Abstract
Like most of his predecessors—except perhaps George Bush Senior, who directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the American liaison office in Beijing—Barack Obama had little time to familiarize himselfwith international issues before he assumed the presidency. This is hardly surprising. In the United States, as in most democratic countries, political careers are first and foremost built from the ground up. Following stints as a community organizer and attorney in Chicago, Obama entered politics through the narrowest of doors: local politics. In 1997, he was elected to the Illinois Senate. In 2000, he had a failed run for the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the US Congress. Nonetheless, through exceptional circumstances and remarkable willpower, he managed to get elected senator from Illinois in November 2004. A few months earlier, he had gained national visibility for the first time when he addressed the 2004 Democratic Convention.
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Notes
David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (New York: Amistad/Harper Collins Publishers, 2007), 175.
In his autobiography Barack Obama compellingly explains the distance that existed between him, the son of an African, and American blacks. This distance was reflected in the surprise of many black Americans when he mentioned his name. Neither Barack nor Obama were considered to be black names. He therefore had to integrate into the American black community and succeeded in doing so, especially by marrying a woman from this community. See Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Broadway Books, 2004).
This ability to unite and bridge divides is well captured in David Remnick’s biography of Barack Obama, aptly entitled The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (New York: Knopf Publishers, 2010).
White House, Remarks of President Obama at Student Roundtable, Tophane Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey, April 7, 2009. Available at the White House website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama -student-roundtable-istanbul.
Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
John Brennan, “The Conundrum of Iran: Strengthening Moderates without Acquiescing to Belligerence,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008, 618, no. 1 (July 2008): 168–179.
Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Michael O’Hanlon, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), 133.
The White House, “Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address,” January 24, 2012.
See Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
Global Council, The dragon in the room: U.S. trade policy after the Doha Round, February 23, 2012.
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
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© 2012 Zaki Laïdi
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Laïdi, Z. (2012). White House Tight Rope. In: Limited Achievements. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137020871_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137020871_2
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