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Buy the Book
Artful Shape Shifting
David Remnick believes in Barack Obama.
(Page 2 of 2)
The task has been to keep the particulars of the dream alive — even if no one quite remembers what the dream was or where it was going — to present the civil rights movement as a dialectical process, a series of progressive steps leading across that bridge to a logical culmination, personified by the perfect human product. And suddenly, from nowhere, there he was — Barack Obama, validating and legitimizing the whole process, reviving and sanctifying the quest.
In service of that quest, Remnick devotes a chapter to locating the book within a genre and attempting to demonstrate that genre’s inherent literary superiority. Obama “was working within the oldest, and arguably the richest, genre in African-American writing: the memoir.” He begins with slave narratives, manages to fill a page and a half with titles and authors from this “rich genre,” and caps it off, somewhat desperately, with Sammy Davis Jr. and his autobiography, Yes I Can. Sound familiar? (There may be hope here. Sammy Davis Jr., at the height of his popularity, converted to Judaism, became a Republican, and embraced Richard Nixon.)
Along the way, Remnick makes a number of dubious observations about the nature of literature in general and African-American literature in particular. (Europeans write memoirs at the end of life, African Americans at the beginning.) Suffice it to say, Remnick is a better reporter than literary critic.
And it’s when he rehearses the last few decades of politics in Chicago — albeit with a relentless liberal bent that requires everything to be viewed through the prism of race — when he brings the great cast of the city’s politicos back for a curtain call, that we hear the Washington Post reporter who sent those splendid dispatches from Moscow a few decades ago and whose book Lenin’s Tomb won a Pulitzer.
If there’s a problem here, it’s that the best parts of this book — the Chicago parts — have already appeared in his New Yorker article, where he kept the theorizing and philosophizing to a minimum, laid off the risky literary criticism, and stuck to what he does best. That means that the over-covered 2008 campaign has now been written to death, a whole new batch of books about the next one is already being ground out, and there’s little new for Remnick to report in this extended rewrite.
NOR, IN ALL THESE PAGES, does he answer the key question. Bill Gavin puts it this way: “I’d like to know the answer to one question. Forget about race and ideology. Obama is a political phenomenon, but why has he always (with one exception) succeeded? He is so damned mysterious. And in a situation that never before happened, the outcome of his two senatorial races, one state, one national, were both determined by sex scandals. There was Bill Ayers, the crazy pastor, his association with the Chicago con man (Rezko), and his extremist positions on partial-birth abortions in the Illinois Senate, far to the left of any other politician of whom I’m aware. Any of these would have killed any candidacy. But he danced his way through. He is truly the Artful Dodger.”
Why has he always succeeded? Don Terry, a Chicago Tribune reporter, says of Obama: “He’s a Rorschach test….What you see is what you want to see.” And what you see, adds Remnick, is often not what you thought you saw. In Chicago, Obama learned “he could change styles….He subtly shifted accent and cadences depending on the audience: a more straight delivery for a luncheon of businesspeople in the Loop; a folksier approach at a downstate V.F.W.; echoes of the pastors of the black churches when he was in one. Obama is multi-lingual, a shape-shifter.”
Is it that it? Artful shape-shifting? Necromancy? Many faces? People seeing what they want to see? Or is it this? Here’s Obama with an aide, as reported by Remnick:
When Obama learned that his opponent [in the 2004 Senate race] would be Alan Keyes, he could not help but betray incredulous delight.
“Can you believe this s***t?” he said to Jim Cauley. [Asterisks supplied by reviewer.]
“No, dude. You are the luckiest bastard in the world.”
And perhaps, despite the oceans of words and analysis, and the hundred of fat books stuffed with stale reporting, it’s just as simple as that.
About the Author
John R. Coyne, Jr. a former White House speech-writer, is co-author with Linda Bridges of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement (Wiley).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
More Articles by John R. Coyne, Jr.
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drudge ette obama| 6.2.10 @ 6:29AM
This story isn't over yet. Here's what's coming:
1. American Jews turn backs on Obama. Finally.
2. Obama overplayed Muslim hand.
3. Bad connections with bad people (Ayers, Wright, SEIU, environmental fanatics, Muslim Brotherhood) starts to stick with the American people. No way out for Obama now.
4. Oil drill leaks destroys ability of Obama White House to fashion the news flow. Jindal wins this because he's real, Obama's not. (Did you see his squat on the beach picture. He looked definitely "third world".)
5. Loss in Fall 2010 elections brings out the progressive vultures and middle of the road liberals distance further from Obama.
6. Euro fails, worldwide riots and violence continue. Banks collapse further. Foreclosures and unemployment don't relent. Hyperinflation stalls US and world economy.
7. Terrorism acts in US rise. What is Obama to do? He must act like Bush.
8. Obama's loss of control of Senate and House leaves a lame duck. Conservative emerges for 2012. Market rallies following election.
9. High taxes are effected. Discord reaches all time highs.
10. Racial strife increases to level with rioting in streets of major urban areas. Hispanic riots increase.
Melvin| 6.2.10 @ 9:05AM
My dear, your vision will come to pass as the rains from fear & ruin already stain our upturned faces.
drudge ette obama| 6.2.10 @ 8:12PM
Melvin, that these things are predicted is not my vision - that would be unoriginal. But I think if we recognize the strong possibility, then we can be better prepared to dilute the bad batch. Being ever hopeful does not mean we close our eyes to inevitability.
Stephanie| 6.2.10 @ 7:18AM
This guy is a flipping disaster. God, please let the American people that voted this charlatan in, see the light this Nov. and in 2012. Republicans, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find someone to run for president that can win.
Don L| 6.2.10 @ 7:26AM
I tend to think that his book was really penned by Pierre Salinger - you know -the guy who wrote Catcher in the Rye...
Actually, if it was printed bouncing back and forth across the two open pages ( like the two teleprompters) I'd believe that he wrote it -but like his Nobel, who really gives a hoot?
He's America's worst president, ever.
JohnD| 6.2.10 @ 8:24AM
That was J.D. Salinger. Pierre Salinger was JFK's press secretary.
drudge ette obama| 6.2.10 @ 8:15PM
Don L. was right. Pierre Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye after he ghost-wrote Dreams of my Father.
Alan Brooks| 6.16.10 @ 10:25AM
Faith Of My Fathers?
Brian B| 6.2.10 @ 11:27AM
--Remnick's anxiety (and not necessarily Obama's) reflects a growing anxiety among liberals that the civil rights movement in which they'd invested so much energy and emotional capital has stalled short of the promised land, with the black leaders who attempted to cross that bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, celebrated by Obama and giving this book its title, having been succeeded in large part by hucksters, hustlers, and con men.--
The libs growing anxety is justified because in their race-conscious myopia they pushed the slickest huckster, hustler and con man of the bunch into the Oval Office.
Paul| 6.2.10 @ 11:52AM
Just listen to his convention speech. When he mentions Martin Lither King, his speech changes to a mimicry.
Tom| 6.2.10 @ 12:27PM
I read the book. It is not so great. Maybe Obama wrote it maybe he didn't. But frankly who cares?
Brandon| 6.2.10 @ 12:43PM
Ayers already has claimed credit for writing it and he is on video doing so. Some months ago he was seen in Washington, D.C., at the metro station, where he was recognized by a somewhat known woman (who I cannot recall) who videoed the encounter on her phone in which Ayers not only claimed authorship for said book, but said he wanted the royalties for it since he did the work. And he calls himself a communist, communists are funny that way aren't they?
Brandon| 6.2.10 @ 12:51PM
Just looked it up...missed on an important item. Not a video, the picture is from the "conservative bloggers'" phone, bu ti is only a photo and it is at Reagan National, not the metro. Can find it easily on the internet where the conversation between Ayers and the blogger is detailed.
Gerald Stephens| 6.2.10 @ 3:42PM
WHO CARES...?
I do. It is so entertaining to read a postmortem prior to the 'mortem'. I also appreciate one engaged in producing their own epitaph.
Cheer up! November is bearing down rapidly. Ugly as the mess is we are great nation and will fully recover. More importantly, the pathology inflicted, as that of small pox and polio, is likely to be arrested for multiple generations.
Radegunda| 6.3.10 @ 12:16AM
Gerald, it would be nice to believe that. But how did we get a Marxist in the White House twenty years after the Soviet Empire collapsed, and a jihad sympathizer a mere eight years after 9/11? And now a mega-mosque at Ground Zero?
There are way too many people who turn a blind eye to facts and history.
Alan Brooks| 6.16.10 @ 10:22AM
"That was J.D. Salinger. Pierre Salinger was JFK's press secretary."
Eh? Rick Derringer? Aye, great guitar player. Performed with Edgar Winter, didn't he?
dk| 7.1.10 @ 4:47AM
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