On August 2, 2023, Tablet editor David Samuels interviewed David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, a massive work that, as Scott explains, “puts every other biographer of Obama to shame.” This post reviewed Samuels’ statements in light of 10/7 and Iran’s more recent attack on Israel. In that context, Garrow’s comments are also of interest, particularly his outing of Dreams from My Father as a work of fiction. On page 538 of Rising Star, readers learn:
Dreams from My Father was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction. It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.
“He wants people to believe his story,” Garrow told Samuels. “For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction – oh God, did that infuriate him.” Obama “doesn’t want his writerliness challenged,” Garrow told Samuels. “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book is so fictionalized.” Samuels agrees, “yet there was something about this fictional character that he created actually becoming president that helped precipitate the disaster that we are living through now.” As the Tablet editor explained:
Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel, which finally resulted in his determination during his second term to reach his agreement with Iran—an agreement with the main objective of integrating that country into America’s security architecture in the Middle East, while limiting Israel’s power in the region.
“I do find the Iran deal offensive and puzzling,” Garrow told Samuels. “I mean, it’s an explicitly anti-Semitic state.” The Rising Star author was also “puzzled at the Biden administration’s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.” For Samuels, “the easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.” David Garrow did not challenge that reality, and his observations about the composite character take on new significance.
“He’s not normal – as in not a normal politician or a normal human being,” Garrow told Samuels, and “for Barack, everything has to be a success. Everything has to be a victory.”
When Joe Biden tells Israel not to retaliate, that’s Obama telling Iran to “take the win.” As John notes, it’s starting to look that way.
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