Duane Campbell
The book Reading Obama may well offer some significant insights into the political viewpoints of President Obama. In addition, it is a prolonged essay concerning how the author sees the political philosophy of pragmatism and a history of how pragmatism has served in the U.S.
There are several interesting issues. Can a scholar describe well the political philosophy of an important leader by reading books by the President and reading the transcripts of his speeches? Is it far too early to be describing the philosophy of Barack Obama after only two years in office?
I found the book delightful in a number of ways. I particularly enjoyed Prof. Kloppenberg’s descriptions of the development of pragmatism as a political philosophy. The book is as much an essay on pragmatism as it is a description of the Obama philosophy. That is, the author is promoting intellectual pragmatism as a preferred philosophy and using the Obama experience as device to describe concrete implementation issues of pragmatism and the ascendance of pragmatism as a philosophy.
Certainly Barack Obama, as described by Kloppenberg, is a significant intellectual. I am uncomfortable with the device of describing a viewpoint held by one or another of Obama’s professors at Harvard and then asserting that Barack Obama learned and adopted this particular position., or the summary of a position taken by a professor in the Harvard Law Review while Obama was editor and assuming that Obama adopted this particular nuanced position. This seems to me over interpretation.
We know from the book that Kloppenberg has great respect for the faculty of the Harvard Law School and the faculty at Occidental College. He assumes that when a professor teaches an idea the students adopt that idea. This could, I assume be investigated. A researcher could look at the distinct ideas taught by some of the leading scholars at Harvard and then look to see if these ideas are clearly taught or professed when Barack Obama was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago. But, I don’t think Kloppenberg has done this research. Instead he finds someone to make a comment that Barack Obama adopted the idea from one of his professors.
Fro me to be more confident of the correlation, I would need to know- for example- what are the philosophies of Barack Obama’s major economic advisors Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, Tim Geithner. If they have diverse philosophies how do we know that Obama is being a pragmatist or is he taking advice from experts in a field? And, I would like to know the philosophies of major allies such as Richard Trumka and major opponents such as Senator Mitch Mc Connel.
Of course , as the author argues, we all learn from our predecessors. After all, this book is about pragmatism which is a philosophy which many have learned from our predecessors William James and John Dewey, among others.
Kloppenberg reports on major intellectual issues that were current as Barack Obama was a graduate student, an editor,and then President of the Harvard Law Review. The significant intellectual history of U.S. letters in a leading law school provided in the book is valuable in its own right. However, the connection to the intellectual history and Obama’s own philosophical positions is tenuous, suggestive not proven. Further, the connection of these theories to actual behavior as a President is even more indirect. There may be direction connections, but it would require self reflection or other direct evidence to demonstrate the connections.
In current major issues such as the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for millionaires it is not clear that Obama’s intellectual pragmatism is at work or is the political analysis of the power of his opposition producing these results. Which, of course, is what pragmatism would instruct, that you need to consider the political terrain and positions of your adversaries.
The book describes the detailed and interesting debates on philosophy, pragmatism, the role of Dewey, John Rawles, Kuhn, and others, critical legal theory, communitarianism, and the several major intellectual debates that were vigorous while Obama was at Harvard, and some of the debates today. Kloppenberg does not the examine a closely related question. An implied thesis of Reading Obama is that the intellectual fervor shaped Barack Obama, and now that he is President, these intellectual debates guide and influence public policy.
Having taught at both an elite university and a second tier public state university for over 35 years, I am less certain that the intellectual dialogues at the elite universities determine, shape, describe, or even matter in the daily life of the great majority of people in the U.S.
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