The packaging of Obama.

• Author: Gray, Kevin Alexander
• Position: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream - Book review

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

By Barack Obama Crown. 384 pages. $25.

My wife, Sandra, warned me, "Don't be hating." Now San (as we call her), who has worked in retail sales selling ladies shoes throughout her working life, is not an overtly political person. She is one of those old-timey, "salt of the earth" types. But when she doesn't like a person, there is usually something wrong with that person. For instance, before it became evident that Al Sharpton's effort in South Carolina was going nowhere fast, she coined the now-popular phrase "scampaign" to refer to the reverend's run. I know it is ill-advised not to take heed of her warning.

With Son's admonition in mind, I tried to table her (and my) Oprahtainted, media-hyped preconception of Barack Obama so that I could read The Audacity of Hope with an open mind and with the same hopeful spirit as the title seeks to portray.

But the book is like those two solid yellow lines on a two-lane mountain road. They're just there in the middle and never ending, with a stop sign as the only relief.

He offers no boldness. Dr. King set out to change the social, economic, and political structures of this country. He described the change as a "third way" beyond capitalism and socialism. King's "third way" is far different than Bill Clinton's "third way," promoted by Obama and all those around Hillary, who tout the Clintons as the second and third coming of Camelot.

The Clinton "third way" is Republican Party politics in slow motion. Under Bill Clinton, U.S. troops weren't trapped in Iraq, but just as many, if not more, Iraqis died as a result of his policies. His destruction of the welfare system, his embrace of capital punishment and other punitive and discriminatory crime policies, his bowing to Wall Street all made him palatable to many Republicans.

The hope in Obama's title is for a mixture of Kennedyism, Reaganism, and Clintonism packaged as the new face of multicultural America. At its core, this is what The Audacity of Hope promotes, instead of any fundamental progressive change.

Nonetheless, it comes as no surprise that The Audacity of Hope is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The book arrives amidst the hype of an upcoming and wide open Presidential race, the collective angst over the country moving in the wrong direction, an economy that working people know isn't as good as they are being told it is, and a war that has washed away--at home and abroad--the country's preexisting false sense of moral superiority. As the line in Ethan and Joel Coen's 2000 movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou, goes, "Everybody's looking for answers."

Yet, does Obama's book provide any real answers? It there anything in it that will help stimulate measurable change? Or is it all just talk, posturing and positioning for personal political goals? Is it an...