July 9, 2008--John & Barack's Summer Reading

Presidents and presidential candidates have been known to tote around books as a way to show the public that they are literate and as a clue to some of the things they are thinking about or what they turn to as a way to alleviate the pressures of high office.

John Kennedy, as a famous example, lost himself in Ian Fleming novels about James Bond, which also should have also been a clue about what he did to relieve tension with the rest of his spare time.

Bill Clinton got himself in trouble when he got caught following JFK’s tension-reduction strategy, but he was a real reader, primarily of history.

George Bush is also a reader. Or so his people claim. Recall that back in 2006 White House aides leaked word that, in spite of how he appears, he’s really a bookworm. And that he and Karl Rove (otherwise known as Bush’s Brain) were in a contest to see who could read more books in a year. This was August and Bush was already ahead 60 to 50!

In fact, his staffers were so eager to talk about his reading habits that, while some were leaking Valerie Plame’s name, others leaked a list of some of the books he had already finished. Mind you this was only August. Here’s a sample. (I swear I’m not making this up.)

Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb)
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine
Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr.
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky
The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
The Stranger by Albert Camus

I especially like his choice of The Stranger. I can’t wait to hear what Bush the existentialist has to say about that one.

Well, our two candidates are also trotting out some books. McCain has been seen with Robert Kagan’s The Return of History and the End of Dreams and Obama with Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. The New York Times which picked this up, noted that Barack Obama’s had a bookmark in his, suggesting that he was doing more than parading around with it. (See article linked below.)

Even a quick look at each of these books suggests who we might want to elect.

Kagan was a close advisor to Bush and was one of the leading academic neo-cons who provided the “intellectual” fodder for invading Iraq. As the world’s only remaining superpower, he wrote earlier, we should use that power to bring down totalitarian states so that democracy can flourish. We know now how that’s working out.

Perhaps, then, his recent The Return of History might be the same kind of recanting of this kind of crusading macho that another Iraq invasion promulgator, Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, offered in his 2006, After the Neo Cons: Where the Right Went Wrong.

Well no; and that’s why McCain’s reading, or waving Kagan’s latest work (he is now also a McCain advisor) is so disturbing. Kagan’s worldview continues to be deeply pessimistic. He still sees the world in Manichean ways with the forces of autocracy (China and Russia) aligned against those states that are democratic; and he calls for the establishment of a League of Democracies to protect themselves and the rest of the world from these bullies. Another Coalition of the Willing? McCain’s interest in Kagan thus provides his version of intellectual cover to justify remaining in Iraq indefinitely.

Sorry, I stand corrected, for just another 100 years.

The Zakaria book, on the other hand, Obama’s bedtime reading, is far from blithely optimistic but it sees the rise of Russia and China as economic superpowers to be a great opportunity for America. Whatever you think of the excesses and unintended consequences of globalization, U.S. businesses have already seized this opportunity. He asserts that America also has much to gain because of the power of our higher education system (“America’s best industry” according to him) and technologies; while immigration, which many of the right demagogue, gives us other decisive advantages.

While Kagan fears global competition, Zakaria is concerned about how “we have managed to spook ourselves in a time of worldwide peace and prosperity.” Among other things, we fear Islam, rogue nations, foreign companies, immigrants, and international organizations. Thus he sees our need to avoid the trap of “grand crusades” and reap the benefits that will accrue by figuring out how to compromise appropriately and conduct “à la carte multilateralism.”

Keep reading Barack.