claim to fame at the time besides that was probably having been the first black president of Harvard Law Review.
At first, Obama’s book Dreams appears to have had only modest sales; it was long out of print until it was reissued in 2004 as a hot property in light of Obama’s Democratic Convention speech. What’s more, if you look at the notes here, all of the great praise of Dreams as a fabulous literary work seems to have come after its 2004 reissue (here’s the original 1995 NY Times review, which is mostly descriptive), and especially during the 2008 campaign when Obama was a celebrity and people were taking a look back at it. But Ayers knew about the book way back in 1997 and even characterized lawyer/activist/politician Obama as a “writer” and nothing else.
As I said, curiouser and curiouser.]
[NOTE II: Here’s an audio interview with Obama in 1995 on the publication of his book. It’s interesting that even in this interview he specifically mentions his grandmother as having had a fear of “black men on the street.” That’s the incident he cited in his famous post-Reverend-Wright race speech in which he used her as an example of bigotry. But if you look at the story Obama actually relates in his book, it is nothing of the sort: his grandmother mentioned being harassed by one particular aggressively panhandling man on the street, and it was Barack’s grandfather (and Frank Marshall Davis) who pointed out that the man was black and that the grandmother was racist in fearing him.]
“yes, he was magna cum laude at Harvard Law, which does mean something”
And, he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review without ever having written an article for that review, something that you have to do in order to learn your way around the arcana of legal writing in order to do the editor thingy. I guess that means something, too.
Although the review of Ayers’ book was terse, to say the least, I bet Ayers wrote it under Obama’s name.
Ayers calling Obama a writer is sounding more and more like an inside joke. It also portends a debt due from Obama to Ayers. I wonder how it was paid.
The very astute Richard Epstein, professor of law at University of Chicago, noted that “I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.”
In response to the question, “How good is Obama’s mind?”, Epstein replied: “His mind is pretty good, but it is a clever ‘means-ends’ mind. He has never written a scholarly article in his entire life. ”
http://easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/04/richard-epstein-discusses-barack-obama.html
I am Obama’s age and knew many students like him: preppy third world wannabes and poseurs who loved to give the impression that they were both scholarly and engaged by namedropping authors like Fritz Fanon and Edward Said, both of whom Obama has cited as influences.
No real love of books, or of reading and thinking. All just a display for appearance’ sake.
Neo, I don’t think the Chesterton qoute fits because Obama is neither eager or tired when it comes to reading books. He is rather more like the antagonist in C.S. Lewis’ trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) who uses rationality as an instrument.
The book list article is an ego-inflating gift by the New York Times and meant to buttress Obama’s sparse production. What galls me is that the required reading that Obama’s books became affored Obama with millions of dollars. Just like Hitler, Lenin and Mao. That’s his true company of like-minded readers.
Obama is the biggest time-bomb Ayers ever planted.
I visited the Harvard Coop last summer and there were multiple displays of Obama books (usually Dreams prominently displayed, surrounded by fawning tribute-type books. The displays were scattered throughout the main selling floor..I recall thinking at the time that every time I turned a corner it seemed I ran into another one.
I suppose if any place is ground zero for Obama worship, it would be the Harvard Coop.
Most American politicians have more than a whiff of Elmer Gantry about them (that’s YOU, Bill Clinton and Al Gore). They acquire a patina of learning and dispense a few literary phrases in order send a collective tingle up the legs of the chattering classes (that’s YOU, Chris Matthews and David Brooks).
What makes Obama unique is the paramount attractiveness of his image above all else to those who want to believe (that’s YOU, Nobel Prize Committee). He is just a great conman.
I have often thought of Obama, sounding oh-so stentorian behind the teleprompter, as “The Mule” from Asimov’s Foundation trilogy — a mysterious figure who somehow managed to become the ruler and compell others to do his will.
Yeah CV, Obama is our very own Dear Leader. Most intellectual president ever. Greatest athlete in the office, too. I’m surprised that the media is not breathlessly reporting that he shot 18 consecutive holes in one last time he golfed.
“yes, he was magna cum laude at Harvard Law, which does mean something”
Only if I can see the transcript that proves this assertion. Oh, and how ’bout those transcripts from Occidental and Columbia while we’re at it. Then we’ll have a good idea of what sort of reader BHO really is.
In the pictures at one of the links, Obama was carrying the book with the cover facing out. I think he did the same thing once when descending from Air Force One. Is that a normal way to carry books?
Also, in the NYT book review, Obama’s lack of curiosity about the white side of his family was mentioned. I guess we whites are boring, just like the suburbs and the Illinois legislature.
Books? Those are things with other peoples ideas and opinions in them. Barak read one? Lol
“yes, he was magna cum laude at Harvard Law, which does mean something”
Does it mean more or less than winning a Nobel Peace Prize?
I’m 100% with Steve G and physicsguy. No transcripts, no dice.
“. . . it was Barack’s grandfather (and Frank Marshall Davis) who pointed out that the man was black and that the grandmother was racist in fearing him.”
Davis did not say the grandmother was racist in fearing him. Here is Frank’s statement from “Dreams”:
“What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’ right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not . So you might as well get used to it.”
She understands that black people have a reason to hate.
This invites the conclusion that black crime is a matter of retribution. Yet most of the victims of black crime are…other blacks.
Doesn’t quite fit the narrative, does it? Or do blacks have a reason to hate each other as well as whites?
One of my favorite Obama phony moments was when some reporter asked him what the Big O was reading, and he said “Reinhold Niebuhr.”
Of course, the next obvious question would have been, “Why are you reading Reinhold Niebuhr.” But that might have embarrassed the Great Man.
Can anyone tell me why Obama might have been reading RN? What would he have gotten out of reading this author?
Note: I feel the same way every time someone quotes George Santayana’s “Those who . . . ” quote. Has anyone, and I mean anyone here actually read anything by George Santayana? And if so, why?
“An activist mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.” DING! Perfect!
He wrote his Two Autobiographies about as surely as JFK wrote Profiles in Courage. All bollocks.
Like Physicsguy, I’ll believe the magna claim if, and only if, we can see the bloody transcripts. Even then, I doubt it would reflect merit as much as a fervent desire by the HU faculty to promote a likely-looking black student. If not, why the hell didn’t he publish anything in the Review? More bollocks.
“”She understands that black people have a reason to hate.””
Because it pays off in dividends from white liberals.
My favorite Santayana quote is, “There is no God, and Mary is His mother.” Well, at least I’ve seen it attributed to him. Tells you something about the relationship of the head to the heart.
The thing that struck me most about Obama’s reference to his grandmother in the “racism and Rev. Wright” speech was that he spoke with some feeling about how much his grandmother loved him (shouldn’t everyone?). He never once made any mention of his having loved her. Indeed, his whole emphasis was on how this woman, who loved him (a black man, after all) so, was nevertheless a racist. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a decent man would make such public note of, even if he were sure it was true.
Betsy, I think the conclusion is that Buraq, like a good Marxist (I love oxymorons), considers all people as factors of production. Nothing more.
gpc31 said;
“Yeah CV, Obama is our very own Dear Leader. Most intellectual president ever. Greatest athlete in the office, too. I’m surprised that the media is not breathlessly reporting that he shot 18 consecutive holes in one last time he golfed.”
Reminds me of the Ballad of Davey Crockett.
OB,
Yes. Well, that, or props.
Neo,
Epstein’s quote [above] is a good one. I really tire of Obama-lovers describing him as ‘smart’. There’s no actual evidence of such, though of course he might be. The news folks, who are utterly infatuated with him, tell people that he is smart, but that is mostly a reflection of their own dimness.
Worse still is the common statement that he was a “professor” at U of C. That, of course, is completely wrong. He was a “guest lecturer”: gosh, any senior graduate student can be a lecturer! Obama could not ever be a professor at U of C [or any other decent university] for the simple fact that he has never published any scholarly article!
In short, though he may indeed be brilliant, based on the evidence, one cannot distinguish him from one’s plumber!
Reminds me of the Ballad of Davey Crockett.
Or Paul Bunyan. In this case, maybe it should be “Paul Bunion.”
The fact is Buraq is of modest intellectual and athletic complement. No one who saw his bowling or throwing performances will dispute the latter; his refusal to release transcripts, coupled with his reliance on the teleprompter, and his risiible gaffes off it, confirm the former.
Well said, Henry. I’ve made the same assertion here before, and on the same grounds.
This is kind of a hot-button issue for me, because I slogged my guts out to get an academic position at a top university, and then to get tenure. Having a skidmark like Obama characterized as a “professor” incenses me. It’d be like characterizing Obama as a “former MLB pitcher” because he’s now made two girly throws off a mound. “But…but…he threw off a major league mound, didn’t he? Doesn’t that technically make him a pitcher in the major leagues?” No effing way. The analogy is precise.
As I understand it, Obama was a law professor in the same way I was a geology professor. That is to say, he was a contract employee–an adjunct. I recall reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal, during the years when I worked in that capacity, that referred to adjuncts as “the migrant workers of higher education.”
Not much status associated with that, but it was certainly fun!
It also tells you something about fake weightiness. Obama’s people won’t tell you this, but he’s all about fake weightiness.
betsybounds:
Obama was not an adjunct professor at U of C. Even an adjunct professor has to have published something in a journal. B.O. simply does not qualify.
Henry Bowman,
Good point. And I did, of course, have a thing or two published in a couple of the more widely cited professional geological journals. 🙂
Nevertheless, adjuncts are simply semester-scale contract workers.
Bamster is NO reader. Bush was a voracious reader. Bamster is vastly self-regarding. Bush was balanced. Baa-Daa-Bing.
Even an adjunct professor has to have published something in a journal.
Exactly. To have published nothing whatever would be an unsuccessful career as a grad student. Buraq’s “professorial” appointment was pure political patronage. In my entire career, I never heard of anyone even being considered for an academic position (even untenured, much less tenured) who had published exactly…bupkis.
The very suggestion would have occasioned questions regarding one’s sanity.
21st century Adlai Stevenson.walking talking vacuum tube.wow ayers is a lot deeper than i thought. of course one must wonder why someone who can plan so far ahead would follow such a ludicrous belief system, but i suppose that’s why pride is one of the 7 deadly sins.
And yes, I know Chicago now says he’d been a professor there. What else would they say, even if they weren’t ardent liberals? “Homeboy is full of crap. We let him give the odd lecture as a favor to the powers that be, but he was a joke. Btw, we have competitive NIH block grant renewals coming up, so wish us luck, OK?”
Ain’t gonna happen. A lot of the operating expenses of universities (especially private ones) comes from overheads on Federal grants. For the University of Chicago to playing along with Buraq and his handlers would be just as understandle as the JCS being “comfortable” with Buraq’s nuclear policy.
Hmm. There are many mysteries revolving around Obama’s “life of the mind,” so to speak. Those who truly read a great deal are affected by those books, by the ideas, and their speech, thinking and behavior are correspondingly molded. In addition, their homes are commonly treasure troves of books read and lovingly preserved. I certainly don’t claim any great personal knowledge of Obama, but I’ve observed none of the characteristics of mind or action of dedicated, thoughtful readers in him, nor have I ever read anything by even his most fawning fans commenting on the sort of book collection one would expect to find if he is, indeed, a genuine reader.
His academic record is likewise very odd. Apparently nothing is known or discoverable about his undergraduate work at Columbia, and while he was (apparently) the Editor of the Harvard Law review, he apparently didn’t publish a thing while holding that post. Likewise, as a “constitutional law professor,” his scholarly output was reportedly zero. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard Law? Really? At one time, if we assume this to be true, that would be impressive. Considering what even our most august institutions of higher learning have become, one wonders to what degree such an accomplishment remains impressive. He certainly has none nothing since that would vindicate such potentially great legal acumen.
While Obama’s behavior and intentions are clear, his background remains murky. Such is not common and is quite disturbing. I’ve no doubt that anyone wishing to research my background from boyhood would have little difficulty, yet Obama remains, as Austin Powers might put it, a international man of mystery, and of little or no actual accomplishment.
Sorry, neo-neocon, but he is not intelligent in any way. The Precedent is, in fact, quite stupid. If you listen to his extemporaneous musings you can hear his idiocy display itself in full.
When he said, “profit and earnings ratios” he demonstrated that he has the mathematical sophistication of a retarded 8th grader, as any normal 8th grader knows, not only that “profits” and “earnings” are the same, but, more importantly, that you never translate division into “and”. This little mistake was missed by many, but it demonstrated quite clearly that The Precedent was one of those people who could not handle even the simplest mathematical word problems and likely didn’t score above 420 on the math section of his SATs.
If that wasn’t enough, he went on to show how tenuous his grasp of basic arithmetic was when he proclaimed that his health scare insanity would “reduce premiums by 3000%”. Again, this is the sort of mistake that no one with a brain would ever make, or if they had a slip of the tongue, would catch in a second, as it is so stupid and nonsensical. Yes, it has a meaning (unlike the idiotic “profit and earnings ratios”) but not one that any human would use – i.e. a 2900% increase.
There were untold numbers of these sorts of idiocies that The Precedent would utter, though usually he was on TOTUS and just reading someone else’s words, thereby keeping his mouth tethered to a more able mind.
Lastly, for literary and English types, The Precedent seems to have had terrible difficulties mastering the correct use of the indefinite article. He tends to prefer saying, “aaay enormous” or “aaay illegal” whenever he is speaking off the cuff, which is amazing seeing as so many people had pointed to his alleged prowess as an orator in order to prove his “intelligence”. I’ve yet to hear anyone talk about any of this in public. Most people seem content to let all of these indiciations of idiocy slide by and rest in the idea that neither Columbia nor Harvard could possibly accept and graduate such a total imbecile. Sadly, they can, they do, and we have one occupying the White House.
How come nobody ever talks about being taught by Il Douche? Or worked with him, or took a class with him? It’s like he’s been in Witness Relocation all his life.
This article was mentioned by Maetenloch at AoSHQ. So cool beans for that link bringing some Morons over here (you know who you are).
Good article, Neo!
Hey now, President Obama is absolutely a voracious reader. He can’t even stop reading during his speaking engagements, he loves it so much.
A reader? Of what, his understanding of international affairs is one would expect from a naive 12 year old, indeed I know no one so simultaneously deficient in common sense and moral compass, at least since the sixties. Churchill once said show what a man reads and I tell you who he is. By this criteria he must be illiterate.
The proper books can rise someone out of moral, intellectual and emotional deficiency, Obama’s hallmarks. So even if he is a reader he has not read the right books.
Magna from Harvard? Given the trends of grade inflation – which was happening even back then, as people my age might tell you – I would sooner hire a tech school graduate than a Harvard grad.
Russ
(DeVry, summa cum laude)
David Brooks was the reporter who discussed Reinhold Niebuhr with Obama, in depth, he writes in one of his columns. Why? Maybe social justice from the religious angle?
“Even an adjunct professor has to have published something in a journal.”
I’m afraid that’s not true. I teach as an adjunct at a 4-year college and have not published in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. The vast majority of my grad school classmates who now teach didn’t publish academically, either. Some fields weigh the “publish or perish” rule extremely heavily; others, not so much.
I do, however, have highest possible degree in my field, and the HR department was more than welcome to see my transcripts. Required it, actually. 🙂
OnT, I have thought Ayers was Obama’s ghostwriter for quite some time. “DFMF” has a distinct literary quality which only highly lettered people tend to possess. Terrorist though he is, Ayers is awash in publication. Every single writer of that quality *writes,* whether it’s published or not. And Neocon is right– even if a writer is in a dry spell or has not yet become prolific, he’s almost certainly reading. A lot. It is a compelling force. Most true writers find that they MUST write to feel fully self-expressed. That can include anything from fan fiction to letters to a novel to a daily blog post, but the point is, there’s almost always a lot of it. Certainly much more than a couple of ganja-inspired poems about figs. This kind of polished prose had to have been informed somewhere… and Harvard’s Law School usually isn’t the place to do it.
I seriously wonder how the man lives with himself. Some might see a “comparmentalized mind,” I guess. Me, I just see a dead conscience.
It was supposedly Constitutional Law he taught was it not? Why then can’t he differentiate between it and the Declaration of Independence?
I agree transcripts or the Magna is just BS. 57 states with 2 more to visit, corpse man, the p/e ratio, etc. there’s just too many utterly stupid things the man has said to believe he was even a mediocre student.
Promethea and dw53,
Yes, it was Brooks who was impressed by Niebuhr. This makes me wonder whether TOTUS has some staffer who does background checks on Obama’s interviewers and identifies topics, books, and thinkers that should be brought up in the interview to establish intellectual creds.
Occam’s,
I’d love to know whether those transcripts would show remedial math courses. Or they might reveal that he aced BSing 101.
“In short, though he may indeed be brilliant, based on the evidence, one cannot distinguish him from one’s plumber!”
—————————————–
If Obama had been a plumber, every house he had ever worked in would have a flooded basement!!
There’s a much higher standard for plumbers in the world than there is for politicians, that’s for sure.
Perhaps we need to count using the First Teleprompter as “voracious reading”.
Promethea,
Santayana is sadly neglected today because he has fallen through the cracks of intellectual fashion: as a philosopher, he’s too literary, and as a writer, too philosophical. You are right, nobody reads him much. Our loss. All I can claim to have read is a few essays from “The Birth of Reason and Other Essays”. His book “The Life of Reason” has been sitting unread on my shelf for several months.
Since I don’t have an original thought to contribute to this discussion of Obama’s reading and writing list, I will do the next best thing and borrow a quote from Francis Bacon:
“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
I think Obama fails on all counts.
Promethea,
More on your question concerning Santayana. I didn’t read it carefully enough and forgot to answer the second part, namely, what was the motivation or purpose in reading him (not that my perspective matters, but I can only answer for myself). Hmmm. Good question.
It wasn’t due to the usual reasons: you know, a lust for those snazzy Penguin Classic covers, or the desire to pick up chicks. (No, for that you need Plato, Wittgenstein if you’re gay — and let me tell you from painful personal experience, never, ever, under any circumstances, Schopenhauer).
The quality and subtlety of his epigrams hooked me, such as “There is no God and Mary is His mother” (thanks, BetsyBounds). As an truly civilized mind in the European tradition, he seemed to offer insights into the basic question of how to live, written in beautiful prose. He reminds me of a certain species of cultural conservative who, like the historian John Lukacs, repeatedly awes, surprises, and flummoxes me by his ability to make critical distinctions. A fine mind who makes mine feel gross and clumsy by comparison.
after all, he wrote the great Dreams From My Father!
Naughty Neo! You forgot Lyric.
I don’t know how literate a person can be when he is so uninterested in words that at 48 years of age he doesn’t know how to pronounce a word like “corpsman.” A literate person that loves books is also very interested in words. We enjoy dictionaries and using words to convey precise meaning and knowing how to pronounce these words so as to converse with others our exact thoughts. To a literate person words and their meaning and pronunciation are the very bedrock of intellectual life because: they are.
Obama has learned to speak (I think he’s taken professional lessons) as though he is an authority on anything he speaks of but his words and his lack of real knowledge betray him as a fraud and I consider him to be a very dangerous con man whom we will never know. Like all con men he isn’t going to help us out.
Good grief, when did Obama start claiming he graduated from Harvard Suma Cum Laude?
We’ve not even found his Harvard academic record or even a Harvard diploma with his name on it. Haven’t seen his Illinois law License either, and the part about him and Michelle relinquishing their license to practice law has changed at least twice since he took office.
Oh well, we shoulda’ guessed he would turn out to be a suma cum laude sooner or later. Heck, if you’re gonna’ lie, you might as well make it a big one. And this one is growing.
I think it quite laughable how much is spent on down-playing Obama’s intellect. As an Independent, it is refreshing to have Bush, who graduated at the bottom of his class, out of office. If you want to talk of a president without intellect, he would rank #1.
“…Bush, who graduated at the bottom of his class, out of office.”
Not true. In fact, Bush’s grades were better than Gore’s, who got kicked out of Divinity School due to low grades.
Former President Bush also reads a great deal. We rarely hear Obama talking about how books have informed him. So, exactly which deep intellectual discussion from Obama have “refreshed” you the most?
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