The first half of 1966 was a rough year for Bob Dylan. The previous spring he had released Bringing It All Back Home, a mix of rock ‘n’ roll and folk music that shocked the sensibilities of the folkies who worshipped him. He followed that up with Highway 61 Revisited in the summer of 1965, a straight-up rock record. Then in the winter of 1966, he went on a world tour: one part acoustic and folk, the other part electric and rock (backed by the group that would become known as The Band).
The electric shows were not well received; folk "purists" constantly hounded and heckled him, deriding him as a traitor to the folk tradition for daring to plug his guitar into an amp. By the end of the tour it was all too much. At the encore for his Manchester, England, show, somebody yelled out, "Judas!" Dylan, overwhelmed with exasperation, responded, "I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!" Then, turning to the Band, he exhorted, "Play it fucking loud!" What followed was the best-ever live version of "Like A Rolling Stone."
This anecdote springs to mind quite a bit when I think of Barack Obama. The longer I hear him speak, the more inclined I am to shout at my television, "I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!" and then turn the Band up full blast to drown out the assault on my good sense.
All politicians lie—indeed, all people lie. Politicians lie even more because voters believe in lies, and politicians need to be believed to win. Still, there is something that sets Barack Obama apart.
This is a man who leap-frogged over a host of much better qualified candidates in both parties to become the 44th President of the United States. How did he do it? He promised something different—something, he claimed, nobody else could deliver. Change—which of course all politicians promise—but of a unique sort. Politics, he argued, had become deeply dysfunctional, and as practiced was ruining opportunities to find common ground about seemingly intractable problems. Selecting a president who was deeply entrenched in the status quo would just preserve the old, broken ways of doing things. So, Obama argued, America had to nominate an earnest, fresh-faced rookie—not in spite of the country’s many problems, but because of them.
Belief in his superhuman capacity was at the foundation of his candidacy. His website banner in 2008 read: "I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours." The line was accompanied by a picture of Obama appearing to float in the clouds. Then came the Greek columns, the Shepard Fairey poster, the Brandenburg speech, and all the rest. The point was that he wanted you to believe that he was a better human being than his opponents.
But it was a lie. The people elected a man who lacks the temperament and know-how to build common ground, and who is in fact happy to sacrifice national unity for the progressive left’s project. Thus, the man who promised to mend our tattered and frayed national psyche has rent it even more—for the sake of Obamacare, executive amnesty, a terrible deal with Iran, and so on.
It is this context that David Axelrod’s Believer: My Forty Years in Politics must be understood. Those of us who wish to shout, like Dylan, "You’re a liar!" at our television need to appreciate that "Axe," as he is often called, disagrees. He genuinely and earnestly believes—in liberalism, in the Democratic Party, and especially in Barack Obama.
We must appreciate this … but we need not read about it for 488 pages.
Good political autobiographies are a rare breed. Henry Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Ulysses S. Grant wrote good American examples of the genre. But otherwise it is a very disposable, and predictable genre. Politicos are not often good writers. They are not prone to the self-reflection necessary to offer insight, and they are inclined to use the book as a proxy in whatever battle they are still waging in their hearts.
So it goes with Believer. Take the initial anecdote, of how young Axe developed a "lifelong passion" for politics. He was taken to a JFK political rally back in 1960, when he was five years old. His recollection of it is so vivid, and so infused with meaning, that it seems as though he filled in the gaps years later. He admits as much, but it is still hard to believe that a five year old could "absorb the larger message: we are the masters of our future, and politics is the means by which we shape it."
Subtitle notwithstanding, about two-thirds of the book is about his work with Obama after he won his Senate seat in 2004. Through these pages, Axelrod is the definition of earnest. He comes across as he does on television—as a genuinely nice guy, honestly committed to the cause, and never losing sight of the linkage between tactics and the strategic goals of the movement. And at the center of that movement is Obama, whom he treats with reverence. He writes, "Barack Obama has been a great friend and a dream client. He is not perfect, as no one is. But he is a thoroughly admirable person, who personifies the spirit of politics and public service in which I believe." And it is clear he believes this.
The problem is: I don’t. Not a word of it. I’m guessing you, the reader, don’t, either. So, for us, reading Believer is like reading a first-hand account of a fairy tale.
Is there value to the recollections of a true believer in a false prophet? Perhaps—for the sociologists and anthropologists. But those of us in politics, who have judged Obama to be a liar, will struggle to find much to value, or even believe, in this book.
Here is what I suggest. For the next three weeks or so, you’ll spot this book at your airport Hudson Booksellers. Don’t buy it. Just think of Dylan yelling at that heckler. And then, it will be yanked from the shelves—forever out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Eventually Barack Obama will be gone, too. The 22nd Amendment term-limits him into retirement, and we can all move on.