I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism

(Paperback)

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Leading conservative scholar, educator, and journalist Charles R. Kesler argues that detractors on the left and right do not know who Barack Obama is. They also share a stubborn underestimation of the man and the political movement he embodies. Will Obama save liberalism and become its fourth great incarnation, following Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson Or will he be derailed by his very successes These are the questions at the heart of his thoughtful and illuminating book.

Reflecting a sophisticated mix of philosophy, psychology, and history, and complemented by a scathing wit, I Am the Change tries to understand Obama as he understands himself, based largely on his own writings, speeches, and interviews. Kesler, the rare conservative who takes Obama seriously as a political thinker, views him as a gifted and highly intelligent progressive who is attempting to become the greatest president in the history of modern liberalism. Intent on reinvigorating the liberal faith, Obama nonetheless fails to understand its fatal contradictionsa shortsightedness that may prove to be liberalisms undoing.

Reviews

"Politically timely and of permanent importance to the study of the American mind. A serious but accessible study of the thinking underpinning the modern liberal project...This is a title - and an author - with a long shelf life and much to teach." -- Washington Times

"Drawing on his wide reading in philosophy and American political thought, Mr. Kesler argues that Mr. Obama has been shaped by the political tradition of Progressivism and that his 2008 triumph has helped, in turn, to reshape it." -- Wall Street Journal

"Obama has earned what he now receives, the tribute of a serious intellectual exegesis by a distinguished political philosopher." -- George Will, Washington Post

"Kesler is the reader for whom Obama has long been asking, in the sense of 'asking for it', and this book is the examination of the One we've been waiting for." -- Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review

Author Bio

Charles R. Kesler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, and the editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He is a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, and coeditor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought.