What ensues with the advent of the young vivacious Obama, the newfound US Prez? The forty-fourth president Barack Hussein Obama has vouched the US to give a facelift. He is the first African American to be elected president of the United States. The authors brandish Obama'sversatility, ? Obama is of biracial ancestry, of a Kenyan Luo father and a Kansan White mother. With his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, and his Ivy League education?, he is a class apart.
The authors, Kaushal Goyal and Hideya Nakamura have hypothecated this book to the two vanguards of democracy and humanity ? Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. ?Their dreams have come true and become a reality?, says Kaushal. Obama maintains a portrait of Gandhiji at his Senate Office upholding his ?real message of life?.
Obama has a saga of his own. ?As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of Federal funds.? Obama jumped into the fray for presidential campaign in February 2007, getting formally nominated at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, wining 53 per cent of the popular vote and 364 electoral votes as against his rival John Mc Cain's174 to become the President of the United States on January 20, 2009.
Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was born of Luo ethnicity traced to Kenya. ?He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.? ?In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. ?Michelle (his wife) will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it'slike a mini-United Nations. I?ve got relatives who look like Bernie Mac and I?ve got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher.? Obama largely grew up with his White mother whom his father had left while he was two years old. Later Obama saw his father just once who later died in an automobile accident in 1982. As an adult Obama confessed that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure. Such is his uprightness to squarely make candid confessions.
There is a particular section of specific interest to Indian readers. Barrack Obama has avowed to ?build a close strategic partnership? between the US and India. He lauded the Indians??Already in communities across this country, Indian Americans are lifting our economy and creating jobs. Leading entrepreneurs, innovator, lawyers, doctors, engineers and hardworking professionals are adding to the richness and success of the American society. Too often, flawed strategies like racial profiling have had a disproportionate effect on Indian Americans. He is looking forward to implementing ?comprehensive immigration reform? including the H-1B programme ?to attract some of the world'smost talented people to America. We know that we cannot and should not put up walls around our economy.?
Obama'ssecond book, ?The audacity of hope: Thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream? was released in 2006. Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, all had dreamt and they fructified and so did Obama. The readers are to decide whether Obama was audacious and defiant enough to have a dream.
(GBD Books, 1-2/16, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002.)
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