Word: memoire
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...mayor of Newark, and Adrian Fenty, mayor of Washington, D.C., talked openly about the straitjacketing effect of special interests on the Democratic party - especially the teachers unions, with their resistance to education reform. It is an opinion that Barack Obama shares, or at least used to share. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, he expressed his frustration at the educational establishment, calling it "the biggest source of resistance" on behalf of "the status...
...McCain has also made clear that he does not want Vietnam to be the "leitmotif" for the rest of his life. In his memoir, Faith of My Fathers, McCain describes this in some detail. "My public profile is inextricably linked to my POW experiences. Obviously, such recognition has benefited my political career, and I am grateful for that," he writes. "But I have tried to make what use I can of Vietnam and not let the memories of war encumber the rest of my life's progress. Neither have I been content to accept that my time in Vietnam would...
Obama tells a parallel story in his memoir, the journey of a man raised by his Caucasian mother and grandparents who seeks his identity as an African American. Along the path, he was drawn to a number of older black men who argued that America's racial divide is absolute and unbridgeable. Obama recalls a visit as a teenager to the home of a black man his white grandfather considered a friend. To his surprise, the man explained that it was hopeless to think any white man could truly befriend someone black. "He can't know me," the man said...
...Obama's memoir displays more familiarity with the ideas of the far left than most American politicians would advertise. His interest in African independence movements led him to the seminal work of Frantz Fanon, a Marxist sociologist, and he speaks in passing of attending "socialist conferences" at the Cooper Union in New York City. But as Obama told TIME, this was in the Reagan years, and he was also reading works by conservative giants like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. He browsed among the ideologues but never bought in, he said. "I was always suspicious of dogma and the excesses...
Back up a few paragraphs and look again at something Obama wrote in his memoir. It's that passing reference to his mother living in a "'60s time warp." No presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy has so lightly dismissed those turbulent years. What could the Summer of Love have meant to a 6-year-old in Hawaii, or Woodstock to an 8-year-old in Indonesia? The Pill, Vietnam, race riots, prayer in school and campus unrest - forces like these and the culture clashes they unleashed have dominated American politics for more than 40 years. But Obama approaches these...