Could a 30-year-old document help save democracy today?
 | By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
When I first reached out to the historian Tim Shenk in July to ask if he'd be interested in writing for Opinion, he responded with the words every editor longs to hear: He had a "juicy scoop" to share. |
While researching his forthcoming book "Realigners," Tim had tracked down an unpublished manuscript Barack Obama wrote with a friend while they were students at Harvard Law. For roughly 30 years it had been mostly overlooked, but as Tim began to turn the pages he realized it was more than just an artifact. Boldly argued and unsparingly critical, this remarkable document seemed full of the kind of searing advice that might help Democrats out of their present political quagmire. |
"You could say that Barack Obama was a Bernie bro ahead of his time," Tim said in one of the first emails he sent me, "except that he was building on a rich tradition of Black political thought that has, unfortunately, been almost forgotten today." |
"Transformative Politics" — the working title Obama and his friend and co-writer, the former economics professor Robert Fisher, gave their book — turned out not to be a master plan that Obama followed to the letter as president. But in a guest essay published today, Tim frames it as the best window we have into Obama's uncensored thoughts about American democracy at the start of his career, something that casts his subsequent evolution in a different light. |
The manuscript is also a pre-emptive rebuttal, Tim argues, to what he believes are some of the bad habits the left has fallen into over the last decade. "I see it as a program for a kind of left-wing popularism that combines the desire for big structural change with a bracing assessment of electoral reality — and, still, an idealistic faith in what American democracy might achieve," he told me in one of our early exchanges. "It's simultaneously a fascinating piece of intellectual history, a helpful way of thinking about the origins of our problems today and (I think) a wise strategy for navigating the struggle ahead — even if Obama himself might no longer agree." |
As an editor working on Opinion's politics coverage, I often find myself searching for pieces that offer a dose of cautious optimism to cut through the gloom and doom we confront every day in the news. Tim's essay offers stern warnings for the Democrats — as well as an unflinching view of the man Obama would become — but also charts a path forward, beyond our current and seemingly inescapable national predicament. |
As you read the essay and scroll through the excerpts we've collected from Fisher and Obama's original outline for their book, their scribbles still visible all over the pages, you can catch glimpses of the optimism Obama offered when he first burst onto the national scene, describing himself as "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too." Obama may not have intended for this youthful manifesto to see the light of day. But as our democracy hurtles toward what could be a point of no return, its prescriptions are more relevant today than they were 30 years ago. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
| Exclusive for Subscribers | | |
| |  | Sign up for the Frank Bruni newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Reflections on the mess (and magic) of politics and life. Get it in your inbox |
| | |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
Contact us If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment