The Bridge

Davd Remnick, “The Bridge: The Life & Rise of Barack Obama”, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, 586 Pages

This book is a biography of Barack Obama derived from extensive on-the-record interviews, including interviews with Obama. It is an especially useful and necessary book to read if, like myself, you have not read either of Obamas’ books: The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father. One glaring missing component of the book is his wife, Michelle. Very little is said about her; apparently she would not be interviewed by the author. The journey covers Obama’s childhood, an absent Father (living in Kenya with other wives), remarkable white grandparents (who raise him), his education ending with his Harvard Law school graduation, his community organizer position in Chicago, then state senator, U.S. senator, and now President. Like him, or not, he is truly a self-made man.

My Notes:

Pg. 175: Obama may have joined Reverend Wright’s Trinity Church as he saw it as a platform to establish himself should he ever be positioned to run for mayor of Chicago. Mayor or Governor were his goals.

Pg. 177: On November 25, 1987, Harold Washington died, one year after his re-election.

Pg. 207: In 1990 Obama became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. This was a sure stepping stone to a clerkship at the Supreme Court—which Obama chose not to pursue.

Pg. 347: Senator Obama opposed the Iraq war as a “dumb war.” ‘I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.’

Pg. 480: Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, made unmistakable, if implicit, racial appeals during their campaigns. On August 3, 1980, Reagan launched his general election campaign with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil-rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were murdered by white supremacists during the 1964 voter-registration drives. By delivering a speech in Philadelphia emphasizing his support of ‘state’s rights,’ Reagan was making, at best, an insensitive and knowing appeal to George Wallace Democrats—an attempt to broaden what Nixon called the ‘Southern strategy.’ Of course Bush is remembered for his Willie Horton ads.

Pg. 493: On January 3, 2008, Obama won the Iowa caucuses in commanding fashion. Hillary Clinton came in third behind John Edwards. This ensured Obama’s legitimacy in the campaign—he could win white votes.

Pg. 555: Obama won the election with fifty-three percent of the popular vote to McCain’s forty-six percent. He won by more than nine and a half million votes and took three hundred and sixty-five electoral votes of a total of five hundred and thirty-eight. Turnout was the highest since 1968. African-American turnout rose a full two percent and was crucial to Obama in winning unlikely states like North Carolina and Virginia. Obama won every region of the country by double digits except the South, where McCain led by nine points. Nationally, Obama did not win the white vote—McCain won it fifty-five percent to forty-three—but the country was becoming increasingly diverse and non-white.