THE OBAMA PUZZLE
A Talk by Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Michael Haas
WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? Date: April 20
WHY IS HIS BEHAVIOR SO UNUSUAL? Time: 12:30
WHAT’S HIS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? Place: SS B-40
Barack Obama is the most misunderstood president in American history.
He impressed voters in 2008 with his “audacity of hope,” but he governed almost mysteriously after taking office in 2009, and his party lost the 2010 elections despite his efforts to campaign to save his Congressional majority.
Now the puzzle has been solved. Political science professor Michael Haas has written Barack Obama, The Aloha Zen President: How a Son of the 50th State May Revitalize America Based on 12 Multicultural Principles (Praeger, release date 1/19/2011). His book responds to Michelle Obama’s revealing avowal, “You do not understand Barack Obama until you understand Hawai‘i.”
Michael Dukakis, former presidential candidate, writes the Foreword to the book. Cover jacket endorsements are by Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter and prominent sociologist Amitai Etzioni. The book is truly a breakthrough.
Haas, who now lives in the Hollywood Hills, taught political science at the University of Hawai`i for 35 years, reads Obama like a book—and now has written one about President Barack Obama to explain his temperament and his politics!
The talk focuses on two themes:
· How young Barack Obama, growing up in Honolulu, assimilated to the 12 multicultural principles which explain why race relations in Hawai‘i are so exemplary—and how he integrated those principles into his personality.
· Obama’s political philosophy, which deliberately steers a middle course between right-wing antigovernmental sentiment and left-wing spendthrift overuse of government--by seeking to facilitate the rebuilding of a united community spirit in a deeply divided United States, with government as a “catalyst.”
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