Barack Obama book: Ex-president fights the waves of history in chronicle of first term

Forty-fourth president views himself, Trump, others more as products of the political and historical moment than drivers of it

Barack Obama has a lot to say about his own history as the 44th president of the United States.

So much, in fact, that he needed a break: Mr Obama has split his presidential memoir into two volumes, the first of which, a 701-page behemoth, hit shelves on Tuesday and takes readers from his (well-investigated) birth and (well-documented) childhood in Hawaii all the way up through the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

The former president’s autobiography, A Promised Land, presents a deeply introspective central character navigating the crests and troughs of a turbulent history crashing all around him.

From overseeing the automobile industry bailout amid the Great Recession, to losing Democratic control of the US House in the 2010 midterms, to Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented crusade to obstruct his administration at every turn, Mr Obama’s sense of himself as simultaneously the most powerful man in the world and yet deeply constrained by his political opponents remains palpable throughout his telling of events.

Through multiple interviews in anticipation of the book’s release, he has made clear he views himself and the other political figures of the day — including his successor in the White House, Donald Trump — more as products of the political and historical moment than drivers of it.

“I’m not surprised that somebody like Trump could get traction in our political life,” he told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview published on Monday.

“He’s a symptom as much as an accelerant. But if we were going to have a right-wing populist in this country, I would have expected somebody a little more appealing,” Mr Obama said, later explaining to Mr Goldberg that Mr Trump does not fit, to his mind, the archetype of the classic American male hero.

A Promised Land goes on for more than 700 pages largely because Mr Obama insists on laying out in painstaking detail the history and circumstances of specific moments, providing pages of context not just for his own motivations and decisions while president, but for his adversaries’.

In the early days of his presidency, Mr Obama recalls, he met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Mr McConnell, and House Republican Leader John Boehner. The Republicans, Mr Obama writes, made it clear from the beginning that they intended to put up roadblocks throughout his presidency in order to survive politically.

“It’s hard for me not to fixate on the political dynamics that unfolded in those first weeks of my presidency,” Mr Obama writes. “How quickly Republican resistance hardened, independent of anything we said or did, and how thoroughly the resistance coloured the way the press and ultimately the public viewed the substance of our actions.”

Mr Obama writes at length and with candor about his party’s future Democratic presidential nominees: Hillary Clinton, whom he tapped in 2008 to lead his State Department, and Joe Biden, his vice presidential pick.

The book confirms, for instance, the revelation reported previously that Mr Biden opposed the raid on Mr Bin Laden’s compound in 2011, believing it was too risky.

There are nuggets of levity, too, many springing from his trips abroad.

Mr Obama describes struggling to stay awake during world leaders’ speeches at UN meetings and laments the crummy pens handed out at one G20 Summit.

He recalls asking Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at a state dinner in 2009 how he managed to keep his house in order with his 12 wives, 40 children, and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“It’s more complicated than Middle East politics,” the king responded.

Readers will have to wait for a more detailed rumination about Mr Trump by his predecessor until Mr Obama picks his pen back up for Volume Two, whenever that might be.