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Thinking a lot about the NYT review and the Atlantic excerpt of the Obama book today. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/books/review/barack-obama-a-promised-land.html
At one point Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes Obama as "genetically incapable of being an ideologue" and it's easy to understand her meaning. There is a depth of consideration to his writing and rhetoric that we think of as anti-ideological, open to other perspectives.
But beneath the "conciliatory middle child" style she describes, there is still a strong ideological current to what Obama has to say. It's very clear at the end of the Atlantic piece. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/barack-obama-i-still-believe-america/617073/
This section here, in particular. Obama is a better writer, but the sentiment is almost Thomas Friedman-esque. The world just *is* this way, rather than made this way by political choice and political action.
Global supply chains, social media, instantaneous capital transfers — these things do not just fall out of the sky. They are built, they can be changed. They are not beyond the power of politics. And yet in Obama’s view, it is politics that must adjust to them, not the other way.
