A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

The Audacity of Hope is nowhere near as good a book as Dreams From My Father was--in large part because it is written much less in Barack Obama's voice and much more in the voice of the ghostwriter Obama employed, a sharp contrast to Obama's first book. But the other part stems from the fact that Obama portrayed this latter book as offering "a new kind of politics" and then allowed the book to lapse into Democratic cant.

That he did so does not come as much of a surprise; Obama warns us at the very beginning of his book that he won't try to hide the fact that he is a Democrat. Fair enough and he shouldn't. But it would be a whole lot easier to respect the book if Obama came out and said that he was going to write something akin to an answer to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative; a clear, blatant, (dare I write it?) partisan call to arms. Instead, Obama tells us that he will try to transcend politics while remaining true to his Democratic roots. He pulls off the second goal just fine but the first one? Not so much.

Naturally, given the fact that I am located to Obama's right on the political spectrum, I disagree with a whole host of his arguments and prescriptions. But there are other things that annoy as well. When it comes to the matter of Constitutional interpretation, Obama poses the argument as one between adherents of the "Living Constitution" method of interpretation and adherents of "strict constructionism" with Justice Scalia as the patron saint of the latter school. Only problem is that Justice Scalia is not a strict constructionist. He is an originalist and an adherent of the original public meaning school of jurisprudence. You would expect a former Constitutional Law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School to know that. Scalia, in fact, has been dismissive of strict constructionism, stating that he is "not a strict constructionist, and no-one ought to be" and that strict constructionism is "a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute." As part of his argument, Obama states that the "original understanding" (here, we see that Obama is confusing strict constructionism--which he said is the school of jurisprudence that Scalia belongs to--with the doctrine of original intent, which is closer to the school to which Scalia belongs, but still no cigar) of the Fourteenth Amendment would allow for sex discrimination and possibly racial segregation. To which I respond with "huh?" Consider the relevant language of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Original public meaning jurisprudence can be used to point out that "citizens" are the subject of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the commonly accepted meaning of the word "citizens" at the time of the enactment of the Amendment is not restricted by either racial or gender classifications. Thus, if African-Americans and women are considered "citizens" of the United States--and they were and are--then there is nothing in the doctrine of original public meaning jurisprudence that would prevent the rights ensured under the Fourteenth Amendment to be extended to African-Americans and/or women. As racial segregation and sexual discrimination certainly "abridge[d] the privileges or immunities" of African-American and female citizens of the United States in a whole host of ways and circumstances, original public meaning jurisprudence is a help, not a hindrance to the realization of rights under the Amendment.

And of course, there are mistakes that are just silly. Obama tells us that we could not hope to discern the Founders "original intentions" since "the intentions of Jefferson were never those of Hamilton." First of all, again, Obama uses the terms "original intent" and "strict construction" interchangeably, even though they mean entirely different things (again, this is really weird for a supposedly acclaimed Constitutional Law lecturer from the University of Chicago Law School). Secondly, to the extent that original intent is considered a valid school of interpretation, the success or validity of original intent jurisprudence is not dependent on unanimity amongst the Founders in terms of their thinking on Constitutional issues. And finally, let's get our history straight. Jefferson's thinking on the Constitution matters not a whit because Jefferson was never a Framer of the Constitution. When the Constitution was being drawn up, Jefferson was out of the country, serving as America's Ambassador to France. He had nothing to do with the construction of the Constitution.

When it comes to a discussion of foreign policy, Obama gives credit on a few fronts to the work done by Ronald Reagan, but he also criticizes policies like the invasion of "tiny, hapless Grenada." The degree of Cuban involvement in Grenada concerned Obama not a whit and he makes no mention of it in his book. We get the traditional accusations that the Bush Administration "shaded" intelligence on Iraq, even though the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission found otherwise. Obama criticizes the Bush Administration for having sought a vote in Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, forgetting that Congressional Democrats demanded this very step. And so it goes.

The book is just a disappointment. I suppose that if you take Obama's side in the Presidential race, you will like The Audacity of Hope better than I did. But even so, can't you just listen to the speeches for free? They are pretty much the same thing, after all.