Review of David Mendell Book: "Barack Obama, from Promise to Power"

I've never read "Dreams of My Father" or Obama's other book, "The Audacity of Hope." I'm not saying I wouldn't read them; perhaps some day I will. Before reading what some reviewers call Obama's "memoirs," I thought I'd read David Mendell's "Barack Obama, from Promise to Power." Biographies are likely to contain more of the truth than "memoirs" or autobiographies.

People who write autobiographies engage in what is called "artistry" or "poetic license." Some writers seem preoccupied with truth-telling but that rarely applies to politicians. A politician must come up with what is called a "narrative." Frank and brutal honesty doesn't get people elected. President Obama admits that he fictionalized parts of his own books in making up composite characters, combining several characters into one.

Barack Obama knew that he would have obstacles to overcome in achieving his political ambitions. There are clever ways of writing about one's personal negatives in an appealing way. Snorting cocaine and libertinage in college can be cutely irresponsible, but the "crack ho'" standing by the alley outside a seedy night club is a vice cop's nightmare.

Owing to his mother's travels to Indonesia, and his father's origins in Kenya, and his being sent to an exclusive boarding school in Hawaii, it was more difficult for Barack Obama to conjure up a narrative than it was for George Bush. George Bush's life was a known factor, and he lived in a distinguished, public household. The "bad boy" carousing that Bush Jr. did at Yale, the partying and the substance abuse, was often explained as "wild oats."

Barack Obama had no such identity and had to create one out of whole cloth. He wrote two books, with the unifying political theme that the casual player at life "saw the light" and became inspired to serve humanity. This is the perfect political myth for a person's whose background is ill-defined by a lack of known history.

From most accounts, Obama's mother was something of a Bohemian, a person who lived outside the conventions of Kansas in her day. Her marriages to a Kenyan who was already married, and then later to an Indonesian, flaunted the conventions of her Kansas town in the early 60s. Ann Dunham raised her son to the beat of a different drum, frequently reminding "Barry" of his "special" status, as Obama himself says. Obama's mother sent him from Indonesia to live with staid grandparents in Hawaii, where "Barry Soetoro" attended the exclusive Ponahu school.

Back in the U.S., the mire of identity crises, to which all male adolescents must succumb, seems to have left Barack Obama in psychological limbo. Mendell claims in his book, "Barack Obama, from Promise to Power," that Obama sometimes described himself as an "orphan."

As a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Mendell was assigned to cover Obama's Senate primary campaign. His chief opponents during that race were state controller Dan Hynes and a newcomer millionaire named Blair Hull. With his standing political connections, which included the AFL-CIO, Hynes was favored to win easily. That scenario changed when Hull used the millions he had acquired on Wall Street to launch a non-stop, no expenses spared image shaping campaign. There were other candidates in the primary, too, but Mendell focuses mainly on the three.

Obama had support from the SEIU, the Service Employees Interntational Union, which figures often in today's headlines. As a state senator, Obama was given chairmanship of the state senate labor committee by his friend and state Senate President, Emil Jones.

The SEIU, with large numbers of "non-whites" in its membership, was one of the two chief pillars of Obama support. The other pillar of Obama's support consisted of what the author calls "lakefront liberals," a largely white, wealthy liberal Democrat enclave who lived in Chicago's ritzier communities. Among them, and perhaps representative of the clique, were the Pritzker family. Upon arriving upon Chicago's political scene, Obama tapped the family for generous contributions.

Obama's strategy was to capitalize on the split between white liberal voters, some of whom would vote for Haynes and others who would vote for Blair Hull. Obama had broad support in the black community and he knew he could count on the black vote. As past elections show, African American voters will vote for a black candidate almost unanimously, where there is one. Candidate Hynes was laboring under the illusion that former Black, Panther Party member Bobby Rush could deliver the black vote into his column.

Hull was leading when the race changed drastically . Obama biographer Mendell undermined Blair Hull, described as a poor campaigner anyway, when he filed a story about a protection order from one of Hull's ex-wives. It was a theme picked up and broadcast by major media outlets.

Obama's team, with image-shaper David Axelrod, worried that Hull would abandon the race in disgrace, upending their strategy of splitting the white vote. Hull stayed in and lost the race the old fashioned way, as did Hynes, and Obama was the benefactor.

Obama's star continued to rise in the general election with Republican opponent Jack Ryan's help. Jack Ryan withdrew from the race when his actress wife, Jeri Ryan, filed divorce records maintaining that Ryan pressured her to participate in public sex in swinger's clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris. Jeri Ryan's declarations in the divorce documents make for salacious reading. In the weeks before the election, Republicans found a substitute in the articulate talk-show host, Alan Keyes, but it was too late.

I read other opinions of Mandell's book on the pages of giant bookseller Amazon. Mandrell is most likely that rare species, the sensible moderate Democrat. He often describes subject Barack Obama in glowing terms. Some of Mendell's critics excoriate him for an anti-Obama bias. Twenty-four of thirty customer reviews on the Amazon book site give it either four or five stars. Of the six remaining customer reviewers who gave the book a low one-star rating, the opinion was split. One Amazon customer reviewer titles his review of the book as "sleazy journalism" because it mentions Obama's "conceit" and "overabundance of confidence." Another Obama fan calls it "a very deceitful book."

It's quite possible to have a personal bias in favor of Obama and still write an objective biography. Judicious readers may conclude, as I did, that writer David Mendell upheld higher standards of professional journalism than one routinely sees these days. For the most part, Mendell seems to have avoided the current fashionable tendency to "blog" the information he's acquired from access to Obama.

While Mendell covers much of the Obama media "packaging," he doesn't cover the impact of liberal, left, and progressive dominance of social media. Parts of the book are funny such as when Mendell describes Obama's practice of oratorical cadences, pauses, and tonal qualities. The President's oratorical tics have been noted before in an amusing AC article which, unfortunately, I'm unable to locate right now.

In Mendell's book, there's much about the artifice of shaping campaigns, and focus on the role of political image makers like David Axelrod in Obama's success. It was Axelrod who came up with the "Yes, we can!" campaign, approved by Michelle Obama, after it was rejected by the candidate. Some readers may find it disappointing that there is little of Reverend Wright and none of Obama pal Bill Ayers. Is it a flaw of the book that Mendell treated them as only incidental? No mention of the Obama relationship with Rezko or Blagojevich, either. Is that also a flaw? Those looking for an Obama condemnation won't find it here. Those looking for a great deal of information about Obama, congealed in one place, will enjoy the book. I'd call David Mendell's book a significant contribution to Obama's political history.

Sources: David Mendell book: "Barack Obama, from Promise to Power"

The Smoking Gun at: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0625041ryans1.html