HILARIOUS VIDEO: OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE

With a hat tip to Silverfiddle:


Whether you're a "birther" or not, you should admit that the above video shows up Obama supporters for what they are. Heh.

How Do We Respond to Obama?

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
April 21, 2011

April2011http://www.blackcommentator.com/423/423_ml_bring_obama_home.php

Rather than dwell on the question of whether we can

bring Obama home, whether he ever was home, etc., I

want to refocus on this question of how to respond to

him, particularly as we start to think about 2012.

First, what do we now say about 2008? Contrary to those

who have thrown up their hands and feel betrayed by

what the Obama administration has not done, I start in

a different place. I continue to assert that Obama was

knowable in 2008. He was a charismatic, smart candidate

who made the right call on the Iraq War and stepped out

on the issue when it was necessary. He was also, as I

said at the time, someone who could appear to be

different things to different people. The problem was

that too many of his supporters saw what they wanted to

see rather than what existed.

What existed? Well, from the beginning he was a

corporate candidate. We knew that. The question was not

whether he was one but the extent to which his views

could be shifted in order to take progressive, non-

corporate stands. Second, he was a candidate who was

going to avoid race as you or I would avoid a plague

ship. He went out of his way to prove that he was not

an `angry black man' and that race was not going to be

an issue that he would harp on. Third, he was clear

that he wanted to change the image of the USA around

the world, but it was not clear to what extent he

wanted to change the substance of the relationship of

the USA to the rest of the world.

Raising these and other issues in 2008 was exceedingly

difficult. Raising concerns regarding Obama and his

views in 2008, even when one offered critical support

to the campaign (as did I), was often met with

accusations of throwing a wet towel on a fire, and

other such metaphors. Of course, there were those who

denounced Obama all the way, but they offered very

little as an alternative, with the exception of what we

must frankly characterize as symbolic political action.

What these fierce critics failed to address was how to

account for and speak with the masses of people from

various social movements who were gravitating toward

Obama's campaign, individuals and groups looking to

create something very different in the USA (and around

the world). In fact, it was because of these masses of

people, incorrectly described as a "movement" by some

but certainly an energized base, and the potential of

that base to become a transformative force, that it was

correct to critically support the Obama campaign,

despite the limitations of the campaign and the

candidate.

What did we learn? We learned immediately that it was a

mistake to give any elected official, but particularly

someone reflecting more `center' politics, a honeymoon.

Virtually every social movement and organization

stepped back in the interest of providing Obama space.

It did not work. There was space, alright, but the

political Right seized it.

We also should have learned that it is not about the

`man' but it is about the administration. We, African

Americans, tend to focus too much on Obama-the-man. We

like his speeches. He is smart and seems to have a

great family. He sounds so sincere. He understands and

appreciates our culture. That is all well and good, but

Obama-the-man is not as important as Obama-the-

administration. This became all too clear during the

Honduras coup in 2009. A democratically elected

government was overthrown in a coup. Obama initially

condemned this but then did nothing to unseat the `coup

people' (a term made famous by President George H.W.

Bush in 1991, describing those who overthrew President

Gorbachov in the then Soviet Union). Not only that, his

administration took steps to keep the democratically

elected president out of office and came up with a so-

called compromise that resulted in the forces of the

wealthy elite returning to power. In that sense, it

does not matter whether we like Obama as a person; it

is a matter of what we say about the policies of his

administration.

Of course, we had a more recent example of this when no

one from the administration could quite explain why the

return of Haitian President Aristide from South Africa

was being opposed by the US government. Does Obama like

or hate Aristide? It does not matter; what matters are

the actions of the Obama administration.

What should we do? First, we have to focus on policies

rather than intent. Those who uncritically supported

Obama in 2008 should not feel ashamed but neither

should they now flip into despair or abstentionism. We

have to keep in mind that this administration, as all

administrations, is affected by pressure. This

administration SEEMS to be more affected by pressure

from the political Right than pressure from

progressives and those on the Left but that is largely

because the left and progressives have failed to offer

sustained pressure on the administration. At each

moment that many left and progressives stand up to the

administration, they are more often than not met with

bared teeth and a growl, which then results in silence

on our part. The political Right understands that

pressure is not about barking. It is about biting.

So, in this sense, it is not about bringing Obama home.

It is about pressuring him to do not only what he has

promised but to go beyond what he has promised. This

will not come about through email exchanges or social

media, but it will come about through building mass

pressure. What could this look like?

    1. Forget running a candidate against Obama in

    2012. That would be a sure way to alienate much of

    his black and Latin base. Instead, there needs to

    be a progressive strategy focused on Congressional

    races. That means identifying key races to run

    genuine progressive candidates against conservative

    Democrats and/or Republicans.

    2.  We need to build an electoral organization

    that can run such candidates. There are examples of

    these around the country but we need to expand,

    ultimately building something at the national level

    that rivals the vision of the National Rainbow

    Coalition from the late 1980s. It needs to be an

    organization that has a mass base and can run

    candidates inside and outside the Democratic Party.

    3.  We desperately need mass action. Wisconsin was

    wonderful for many reasons but one important one

    was the sustained presence in the capitol. A

    protest movement focused on power needs to be

    prepared to break the law, not through the actions

    of a few individuals, but much as happened in

    Wisconsin, as well as in the Civil Rights movement,

    with masses of people making a situation untenable.

    But we have to also develop key strategic targets

    for our actions where we are clear on what we want

    them to do. This will largely happen at the local

    level at first, but it can also happen at the

    national level, such as through selective boycotts.

    4. We have to think and act globally and locally.

    We must link with social movements around the world

    challenging US foreign policy, providing such

    movements with whatever level of support we can. We

    cannot allow more Honduras coup situations, and we

    have to make it clear that US policy in Afghanistan

    is a disaster.

None of these "to dos" had Obama's name on them. That

is because we are not simply confronting or attempting

to influence an individual. We are up against an empire

and the spokesperson for that empire happens to be

someone in whom many people placed excessive hope. The

hope should have rested with the millions who supported

him and were seeking a better day. Those are the people

upon whom we need to focus so that we can go beyond the

Obama moment and move in a progressive direction.

---

 Originally published on 

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill

Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute

for Policy Studies, the immediate past president

ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of Solidarity

Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path

toward Social Justice(University of California Press),

Barack Obama on the debt- Facebook

On Facebook today.

  Mark Zukenber: So my question to kind of start off is:  What specifically do you think we should do, and what specifically do you think we can cut in order to make this all add up?

     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me, first of all, Mark, share with you sort of the nature of the problem, because I think a lot of folks understand that it’s a problem but aren’t sure how it came about.

     In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, we not only had a balanced budget but we actually had a surplus.  And that was in part because of some tough decisions that had been made by President Clinton, Republican Congresses, Democratic Congresses, and President George H.W. Bush.  And what they had said was let’s make sure that we’re spending wisely on the things that matter; let’s spend less on things that don’t matter; and let’s make sure that we’re living within our means, that we’re taking in enough revenue to pay for some of these basic obligations.

     What happened then was we went through 10 years where we forgot what had created the surplus in the first place.  So we had a massive tax cut that wasn’t offset by cuts in spending.  We had two wars that weren’t paid for.  And this was the first time in history where we had gone to war and not asked for additional sacrifice from American citizens.  We had a huge prescription drug plan that wasn’t paid for. 

And so by the time I started office we already had about a trillion-dollar annual deficit and we had massive accumulated debt with interest payments to boot.  Then you have this huge recession.  And so what happens is less revenue is coming in -- because company sales are lower, individuals are making less money -- at the same time there’s more need out there.  So we’re having to help states and we’re having to help local governments. 

And that -- a lot of what the recovery was about was us making sure that the economy didn’t tilt over into a depression by making sure that teachers weren’t laid off and firefighters weren’t laid off, and there was still construction for roads and so forth -- all of which was expensive.  I mean, that added about another trillion dollars worth of debt.

So now what we’ve got is a situation not only do we have this accumulated debt, but the baby boomers are just now starting to retire.  And what’s scary is not only that the baby boomers are retiring at a greater rate, which means they're making greater demands on Social Security, but primarily Medicare and Medicaid, but health care costs go up a lot faster than inflation and older populations use more health care costs.  You put that all together, and we have an unsustainable situation. 

So right now we face a critical time where we’re going to have to make some decisions how do we bring down the debt in the short term, and how do we bring down the debt over the long term.

     In the short term, Democrats and Republicans now agree we’ve got to reduce the debt by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years.  And I know that sounds like a lot of money -- it is.  But it’s doable if we do it in a balanced way.

     What I proposed was that about $2 trillion over 10 to 12 years is reduction in spending.  Government wastes, just like every other major institution does, and so there are things that we do that we can afford not to do.  Now, there are some things that I’d like to do, are fun to do, but we just can’t afford them right now.

     So we’ve made cuts in every area.  A good example is Pentagon spending, where Congress oftentimes stuffs weapons systems in the Pentagon budget that the Pentagon itself says we don’t need.  But special interests and constituencies helped to bloat the Pentagon budget.  So we’ve already reduced the Pentagon budget by about $400 billion.  We think we can do about another $400 billion.

     So we’ve got to look at spending both on non-security issues as well as defense spending.  And then what we’ve said is let’s take another trillion of that that we raise through a reform in the tax system that allows people like me -- and, frankly, you, Mark -- for paying a little more in taxes.  (Laughter.) 

     MR. ZUCKERBERG:  I’m cool with that.

     THE PRESIDENT:  I know you’re okay with that.  (Laughter.)  Keep in mind, what we’re talking about is going back to the rates that existed when Bill Clinton was President.  Now, a lot of you were -- (laughter) -- I’m trying to say this delicately -- still in diapers at that time.  (Laughter.)  But for those of you who recall, the economy was booming, and wealthy people were getting wealthier.  There wasn’t a problem at that time.  If we go back to those rates alone, that by itself would do a lot in terms of us reducing our overall spending.  And if we can get a trillion dollars on the revenue side, $2 trillion in cutting spending, we can still make investments in basic research.

We can still invest in something we call ARPA-E, which is like DARPA except just focused on energy, so that we can figure out what are the next breakthrough technologies that can help us reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
    
     We can still make investments in education, so we’ve already expanded the Pell Grant program so that more young people can go to college.  We’re investing more in STEM education -- math and science and technology education.  We can still make those investments.  We can still rebuild our roads and our bridges, and invest in high-speed rail, and invest in the next generation of broadband and wireless, and make sure everybody has access to the Internet.  We can do all those things while still bringing down the deficit medium term.

     Now, there’s one last component of this -- and I know this is a long answer but I wanted to make sure everybody had the basic foundations for it.  Even if we get this $4 trillion, we do still have a long-term problem with Medicare and Medicaid, because health care costs, the inflation goes up so much faster than wages and salaries.  And this is where there’s another big philosophical debate with the Republicans, because what I’ve said is the best way for us to change it is to build on the health reform we had last year and start getting a better bang for our health care dollar. 

Cornel West on Barack Obama and Wall Street

What Obama said about testing

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-univision-town-hall

Q My name is Lisa and I'm going to attend my last year here at Bell Multicultural High School. Students go through a lot of tests. Could you reduce the amount of tests? For example, we found a student passes a test, he shouldn’t take the same test next year.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think probably what you're referring to are standardized tests -- because if you're just talking about your math or your science or your English test, tough luck -- (laughter) -- you’ve got to keep on taking those tests, because that's part of the way that teachers are going to know whether you're making progress and whether you understand the subject matter.
What is true, though, is, is that we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at. Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn’t a high-stakes test. It wasn’t a test where they had to panic. I mean, they didn’t even really know that they were going to take it ahead of time. They didn’t study for it, they just went ahead and took it. And it was a tool to diagnose where they were strong, where they were weak, and what the teachers needed to emphasize.

Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let’s find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let’s apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let’s figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let’s make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well.
Because there are other criteria: What’s the attendance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects? There are other ways of us measuring whether students are doing well or not.
So what I want to do is -- one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring.
So, now, I still want you to know, though, you're going to have to take some tests, man. (Laughter.) So you're not going to get completely out of that. All right? (Applause.)

At the Town Hall on Education on March 28. Hosted by Univision

Dear President Obama

(Letter from a teacher) 
I mean this with all respect. I’m on my knees here, and there’s a knife in my back, and the prints on it kinda match yours. I think you don’t get it.

Your Race to the Top is killing the wrong guys. You’re hitting the good guys with friendly fire. I’m teaching in a barrio in California. I had 32 kids in my class last year. I love them to tears. They’re 5th graders. That means they’re 10 years old, mostly. Six of them were 11 because they were retained. Five more were in special education, and two more should have been. I stopped using the word “parents” with my kids because so many of them don’t have them. Amanda’s mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother. (A thousand blessings on him.) Seven kids live with their “Grams,” six with their dads. A few rotate between parents. So “parents” is out as a descriptor.

Here’s the kicker: Fifty percent of my students have set foot in a jail or prison to visit a family member.

Do you and your secretary of education, Arne Duncan, understand the significance of that? I’m afraid not. It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty. We don’t teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities. It’s called the ZIP Code Quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high scores; if they live in a ZIP code that’s entombed with poverty, guess how they do?


We also have massive teacher turnover at my school. Now, we have no money. We haven’t had an art or music teacher in 10 years. We have a nurse twice a week. And because of the No Child Left Behind Act, struggling public schools like mine are held to impossible standards and punished brutally when they don’t meet them. Did you know that 100 percent of our students have to be on grade level, or else we could face oversight by an outside agency? That’s like saying you have to achieve 100 percent of your policy objectives every year.

It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty.

You lived in Indonesia, so you know what conditions are like in the rest of the world. President Obama, I swear that conditions in my school are akin to those in the third world. We had a test when I taught in the Peace Corps. We had to describe a glass filled to the middle. (We were supposed to say it was half full.) Too many of my kids don’t even have the glass!

Next, gangs. Gangs eat my kids, their parents, and the neighborhood. One of my former students stuffed an AK47 down his pants at a local bank and was shot dead by the police. Another one of my favorites has been incarcerated since he was 13. He’ll be 27 in November. I’ve been writing to him for 10 years and visiting him in the maximum-security section of Salinas Valley State Prison.

Do you get that it’s tough here? Charter schools and voucher schools aren’t the solution. They are an excuse not to fix the real issues. You promised us so much. And you want to give us merit pay? Anyway, I think we really need to talk. Oh, and can you pull the knife out while you’re standing behind me? It really hurts.

Sincerely yours,

Paul Karrer
Fifth grade teacher at Castroville Elementary School
North Monterey County, CA
reprinted with permission

The Battle in Wisconsin and Rage Among Teachers

 Diane Ravitch 

Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.

Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.

Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.

The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.

The much-publicized film "Waiting for Superman" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.

Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked.

Diane Ravitch.

Thanks to a reader for suggesting this post. 

Obama's faulty education logic

Obama’s faulty education logic: What he said and failed to say
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/poverty/obamas-stran-faulty-educationge.html?wprss=answer-sheet
By Valerie Strauss 

Someone should have told President Obama that there were important contradictions in the education portion of his State of the Union address before he delivered it to Congress.
First, Obama rightly said that a child’s education starts at home:
“It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done.”
Then why is his administration insisting in pushing policies that evaluate and pay teachers based solely on how well they raise the test scores of their children? How can teachers be solely responsible for what happens to a child outside of school?
Obama spoke about the $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition launched by his Education Department. 
“Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation. For less than one percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning.“
Well, not actually.

For one thing, if parent involvement were so important to the administration, you would think it would have been part of “the most meaningful reform” in a generation. It wasn’t.
And it is far too early to say whether states have really raised their standards for teaching and learning or whether they have simply changed them. Declaring victory before victory is actually at hand is generally a bad idea.
Obama also talked about the importance of local control of education.
“You see, we know what’s possible for our children when reform isn’t just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.”
Really?
The federal government has been telling states and local districts what to do for nearly a decade, ever since No Child Left Behind was passed by president George W. Bush’s administration. Race to the Top just continued that pattern. 
Obama also talked about the importance of teachers.
“Let’s also remember that after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South Korea, teachers are known as 'nation builders.' Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect. We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones.”
Obama apparently doesn’t know that many public school teachers in the United States believe his administration is helping to demonize them. And the South Korean public school system isn’t exactly the model Americans would be happy emulating. 
From an article in Asia Times Online:
"What the stats don’t tell is how drearily authoritarian classes often are. Flair and creativity are rarely rewarded. Instead, teachers drum into students a ton of stuff they must learn by rote so as to jump through hoops leading up to the all-important university entrance examination."
And then there was the subject that Obama did not talk about: the real reason that so many American public schools are troubled. It's poverty.
(Let me be clear: No, I am not saying that we don’t have a lot of lousy teachers who shouldn’t be in classrooms. We have too many, and they should be fired after a fair evaluation process. And I’m not saying that some great teachers don’t help lift poor kids into another world. But they are the exceptions, and as I’ve said before, exceptions don’t make great policy.)
The United States has a child poverty rate of 21 percent. That’s nearly 15 million children who live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, now pegged at $22,050 a year for a family of four. 
We can pretend all we want that great teachers can overcome the effects of poverty, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, bad eyesight, a lack of early exposure to books. But pretending won’t make it so.
I wish Obama had said that.

State of the Union- A change in perspective

State of the Union : a change in perspective

I found the overall frame of President Obama’s State of the Union speech  most interesting, the U.S. economy needs to grow to catch up with other countries.  “We need to Out-Innovate, Out Educate, and Out-Build  the rest of the world,” or  our own standard of living will continue to decline.

This speech accepts the end of U.S. economic domination of the world economy a perspective made clear in the world wide financial crisis of 2007/2009.  The U.S. based corporations need to invest and the U.S. government needs to invest in crating a new future.

This change in perspective is not great, but it is realistic.

The  promise  of America should be a good job for all,  the opportunity to have  a rewarding career, and the chance for a life that is more than simply the workplace.  The austerity paradigm underlying the tax and budget cut mania is the enemy of human progress.  It does not promote good jobs, rewarding   careers, nor a fulfilling life.

And, this from the N.Y.Times

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

By SEWELL CHAN

WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry. [Chaired by Sacramentan Phil Angelides]

The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.

“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.”

While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.

Responding to The State of the Union

In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy Is Unearthed

Duane Campbell

         The book Reading Obama may well offer some significant insights into the political viewpoints of President Obama.   In addition, it is a prolonged essay concerning how the author sees the political philosophy of pragmatism and a history of how pragmatism has served in the U.S.

         There are several interesting issues.  Can a scholar describe well the political philosophy of an important leader by reading books by the President and reading the transcripts of his speeches?   Is it far too early to be describing the philosophy of Barack Obama after only two years in office?

            I found the book delightful in a number of ways.  I particularly enjoyed Prof. Kloppenberg’s descriptions of the development of pragmatism as a political philosophy.    The book is as much an essay on pragmatism as it is a description of the Obama philosophy.  That is, the author is promoting intellectual pragmatism as a preferred philosophy and using the Obama experience as device to describe concrete implementation issues of pragmatism and the ascendance of pragmatism as a philosophy.

            Certainly Barack Obama, as described by Kloppenberg, is a significant intellectual.  I am uncomfortable with the device of describing a viewpoint held by one or another of Obama’s professors at Harvard and then asserting that Barack Obama learned and adopted this particular position., or the summary of a position taken by a professor in the Harvard Law Review while Obama was editor and assuming that Obama adopted this particular nuanced position.   This seems to me over interpretation. 

            We know from the book that Kloppenberg has great respect for the faculty of the Harvard Law School and the faculty at Occidental College.  He assumes that when a professor teaches an idea the students adopt that idea.   This could, I assume be investigated.  A researcher could look at the distinct ideas taught by some of the leading scholars at Harvard and then look to see if these ideas are clearly taught or professed when Barack Obama was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago.  But, I don’t think Kloppenberg has done this research.   Instead he finds someone to make a comment that Barack Obama adopted the idea from one of his professors.

            Fro me to be more  confident of the correlation, I would need to know- for example- what are the philosophies of Barack Obama’s major economic advisors Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, Tim Geithner.  If they have diverse philosophies how do we know that Obama is being a pragmatist or is he taking advice from experts in a field?  And, I would like to know the philosophies of major allies such as Richard Trumka and major opponents such as Senator Mitch Mc Connel. 

            Of course , as the author argues, we all learn from our predecessors.  After all, this book is about pragmatism which is a philosophy which many have learned from our predecessors  William James and John Dewey, among others.

            Kloppenberg reports on major intellectual issues that were current as Barack Obama was a graduate student, an editor,and then President  of the Harvard Law Review.  The  significant intellectual history of U.S. letters  in a leading law school provided in  the book is valuable in its own right. However, the connection to the intellectual history and Obama’s own philosophical positions is tenuous, suggestive  not proven.  Further, the connection of these theories to actual behavior as a President is even more indirect.  There may be direction connections, but it would require self reflection or other direct evidence to demonstrate the connections.

             In current major issues such as the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for millionaires  it is not clear that Obama’s intellectual pragmatism is at work or is the political analysis of the power of his opposition producing these results.  Which, of course, is what pragmatism would instruct, that you need to consider the political terrain and positions of your adversaries.

            The  book describes the detailed and interesting debates on philosophy, pragmatism,  the role of  Dewey,  John Rawles,  Kuhn, and others, critical legal theory, communitarianism,  and the several major intellectual debates that were vigorous while Obama was at Harvard, and some of the debates today.  Kloppenberg does not  the examine a closely related question. An implied thesis of Reading Obama is that the intellectual fervor shaped Barack Obama, and now that he is President, these intellectual debates guide and influence public policy. 

 Having taught at both an elite university and a second tier public state university for over 35 years,  I am less certain that  the intellectual dialogues  at the elite universities determine, shape, describe, or even matter in the daily life of  the great majority of people in the U.S.

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