A Good Man in Politics

I'm halfway through, reading "The Audacity of Hope" by the dashing American Democrat politician cum aspiring President, Barack Obama.

I'm not very fond of the way he writes, but I find myself agreeing to almost all of what he said in the book, so far.

Obama seems to have that one quality that most politicians lack, anywhere in the world - intellectual integrity.

He refuses to cave in to the temptation of winning arguments by virtue of one-sided arguments or a partisan stand, preferring instead to get to the root of the problem and taking a bipartisan approach, by acknowledging all sides of the problem and even considering possible solutions, offered by people who are politically opposed to oneself.

And he values the virtue of walking the talk and to avoid from diluting one's one own opinion and stand on issues, despite the risk to the position that one holds. I think that is one of the most necessary and redeeming features of a good statesman - to be consistent and persistent, to lead and to solve, when others would only prefer to argue.

And that makes him a rare animal in a world, where political and national leaders, have held on to toeing the party line and alignment, defending its stand and virtues, even when its stand is wrong or mistaken and their values have become irrelevant, outdated and quite possibly, corrosive to the nation's future development.

In some parts of the book, one begins to realize that despite America and Malaysia being 2 vastly different countries, at different stages of maturity - some of thepublic and national issues we're grappling with are similar.



I'd just like to share with all of you a few passages from "The Audacity of Hope":

"Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn't enough. After all, talk is cheap; like any value, empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organizer back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighbourhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy and money.

Those are thetrue tests of what we value, I'd tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves.

If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should truly ask ourselves if whether we truly believe them at all"

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"It's not simply a gap that exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the reality that we witness everyday. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America's birth.

Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized and protests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment.

No, what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics - the ease which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.

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"I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate and demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose.

Whenever we dumb down our political debate, we lose.

For it's preceisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country.

It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can only have big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine".

It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off politics."

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"The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns and the amplification of conflict by the media, all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion.

Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or political operatives - professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values - indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith and perhaps, are bad people."

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"Sometimes, we need both cultural transformation and government action - a change in values and a change in policy - to promote the kind of society we want.

The state of our inner city schools is a case in point. All the money in the world won't boost student achievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard work and delayed gratification.

But when we as a society, pretend that poor children will fulfill their potential in dilapidated, unsafe schools with outdated equipment and teachers who aren't trained in the subjects they teach - we are perpetrating a lie to these children and on ourselves. We are betraying our values".

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"Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture for the better - or for the worse."

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Personally, I don't think that Obama would make it in his bid to be the Democrat's choice for Presidential candidate (my money's still on Hillary Clinton - bringing with it a 2nd era of "Clintonship" in the White House).

But I'll be honest - I would love to see more of the likes of him in Washington and perhaps, for him to be the first non-Caucasian American President, one day.

America badly the needs the wisdom and guidance of a centrist-leaning leader that's willing to take the hard decisions to not only make it more politically sensible and economically more competitive and equitable, but also far more internationally humane in its approach and socially cohesive as a nation.

Having said that, where are our very own Obamas in Malaysia?