Renegade: The Making of a President
by Richard Wolffe
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Book Reviews of Renegade: The Making of a President
Book Review: Important and Engrossing
Summary: 5 Stars
I found myself a few weeks ago neglecting other parts of my life (including my busy law practice and cluttered apartment, my sometime writing of travel articles and short stories and my necessary preparation for a birthday escape to France beginning in less than three weeks ). I also found myself walking and eating while reading only one book (instead of rotating among the several, both fiction and nonfiction, that I usually carry about). Yes, I found it that difficult to put down Richard Wolffe's new book, "Renegade- the Making Of A President". I finally finished it one morning during a coffee break at Starbucks.
Wolffe is the Teddy White of the Obama campaign - the writer given sufficient access to be able to write today's version of a "making of the president". I found that Wolffe covered the man and the experience and the historical significance in a compelling manner that avoided the fawning that such closeness might have engendered - reading the book, one sees our new President in all of his complexity. At the same time, he pulled us into the inner workings of the election process (just being in Iowa at caucous time is worth the read) and the relationships of Obama with those around him. I also loved reading about some of the really fun details I had not known (like Biden banging on McCain's door to get his attention after McCain refused his calls).
Obama is in these pages, warts and all - a truly interesting and exciting read both for those of us who love him, and those
The Obama that I saw in this book is who I believe to be the real Obama - neither a God nor a Devil, but exactly the man I first discovered when I read "Dreams From My Father" several years ago and then, much later, unearthed more of when I read "The Audacity of Hope"; the man who I have been trying to explain to friends and acquaintances on both the right and the left - both to those who only see a "tax and spend" liberal, as well as to those who are disappointed that the candidate that they saw as the coming of a pure left wing ideologue is not using his political capital to make changes fast enough.
I don't think anyone could read this book and not discover that Barack Obama is very complex and very human; an intellectually gifted thinking man; a disciplined man who is also caring and moral but also sometimes angry and distant; an educated man who prides himself on his knowledge but who always remains curious, is untethered to the arrogance of constant certainty and who surrounds himself by those who will without fear offer him opposing opinions; a man who respects and is committed to trying to understand those who don't think exactly the way that he does and who will not demonize them; a man who is committed to making a difference and who has his eye on the progressive values I believe in and wants to make this a better world for those at all levels but at the same time a pragmatist who knows that things sometimes need be done in realistic increments and who while honestly wanting to change the political landscape can work with or in the flawed system to the extent needed; a caring but not always perfect husband and father who was raised sometimes by an eccentric but loving mother who dragged him around the world, and then by his grandparents, and was forged in part by the lack of a father and the mixed blessing of finding out more about who that father was.
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These are the Obama qualities that caused me during the election cycle to purchase extra paperback copies of "The Audacity of Hope" so that whenever someone who I thought actually had a brain took a narrow view of who Obama was, or was tempted to listen to the noise on the internet, I could ask him or her:"If I gave you a book, would you promise to read it?" and hand out a copy.
In the Wolffe book you see so much - Obama and those around him in depth, plus (through the eyes of a candidate ) the inner workings of the long and complicated primary and election process.
An important and engrossing book to read.
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Book Review: Nice inside accounts of the campaign, but one-sided
Summary: 3 Stars
How will people speak of Barack Obama in two hundred years? Regardless of what else happens from now until the end of his life, the historic primaries and general election of 2008 will always be an important chapter of both his life and our country's history. Down the road, people will look to our contemporary's recollections of the facts to understand what happened, and why. Although this book will offer much valuable information, it will always be a one-sided account of these events.
Renegade definitely has its moments. It gives great insight into how carefully the decision to run was taken, and has unique insider accounts of the most talked about moments of the campaign: the Wright controversy, the conflicts with the Clintons, the VP selection, the transition, Palin, the financial collapse, and much more.
Where the book was strongest to me was when it describes what it's like to run a presidential bid, just how demanding and almost inhuman it is. One particularly interesting bit describes how Obama wrote his famous speech on race in Americe, which the candidate wrote himself on the two nights before the speech:
"The next night, he took Favreau's outline and started writing after he put his daughters to bed. By three in the morning, he had finished half the speech. Five hours later, he was en route to Pennsylvania for a full day of campaign events.. At 10:00 p.m. on Monday night, he retired to his hotel room to write the second half of the speech that he would deliver the next morning. By 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, he had e-mailed the speech to his senior staff."
What is unfortunate is that these factual accounts of the campaign constitute maybe half of the book. The other half seems like a puff piece aimed at justifying Obama policies during the campaign. There is a good Amazon review titled "What do you call cheerleading after the game is over?" that echoes much of how I feel about the author's partisanship. Politico ran a piece on the book before it was published where it explains how Wolffe never covered any of the McCain campaign. He became a close friend of the candidate, even being admitted into the close-knit circle of people Obama played Basketball with. The idea of the book itself was actually pitched by Obama, promising the journalist the access he would need to write it. As Wolffe himself says in the afterword:
"publishers want partisan screeds nowadays. They don't want reporting."
Indeed, and that is exactly what the author has given his publishers.
One thing I was hoping to find in the book was insights into how the campaign managed to raise almost three quarters of a billion dollars. What did the then-candidate have to promise, and to whom, to get such incredible contributions? The notion that he raised so much from small online donation is clearly debunked by Wolffe who shows that first came the big sums from wealthy donors. The grassroots campaign in Iowa required very large amounts of money, way before the campaign gained the popularity that it did by the time the primaries were over. Although Obama may have broken some of the rules of presidential campaigns, I very much doubt that he managed to alter the fundamental rule that in these high circles of power, nothing is free. Nothing is given.
I give the book a 3 out of 5, with great inside accounts of the campaign, but ultimately partisan enough so that I truly wonder how Richard Wolffe can call himself a Journalist.
Book Review: Renegade: the Prescience of a Reporter
Summary: 5 Stars
When Barack Obama suggested to Richard Wolffe that he write a book about the Obama campaign and the 2008 election, Wolffe dismissed the idea, noting "There's too much coverage....People are consuming everything about the election." (p. 330) That's true and indeed, there is not much new to be discovered in this book about the events that led up to President Obama's election. But musicians often say that the music occurs between the notes, and so too, the "real story" of the Obama campaign happened between or around the events, during those moments when important choices are made, when tears are shed, or during philosophical conversations on a bus in the middle of the night.
Wolffe attempts (successfully, I think) to illuminate those moments between the events, when Barack Obama's character is revealed through his decision-making and through his interactions with the people around him. It's a tough job. Wolffe walks the thin line between being too analytic and impersonal and collapsing into soap opera. His simple and straightforward writing style helps to keep him on the straight and narrow in this regard, never slipping into a gossipy tone, even with the personal material, and never sounding bombastic in his analysis.
Wolffe's story about traveling with Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency betrays a surprising humility on the part of the author. Given the unprecedented access he had to the candidate during the entire campaign, I imagine the temptation would be great to write a Barack and Me kind of memoir. But he succeeds in making himself almost completely invisible until the Afterword, when he talks about the similarities between his and Obama's upbringing. (It's a very touching and appropriate ending to the story.) Instead, he focuses on Obama's character and personality--how he came to be the person he is today. I came away from the book with a clearer understanding of the philosophical ground upon which Barack Obama stands.
I originally wrote this review about a year ago, not bothering to submit it to the website. When I went back at the beginning of 2010 and reread it, I was struck by my original closing line: "He [Obama] will disappoint both conservatives and progressives, because, as Wolffe makes clear, he is not about pleasing one side or the other, but about finding common ground between them." The temptation is to applaud my own prescience but really, the credit belongs to Wolffe for writing a book which so accurately predicts the particular challenges of the Obama presidency. That makes it a very important, and useful, book.
Book Review: Good Outsiders View, A few little known Nuggets, Badly Edited Though
Summary: 4 Stars
Wolffe wrote this book at the suggestion of then candidate Obama (a story he outlines in the appendix) and was given some pretty good access to the main players during the campaign. Despite his access, it is still a (well written) outsider's view of the Obama 2008 campaign - you are not going to find Obama or his staff overtly trashing people - they knew when they were talking to Wolffe he might eventually write a book about it. (my favorite little nugget from the book - that Obama loved <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/2/738159/-Renegade">this picture</a>)
If you followed the Obama campaign with any depth, many of the "insider tales" discussed were either covered in the press or blogosphere, but for the casual person, Wolffe's description of the Obama campaign will be a revealing account of some of the behind the scenes motivations and decisions the Obama campaign made.
However, the book is BADLY EDITED. It starts on election night, then jumps back and forth through time. Many of the chapters are way way too long and could have easily been broken into several chapters. Moreover, Wolffe over-relies on passages from Obama's books to fill in Obama's personal history rather than telling Obama's story in a new way.
The biggest problem I had with the book is that the chronology of the Democratic Primary is very loose - one minute Wolffe is discussing the Nevada Caucus and the next he's talking about Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania with nary a mention that Obama ran off a consecutive win streak of 11 primaries and caucuses after Super Tuesday. What gets lost in the telling is the fact that Clinton had mathematically lost the nomination, arguably after Obama's win streak and definitely after Texas, and there is little discussion of David Plouffe's delegate strategy. Because of these omissions, Wolffe misses an opportunity to explain to those who did not follow the democratic primary in detail why Clinton's refusal to concede and her campaign tactics after March 2008 upset so many Obama supporters. You will not find the "inside baseball" discussion of delegates, super delegates and such that seemed to dominate the cable news coverage throughout the spring of 2008. The delegate story was badly reported during the election and Wolffe misses an opportunity to set the record straight. I suppose we will have to wait for Plouffe's or Axelrod's book to hear that tale.
Despite these flaws it is definitely worth a read....
Book Review: Our "First Renegade" And How He Got There
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Wolffe's comprehensive, intelligent, critical and even-handed account of the making of a President is a page-turner, even though we all know how it all turns out. One interesting theme explored by Wolffe is the role played in the campaign by the 24/7 media and concomitant 24-hour news cycle. Clearly, to Obama and other candidates, the media was a force to be controlled, rather than merely a disseminator of information. Wolffe depicts the pundits as loose cannons rather than analysts, implying that not the least of Obama's achievements was a successful interruption of the Republican narrative -- swallowed whole by much of the media -- that attempted to depict Obama as an "alien" (one of Wolffe's chapter heading) and reduce complex domestic and foreign policy to simplistic cliches about patriotism and national security.
Barack Obama emerges as a thoughtful, careful, very smart, self-confident individual who planned each stage of his campaign carefully and, despite his prior lack of executive experience, ran his more experienced staff rather than permitting that staff to run him. Wolffe shows Obama as grasping, not merely issues, but also process, a planner and strategist who was deeply involved in the planning and execution of his campaign, including the brilliant Internet campaign that transformed the principles of community organizing into organization on a national scale. The title "Renegade" -- the Secret Service's code name for candidate Obama -- is ironic, in that Obama broke all the rules but, in doing so, "played the game" better than his more experienced rivals. Basketball is Obama's favorite game and a central metaphor in Wolffe's story, which depicts the "renegade" Obama as a "team player" of great creativity and vision.
I am an Obama supporter who continues to be impressed by our new President's ability to handle a myriad of complicated issues with intelligence, judgment and grace. Yet anyone with an interest in the political process, and the role of 21st-century media in that process, will appreciate this book. It is a worthy successor to previous
"Making of the President" texts, a real "insider's" view of the very innovative, successful, Obama campaign.