Early in the morning in October 2009, former US president Barack Obama was jolted awake by a call: he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
“For what?” was his immediate reply. He told his wife Michelle, who responded, “That’s wonderful, honey” and went back to sleep.
An hour later, his daughter Malia mentioned the Nobel, but was more excited about the forthcoming celebration of the birthday of family dog Bo.
Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land” is riveting and refreshing, unlike self-serving volumes from others who trumpet dubious achievements but bristle when called to account.
Obama does not spare himself, which makes the opposition appear even more ludicrous.
Majority of Republicans had to join the (failed) crusade of Senator Mitch McConnell to make Obama “a one-term president” even if it meant depriving citizens of better health care and social safety nets. Autocratic world leaders (Obama names them in the book) vetoed measures towards global peace or environmental protection in favor of self-serving interests.
Last week, we discussed Obama’s frustrations with Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis, where he was pilloried on all sides. “For many thoughtful critics… the financial crisis offered me a once-in-a-generation chance to reset the standards for normalcy, remaking not just the financial system but the American economy overall. Maybe today we’d have a more equitable system that served the interests of working families rather than a handful of billionaires. I understand such frustrations. In many ways, I share them.”
But after exhaustively studying the scenarios, Obama could not risk another Great Depression. “As willing as I had always been to disrupt my own life in pursuit of an idea [running for president, for instance, which Michelle at first did not approve of], I wasn’t willing to take those same risks with the well-being of millions of people… Whether I was demonstrating wisdom or weakness would be for others to judge.”
History will be kind. The depression did not happen and the US economy recovered.
But memories are short, and what Obama achieved was taken for granted, especially by opponents. What “sustained [his] spirit and beat back whispering doubts on late, solitary nights” were letters from ordinary people saying, “You will never read this, but a program you started has been a real lifesaver.”
More than peace, Obama should be in line for a literature award. He writes lyrically and poignantly about family and friends, precisely and thoughtfully on policy and context. Some critics bemoan the length (700 pages), but I appreciate that he took care to set the background for US domestic and global policy.
The prose is worth savoring: White House groundskeepers tending the gardens (that flourished under Michelle’s nutrition program, with excess produce given to the needy) were “the quiet priests of a good and solemn order.” A cherished crucifix was bestowed on him by a nun whose face was “as grooved as a peach pit.” Hillary Clinton he admired for being “a workhorse, not a showhorse.”
Lights are never turned off in the Oval Office, so at night, it “remains luminescent, flaring against the darkness like a lighthouse’s rounded torch.”
Obama shares, unflinchingly, his thoughts as he clashed with the military on Afghanistan, dealt with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, maneuvered legislation (“I love that woman,” he said of House leader Nancy Pelosi, who rallied support for the Senate’s healthcare bill in the House to avoid a Republican filibuster), and led the operation that brought down Osama bin Laden.
A modern take on Sun Tzu, a policy manual, a philosophical treatise, the book is a must read for all who aspire to lead.
May our own leaders abide by Obama’s prayer at Jerusalem’s Western Wall: “Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.”
Get “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama at National Bookstore.
Queena N. Lee-Chua is with the board of directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her book “All in the Family Business” on Lazada and the ebook version on Amazon, Google Books, Apple Books. Contact the author at blessbook.chua@gmail.com.