In this surprisingly fast-moving volume, the audacity isn’t in the hopefulness but the acknowledgment of its low ebb. But the triumphs are tempered with brooding reflections about the inevitable limitations of the presidency.
There is a literary grandness, to be sure - references to Hemingway and Yeats and dramatic renderings of moments high and low captured in sometimes Sorkin-esque dialogue. On that central question, he writes glumly in the book’s preface, “the jury’s still out.”Ĭovering only the first two and half years of his presidency, this 701-page tome - part one of two - isn’t the usual post-presidential legacy-burnishing project.
Written in the Trump era, under an administration bent on repudiating everything he stood for, his elegant prose is freighted with uncertainty about the state of our politics, about whether we can ever reach the titular promised land. “ A Promised Land” often reads like a conversation Obama is having with himself - questioning his ambition, wrestling with whether the sacrifices were worth it, toggling between pride in his administration’s accomplishments and self-doubt over whether he did enough.
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