Read Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America for Free Online

of nonfiction. His unusual upbringing fed right-wing conspiracies that he was Muslim, not Christian, and that he was born in Kenya or somewhere else, not in the United States. When Obama chose to tell the story of America, he invariably put himself in the middle of it. When John Kerry asked Obama to give the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, his first instinct was that he would use his own story to deliver the message of unity that he wanted to give that night.
Dreams from My Father
is also a reminder that while he owed a debt to trailblazers before him, he was very much a singular character who made his own way. If he kept his distance from almost everyone, it was because he had learned to rely on himself. His mother may have been the single greatest influence on him, but he had found his own path and his own identity. Though he had a few close friends and he listened to a handful of trusted advisers, his greatest confidence was in himself. I once asked him what was the best advice he had received during the last months of 2006 when he was consulting with close friends and advisers about whether he should run for president. “Well,” he replied, “I would have to say it was advice I gave to myself.”
    Obama also remained politically opaque to many people. Just how liberal was he? Was he the Barack Obama who as a candidate for the U.S. Senate opposed the Iraq War, or the Obama who in 2008 favored escalating the war in Afghanistan? Was he the president who bragged about ending two wars, or the president who ordered a dramatic increase in the use of unmanned aerial drones to hunt down and kill enemies? Was he the president who pushed for the biggest social program since the Great Society (the Affordable Care Act), or the president who made clear his ambivalence about a public option as part of his health care reform? Did his long period of reluctance to embrace same-sex marriage reflect a person genuinely wrestling with a difficult decision, or a politician afraid to say what he really believed? Was he someone willing to take on the toughest of fights for his agenda, or a president too willing to cave in to pressure from Republicans?
    In his first campaign, he presented two faces to the country. The first was the Obama who sounded the call to turn the page on a poisonous chapter in its political history, to move beyond the old quarrels and transcend the politics of polarization. It was that Obama who struck such a chord, starting in 2004 and throughout his presidential campaign. Even Republicans were drawn to him, particularly in those flush days in early 2008. But he was also a candidate whose policy sympathies leaned distinctly toward liberalism, and his Senate voting record was among the most left-leaning in the chamber. He saw a role for government to attack and solve problems, though he managed to shade his proposals enough to leave room for different interpretations as to just where he stood ideologically. He could support a national health care bill but oppose an individual mandate, as he did in his first campaign. This was not an electoral pose. It was a trait evident in Obama much earlier. When the nuclear freeze movement arose while he was a student, he embraced nuclear nonproliferation and negotiations with the Soviets rather than the freeze. His first campaign for president was masterful for never having to square the circle between the aspirations of someone calling for a new politics and the one advocating ideas that might fit comfortably as part of the old liberal politics. In office, the questions persisted: Who was Obama? Was he the transcendent politician who talked about moving beyond red and blue America to find a new consensus, or was he actually a closet liberal with an agenda to extend government’s reach at every opportunity? The most conservative of Republicans believed they knew the answer. They thought he was a socialist. Liberals, however, were far from sure he