Long-lost article by Obama's dad surfaces
Barack Obama's dad was such an im****tant but absent figure in his life
that
he devoted his first book, Dreams From My Father, to the search for
details
about his father's life and how the quest helped forge a son's identity.
Now, a long-forgotten essay written 43 years ago by Obama's father has
surfaced, and its contents reveal much not only about the senior Obama's
grasp of economic theory but also the iconoclastic politics that, his son
would later write, sent him into the spiral of career disappointment that
concluded with his death in 1982 in his native Kenya.
Parts of the article, titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism," have been
making the rounds on several small blogs over the past week, but Politico
is
now reproducing the entire piece in its original form online for the first
time.
The scholarly eight-page paper credited to "Barak H. Obama" is never
mentioned in Dreams From My Father, nor has the candidate discussed it in
any of his many public speeches. (Politico brought the article to the
campaign's attention late last week, but aides did not respond to a
request
for a comment from Obama.)
The paper's substance, though, offers insight into the mind and the
political trajectory of a man described by his son largely through his
emotional life, his family, and his traditions.
Published in the esoteric East Africa Journal in 1965, the year after
Kenyan
President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta took power and the country declared
independence from British rule, the paper takes a gently mocking tone to
the
Kenyatta government's key, controversial statement of economic policy,
titled "African Socialism and its Applicability to Planning in Kenya."
Obama Sr.'s journal article repeatedly asks what the Kenyan government
means
by "African Socialism," as distinct from Soviet-style communism, and
concludes that the new phrase doesn't mean much.
Elements of Obama's argument now seem prescient, others deeply dated, but
his central aim - particularly in the context of the heady early days of
African independence - was moderate and conciliatory.
"The question is how are we going to remove the disparities in our country
such as the concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands
while not destroying what has already been achieved and at the same time
assimilating these groups to build one country," Obama Sr. wrote.
When he wrote the paper, he was in Nairobi and working toward a
never-completed Harvard doctoral dissertation, according to his brief
biography in the journal. He had divorced his wife, who was raising his
son
in Hawaii, two years earlier.
But even back in Nairobi, Obama Sr. also felt free to mock the Kenyan
government.
"Maybe it is better to have something perfunctorily done than none at
all!"
he concluded.
That's the attitude, his son would later find, that took him from a career
in the Kenyan governing class to "a small job at the Water Department,"
and
then to unemployment and drink.
Obama Sr., who returned to Kenya after his Harvard years, soon became a
public critic of Kenyatta's growing favoritism toward the Kikuyu tribe
over
Obama's Luos.
"Word got back to Kenyatta that the Old Man was a troublemaker, and he was
called in to see the president. According to the stories, Kenyatta said to
the Old Man that, because he could not keep his mouth shut, he would not
work again until he had no shoes on his feet," Obama quoted his
half-sister
telling him.
Obama wrote that his father was rehabilitated after Kenyatta's death in
1978, but was by then broken and embittered.
Obama Sr.'s 1965 paper, however, brims with confidence and optimism.
The article, with a loaded term in the title and a casual discussion of
socialism, communism, and nationalization, has raised the hackles of some
anti-Obama conservatives who have been discussing it online.
Greg Ransom, a blogger who unearthed the journal at UCLA's library, calls
the article "the Rosebud" that provides the missing key to Obama's memoir.
Ransom wrote about its contents recently in a posting with the provocative
headline, "Obama Hid His Father's Socialist and Anti-Western Convictions
From His Readers."
But Kenya expert Dr. Raymond Omwami, an economist and UCLA visiting
professor from the University of Helsinki who has also worked at the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, said Obama Sr. could not be
considered
a socialist himself based solely on the material in his bylined piece.
Omwami points out Obama Sr.'s paper was primarily a harsh critique of the
controversial 1965 government document known as the "Sessional Paper No.
10." Sessional Paper No. 10 rejected classic Karl Marx philosophies then
embraced by the Soviet Union and some European countries, calling instead
for a new type of socialism to be used specifically in Africa.
The government paper rejected materialism (i.e., "conspicuous
consumerism"),
outlined the nation's goals to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and disease,
and also laid out im****tant decrees regarding land use for economic
development. Obama Sr.'s response covers these issues, frequently focusing
on the distribution of real estate to farmers. Since most Kenyans could
not
afford farmland in line with market forces established earlier by white
British farmers, Obama Sr. argued that strong development planning should
better define common farming space to maximize productivity, and should
defer to tribal traditions instead of hastening individual land owner****p.
In other words, Obama Sr.'s paper was not a cry for acceptance of radical
politics, but was instead a critique of a government policy by Kenya's
Ministry of Economic Planning & Development, which applied African
socialism
principles to the country's ongoing political upheaval.
"The critics of this article are making a big mistake," says Omwami, who
read the document and the associated internet debate at the request of
Politico over the weekend. "They are assuming Obama Sr. is the one who
came
up with this concept of African socialism, but that's totally wrong. Based
on that, they're imbuing in him the idea that he himself is a socialist,
but
he is not."
Omwami says he'd instead refer to Obama Sr. as "a liberal person who
believed in market forces, but understood its limitations."
Sessional Paper No. 10 centered on the new control of Kenya's resources,
promoting a form of trickle-down economics in which financial aid would be
consolidated in more populated areas with the hope that positive effects
would eventually be felt by smaller villages.
Obama Sr. argued against this notion, and Omwami suggests history has
proven
him correct since most, if not all, small communities in Kenya have yet to
benefit from monies that poured into larger cities since the nation's
independence four decades ago.
Obama Sr. also looked ahead to what has become a shaping force across
Africa, urbanization, arguing that the government's efforts to lure
citizens
back to the land were futile.
"If these people come out in search of work, it is because they cannot
make
a living out of whatever land they have had," he wrote.
In retrospect, it was one of several warnings in the paper that would
prove
true.
"If you understand the Kenyan context, you can clearly see in that paper
that Obama Sr. was quite a sharp mind," concluded Omwami. "He addresses
economic growth and other areas of development, and his critique is that
policymakers in Kenya were overemphasizing economic growth. We had high
economic growth for years, but never solved the problems of poverty,
unemployment and unequal income distribution. And those problems are still
there."
Obama Sr.'s projections and critiques are so spot on, says Omwami, that he
plans on assigning the paper to his classes in the future.
--
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
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