In New Biography Obama Asks: Am I An American?

Obama biography by former Washington Post reporter to be published By Byron York Ever since the 2008 campaign many voters and some journalists too have felt they know Barack Obamas life story. In fact the story they know is the one Obama told them. Obamas first memoir Dreams From My Father published in 1995 has become the semi-official record of his life. But it is not the complete record.   Its partially fictionalized with composite characters who Obama has always acknowledged were created to make the story read better. It focuses on a few themes Obama wanted to present to the public about himself. And as with any memoir it is told completely from Obamas point of view. Its not a biography. Next month the beginnings of an Obama biography will be published by former Washington Post reporter David Maraniss. Readers wanting to learn about Obamas entire life will be disappointed to discover that Maraniss stops when Obama is age 27 as he finishes work as a community organizer in Chicago and heads to Harvard Law School. Obamas law school years his practice of law in Chicago his campaigns and career as an Illinois state senator U.S. senator presidential candidate -- none of that will be covered. Still an excerpt of the Maraniss book published recently in Vanity Fair reveals a portrait of Obama that might have enriched the voters understanding of him in the 2008 campaign when many Americans were eager to learn about this new fresh face in politics. The excerpt focuses on Obamas brief time in New York after his graduation from Columbia University. The son of a Kenyan father and an American expatriate mother Obama emerges as a man questioning whether he viewed himself or wanted to be viewed by others as an American. Not in a citizenship sense -- Obama was born in the United States and that was that -- but in the sense of how he saw the world and wanted to be seen by it.

Obama had a lot of Pakistani friends; Maraniss writes that if Obama and his girlfriend socialized as a couple it was almost always with the Pakistanis.

Obama appeared to identify with his friends as fellow non-Americans. For years when Barack was around them he seemed to share their attitudes as sophisticated outsiders who looked at politics from an international perspective Maraniss writes. He was one of them in that sense. But Obama was ambitious. Appalled by the dirty deeds of Reagan and his minions (as he wrote in Dreams From My Father) Obama became increasingly interested in as Maraniss writes gaining power in order to change things. He couldnt do that as an international guy hanging around with his Pakistani friends; he needed to become an American. So he did. One of those Pakistani friends Beenu Mahmood saw a major change in Obama. Mahmood calls Obama the most deliberate person I ever met in terms of constructing his own identity according to Maraniss. The time after college Mahmood says was an important period for him first the shift from not international but American number one and then not white but black. Mahmood Maraniss writes could see Obama slowly but carefully distancing himself as a necessary step in establishing his political identity as an American. Years later the picture of Obama as a young adult wondering whether or not he was really an American was precisely the image that the Hillary Clinton campaign wanted to impose on the middle-aged Obama.

In internal memos top Clinton strategist Mark Penn questioned Obamas lack of American roots writing that Obamas roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.

Clinton didnt come out and say that during the campaign but she did everything she could to present herself as the all-American candidate in the race. Her campaign didnt play Tom Pettys American Girl at all her rallies for nothing. In the general election the contrast between Obama and John McCain was of course even more stark. At the age Obama was wondering whether he was an American McCain the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals was a newly commissioned officer at Naval Air Station Pensacola headed for a noteworthy military career. It seems unlikely McCain spent much time musing on whether he was an American. In the end as the Maraniss excerpt has it Obama chose to become an American in part because thats what he needed to be to accomplish his goals. The story of what he did after that momentous decision will unfortunately have to wait for another biography. Byron York chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner