There’s an excerpt from Barack Obama’s upcoming book The Audacity of Hope on his website. I really enjoyed Dreams from My Father, and I have a hunch I’ll enjoy this next book too. I also have a hunch that it’s going to aggravate a lot of people in the online liberal activist sphere. Obama’s approach is to try to appear above the fray, aiming to build consensus and do something different. As a result, in the excerpt, he talks about how he doesn’t share the view of many fellow Democrats that things are worse than they’ve ever been, and about how both sides in the partisan struggle have gotten caught up in their favored positions and stopped looking for either common ground or innovative solutions. Obama makes clear that he prefers the Democrats to the Republicans, but I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the effort to appear evenhanded is going to be categorized by some folks as a form of selling out, diminishing the Democratic brand, and/or reinforcing right-wing talking points.
I can see where those critiques would be coming from, but from Obama’s last book and his keynote speech in 2004, it sure seems to me like this was always the kind of guy he is. (I have read some reports from folks who watched the Illinois primary more closely that Obama was more of a firebrand at that point.) I guess we will see if he maintains his popularity and high approval with the population at large.