Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless,
Barack Obama puzzles observers. In "Reading Obama," James T.
Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why
his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary
partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and
experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American
democratic thought. In a new preface, Kloppenberg explains why
Obama has stuck with his commitment to compromise in the first
three years of his presidency, despite the criticism it has
provoked.
"Reading Obama" traces the origins of his ideas and establishes
him as the most penetrating political thinker elected to the
presidency in the past century. Kloppenberg demonstrates the
influences that have shaped Obama's distinctive worldview,
including Nietzsche and Niebuhr, Ellison and Rawls, and recent
theorists engaged in debates about feminism, critical race theory,
and cultural norms. Examining Obama's views on the Constitution,
slavery and the Civil War, the New Deal, and the civil rights
movement, Kloppenberg shows Obama's sophisticated understanding of
American history. Obama's interest in compromise, reasoned public
debate, and the patient nurturing of civility is a sign of
strength, not weakness, Kloppenberg argues. He locates its roots in
Madison, Lincoln, and especially in the philosophical pragmatism of
William James and John Dewey, which nourished generations of
American progressives, black and white, female and male, through
much of the twentieth century, albeit with mixed results.
"Reading Obama" reveals the sources of Obama's commitment to
democratic deliberation: the books he has read, the visionaries who
have inspired him, the social movements and personal struggles that
have shaped his thinking. Kloppenberg shows that Obama's positions
on social justice, religion, race, family, and America's role in
the world do not stem from a desire to please everyone but from
deeply rooted--although currently unfashionable--convictions about
how a democracy must deal with difference and conflict.
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