- Cashill, Jack.
Deconstructing Obama.
New York: Threshold Editions, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-4516-1111-3.
-
Barack Obama's 1995 memoir,
Dreams from My Father
(henceforth Dreams),
proved instrumental in his rise from an obscure Chicago
lawyer and activist to the national stage and eventually the
presidency. Almost universally praised for its literary
merit, it establishes Obama's “unique personal narrative”
which is a key component of his attraction to his many supporters.
Amidst the buzz of the 2008 presidential campaign, the author
decided to buy a copy of Dreams as an “airplane
book”, and during the flight and in the days that followed,
was astonished by what he was reading. The book was not just good,
it was absolutely superb—the kind of work editors dream of
having land on their desk. In fact, it was so good that Cashill, a veteran
author and editor who has reviewed the portfolios of hundreds of aspiring
writers, found it hard to believe that a first time writer, however smart,
could produce such a work on his own. In the writing craft, it is well known
that almost all authors should plan to
throw away their
first million words or equivalently invest on the order of 10,000 hours
mastering their craft before producing a publishable book-length work,
no less a bestselling masterpiece like Dreams. There was
no evidence for such an investment or of natural talent in any of Obama's
earlier (and meagre) publications: they are filled with clichés,
clumsy in phrasing, and rife with grammatical problems such as agreement
of subject and verb.
Further, it was well documented that Obama had defaulted upon his first
advance for the book, changed the topic, and then secured a second advance
from a different publisher, then finally, after complaining of suffering from
writer's block, delivering a manuscript in late 1994. At the time he
was said to be writing Dreams, he had a full time job at a
Chicago law firm, was teaching classes at the University of Chicago, and
had an active social life. All of this caused Cashill to suspect Obama
had help with the book. Now, it's by no means uncommon for books by politicians
to be largely or entirely the work of ghostwriters, who may work entirely
behind the scenes, leaving the attribution of authorship entirely to their
employers. But when Dreams was written, Obama was not
a politician, but rather a lawyer and law school instructor still burdened by
student loans. It is unlikely he could have
summoned the financial resources nor had the reputation to engage a ghostwriter
sufficiently talented to produce Dreams. Further, if the
work is not Obama's, then he is a liar, for, speaking to a group of teachers
in June 2008, he said, “I've written two books. I actually wrote them
myself.”
These observations set the author, who has previously undertaken
literary and intellectual detective work, on
the trail of the origin of Dreams. He discovers that,
just at the time the miraculous manuscript appeared, Obama had begun
to work with unrepentant Weather Underground domestic terrorist
Bill Ayers, who had reinvented himself as an “education reformer”
in Chicago. At the time, Obama's ambition was to become mayor of
Chicago, an office which would allow him to steer city funds into the
coffers of Ayers's organisations in repayment of his contribution to
Obama's political ascendancy (not to mention the potential blackmail
threat an unacknowledged ghostwriter has over a principal who claims
sole authorship). In any case, Dreams not only matches
contemporary works by Ayers on many metrics used to test authorship, it
is rich in nautical metaphors, many expressed in the same words as
in Ayers's own work. Ayers once worked as a merchant seaman; Obama's
only experience at sea was bodysurfing in Hawaii.
Cashill examines Dreams in fine-grained detail, both
bolstering the argument that Ayers was the principal wordsmith
behind the text, and also documenting how the narrative in the book
is at variance with the few well-documented facts we have about Obama's
life and career. He then proceeds to speculate upon Obama's parentage,
love life before he met Michelle, and other aspects of the canonical
Obama story. As regards Ayers as the author of Dreams, I
consider the case as not proved beyond a reasonable doubt (that would
require one of the principals in the matter speaking out and producing
believable documentation), but to me the case here meets the standard
of preponderance of evidence. The more speculative claims are
intriguing but, in my opinion, do not rise to that level.
What is beyond dispute is just how little is known about the current
occupant of the Oval Office, how slim the paper trail is of his
origin and career, and how little interest the legacy media have
expressed in investigating these details. There are obvious and
thoroughly documented discrepancies between what is known
for sure about Obama and the accounts in his two memoirs, and the
difference in literary style between the two is, in itself, cause to
call their authorship into question. When the facts about Obama
begin to come out—and they will, the only question is when—if
only a fraction of what is alleged in this well-researched and -argued
book is true, it will be the final undoing of any credibility still
retained by the legacy media.
The Kindle edition is superbly produced, with the
table of contents, notes, and index all properly linked to the text.
March 2011 