The Audacity of Hope

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Spanish and be the better for it. Cristina will learn about Rosa Parks and understand thatthe life of a black seamstress speaks to her own. The issues my girls and Cristinaconfront may lack the stark moral clarity of a segregated bus, but in one form or anothertheir generation will surely be tested—just as Mrs. Parks was tested and the FreedomRiders were tested, just as we are all tested—by those voices that would divide us andhave us turn on each other.And when they are tested in that way, I hope Cristina and my daughters will have allread about the history of this country and will recognize they have been givensomething precious.America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.
Chapter EightThe World Beyond Our BordersINDONESIA IS A nation of islands—more than seventeen thousand in all, spreadalong the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Australia and theSouth China Sea. Most Indonesians are of Malay stock and live on the larger islands ofJava, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. On the far eastern islands like Ambonand the Indonesian portion of New Guinea the people are, in varying degrees, ofMelanesian ancestry. Indonesia’s climate is tropical, and its rain forests were onceteeming with exotic species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Today, those rainforests are rapidly dwindling, victim to logging, mining, and the cultivation of rice, tea,coffee, and palm oil. Deprived of their natural habitat, orangutans are now anendangered species; no more than a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.With more than 240 million people, Indonesia’s population ranks fourth in the world,behind China, India, and the United States. More than seven hundred ethnic groupsreside within the country’s borders, and more than 742 languages are spoken there.Almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s population practice Islam, making it the world’slargest Muslim nation. Indonesia is OPEC’s only Asian member, although as aconsequence of aging infrastructure, depleted reserves, and high domestic consumptionit is now a net importer of crude oil. The national language is Bahasa Indonesia. Thecapital is Jakarta. The currency is the rupiah.Most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map.This fact is puzzling to Indonesians, since for the past sixty years the fate of their nationhas been directly tied to U.S. foreign policy. Ruled by a succession of sultanates andoften-splintering kingdoms for most of its history, the archipelago became a Dutchcolony—the Dutch East Indies—in the 1600s, a status that would last for more thanthree centuries. But in the lead-up to World War II, the Dutch East Indies’ ample oilreserves became a prime target of Japanese expansion; having thrown its lot in with theAxis powers and facing a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, Japan needed fuel for its militaryand industry. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan moved swiftly to take over theDutch colony, an occupation that would last for the duration of the war.With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a budding Indonesian nationalist movementdeclared the country’s independence. The Dutch had other ideas, and attempted toreclaim their former territory. Four bloody years of war ensued. Eventually the Dutchbowed to mounting international pressure (the U.S. government, already concerned withthe spread of communism under the banner of anticolonialism, threatened theNetherlands with a cutoff of Marshall Plan funds) and recognized Indonesia’ssovereignty. The principal leader of the independence movement, a charismatic,flamboyant figure named Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president.Sukarno proved to be a major disappointment to Washington. Along with Nehru ofIndia and Nasser of Egypt, he helped found the nonaligned movement, an effort bynations newly liberated from colonial rule to navigate an independent path between theWest and the Soviet bloc. Indonesia’s Communist Party, although never formally in
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ContentsTitle PageDedicationPrologu
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my marriage, all of which, statisti
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Mostly, though, I just traveled, of
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pages provide a manifesto for actio
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Chapter OneRepublicans and Democrat
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Bork nomination and Willie Horton,
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But whatever conditions might have
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Privately, those of us in governmen
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Throughout the fifties and early si
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decided nevertheless that in style
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It was Bill Clinton’s singular co
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But these Republicans are not the o
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I made this same argument in a lett
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that suggests he’s on a schedule
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I say this not because I am seduced
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I don’t mean to exaggerate here,
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These values are rooted in a basic
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penalty feared that any efforts at
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sexuality from intimacy. They may n
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“You follow him into the bathroom
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back in the eighties, I would often
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“Nothing. You wanna talk to Mommy
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the document itself. For Senator By
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seen for a judicial confirmation. W
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Not many of my fellow Democrats app
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universal rights presupposes the eq
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remain true to the rules that the F
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yielded to fact and necessity. Jeff
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slaves and former slaves, men like
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“Oh, I have been very fortunate,
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moron, or Congressman So-and-So is
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eighteen-month-old Malia, the state
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As for most politicians, money isn
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In many ways, I was luckier than mo
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pensions, their crop supports, thei
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who’s calling you a traitor, you
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Still, I was reminded of what my ve
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viewing preferences, global climate
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our troops, say, or some modest inc
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those who sent them to Washington
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I could see how people might get us
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Shanghai as in California. And over
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and the advent of big-box retailers
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Worst of all, it will mean fewer op
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instruct farmers on the latest agri
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In this more competitive global env
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rebuild the social contract that FD
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It also means paying teachers what
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whether the Bush Administration’s
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Brazilian government has no place i
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Like most Democrats, I strongly sup
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CAFTA debate, when I and a group of
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The same principles are at work whe
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Page 118 and 119: Chapter SixFaithTWO DAYS AFTER I wo
Page 120 and 121: group wanted to come in. Again the
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Page 136 and 137: Chapter SevenRaceTHE FUNERAL WAS he
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Page 140 and 141: office, including a black state com
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Page 152 and 153: color of our skin—and the conclus
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Page 156 and 157: Indeed, until their numbers finally
Page 158 and 159: overseas. To address this problem,
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Page 164 and 165: Even the darker aspects of Indonesi
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Page 174 and 175: and-dried. Like most analysts, I as
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Page 186 and 187: who are rich.” Forty-five years l
Page 188 and 189: connected local elites but do littl
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Page 192 and 193: “Huh?”“I found ants in the ki
Page 194 and 195: Eventually I wore her down. After a
Page 196 and 197: For adults, at least, the effect of
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Page 200 and 201: Tired and stressed, we had little t
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the Democratic primary for the Illi
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said that a convention wouldn’t c
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That’s what satisfies me now, I t
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Several good friends, including Dav
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ALSO BY BARACK OBAMADreams from My
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