PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

Sen. Barack Obama was on Tim Russert today, talking about his new book, The Audacity of Hope. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Too often, especially after six years of the Bush Administration, progressive Democrats sound too much like worry-worts and nags, always talking about what is wrong. And we have plenty to talk about! Obama is too smart to be merely a pollyanna (although there’s a lot to be said for that attitude): In his book, there is no shortage of candid assessments of the way things are. But he apparently doesn’t stay stuck in that groove.

To place this book in proper perspective, I want to compare it, briefly, to two disparate points of view seldom connected. One is a book by Paolo Freire, the radical educator from South America, best known for his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Reading Freire is instructive, because he has lived under several regimes much more oppressive than our own, as well as participating as an official in the Brazillian State of Pernambuco in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s, when the climate was different. But it is a different book of his that I want to call attention to: The Pedagogy of Hope (1992; Eng. Trans. 1994). In this book, he emphasizes the importance of hope in ways that are politically significant. Freire wrote (p. 9) that

One of the tasks of the progressive educator, through a serious, correct political analysis, is to unveil opportunities for hope, no matter what the obstacles may be. After all, without hope there is little we can do.

The other point of comparison I have to offer is the eternal optimism of President Reagan — I am no fan of his, but he remains the most popular visionary among Republicans to this day. His lustre as leader was scarcely diminished among them by Iran Contra, which is unfortunate, because he should have been impeached for the illegal and unconstitutional activities that he authorized.
Those of us who are old enough remember his 1984 “Its Morning in America” campaign theme. The current President Bush’s optimism appears lame by comparison. Reagan’s optimism seemed a timely sequel to President Carter’s speech about a “national malaise,” and Reagan seemed adept at making all Democrats look like sour-pusses. Carter’s “serious, correct political analysis” was not balanced by an uplifting message of hope, and the public has punished Carter relentlessly for that.
The difference between Obama and Reagan is that Obama, through his book, shows signs of the “serious, correct political analysis” that Freire suggested. President Bush’s problem is that his optimism, especially about the War on Iraq, is very obviously untainted by any hint of this kind of analysis. The American people finally figured this out, and his legacy will bear this albatross. Furthermore, his so-called “war on terrorism” not only lacks such an analysis, but also emphasizes fear over hope.

This book, then, may give Obama a stronger plank to run on than most of the other political books by potential candidates on the horizon.
Bob Schacht