Thursday, March 28, 2024
Hawai'i Free Press

Current Articles | Archives

Thursday, December 27, 2012
Obama Skips Inouye in Memoirs
By Selected News Articles @ 12:03 PM :: 7132 Views :: Hawaii History, Politicians

Obama Skips Over Inouye, ‘Perhaps My Earliest Political Inspiration’ in Memoirs

by Patrick Brennan, NRO December 27, 2012

This past Friday, President Obama delivered a very personal eulogy at the funeral service for Senator Daniel Inouye, the president pro tempore of the Senate and a Medal of Honor recipient.

Obama spent most of the speech describing his own impressions of Inouye, especially the inspiration he drew as a young boy from learning about the Japanese-American senator, describing it as a major development in his political life:

It wasn’t until I was 11 years old that I recall even learning what a U.S. senator was, or it registering, at least. . . . And my mother that summer would turn on the TV every night during this vacation and watch the Watergate hearings. And I can’t say that I understood everything that was being discussed, but I knew the issues were important. I knew they spoke to some basic way about who we were and who we might be as Americans.

And the person who fascinated me most was this man of Japanese descent with one arm, speaking in this courtly baritone, full of dignity and grace. And maybe he captivated my attention because my mom explained that this was our senator and that he was upholding what our government was all about. Maybe it was a boyhood fascination with the story of how he had lost his arm in a war. But I think it was more than that.

Now, here I was, a young boy with a white mom, a black father, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. And I was beginning to sense how fitting into the world might not be as simple as it might seem. And so to see this man, this senator, this powerful, accomplished person who wasn’t out of central casting when it came to what you’d think a senator might look like at the time, and the way he commanded the respect of an entire nation I think it hinted to me what might be possible in my own life. . . .

And as I watched those hearings, listening to Danny ask all those piercing questions night after night . . . I learned how our democracy was supposed to work . . .

And, somehow, nobody communicated that more effectively than Danny Inouye. You got a sense, as Joe mentioned, of just a fundamental integrity; that he was a proud Democrat, but most importantly, he was a proud American. And were it not for those two insights planted in my head at the age of 11, in between Disneyland and a trip to Yellowstone, I might never have considered a career in public service. I might not be standing here today.

I think it’s fair to say that Danny Inouye was perhaps my earliest political inspiration.

A moving tribute, certainly, but was the president slightly exagerrating the influence of Senator Inouye on his own life and political career? It’s certainly plausible that an American of non-white descent and a senator from the president’s home state was “perhaps [Obama's] earliest political inspiration,” but luckily, we have two memoirs by our relatively young president that document his early political inspirations to see if Obama actually placed such a high importance on the war-hero senator. In their pages, there is only one mention of Senator Daniel Inouye (I’m not going to call him “Danny,” being neither the president nor merely 40 years Inouye’s junior), and it is in a contemporary, not childhood, context. On page 25 of The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes:

One of the first things I noticed upon my arrival in Washington was the relative cordiality among the Senate’s older members: the unfailing courtesy that governed every interaction between John Warner and Robert Byrd, or the genuine bond of friendship between Republican Ted Stevens and Democrat Daniel Inouye. It is commonly said that these men represent that last of a dying breed . . .

Inouye, thus, receives his only mention in Obama’s works when being paired with other senators as an example of senatorial camaraderie that he observed in 2008, and nothing else (Inouye also goes unmentioned in the two most prominent biographies of Obama, by David Maraniss and David Remnick). Not exactly the treatment one expects of someone who Obama claims left a memorable and lasting impression politically, and supposedly, especially struck him on racial issues, which are salient throughout his memoirs.

Obama does mention in Dreams from My Father the summer during which he watched the Watergate hearings, in which Inouye played a part. He explains how, on a summer trip, “we took Greyhound buses, mostly, and stayed at Howard Johnson’s, and watched the Watergate hearings every night before going to bed” (page 144). That is a common memory of Americans from the summer of 1973, but Obama says nothing at all about the hearings’ being what he calls a moment when he first became politically aware, as he claims above. In a book mostly concerned with his confused racial identity and his personal journey to politics, Obama mentions Watergate as an arbitrary period reference, not attaching any political meaning to the events or tying Senator Inouye to his discussion of racial identity and politics — calling into question, perhaps, how seriously he meant his testament to Inouye’s role in his life as a senator or as an Asian American politician.

(In addition, my Lexis Nexis searches did not turn up any instances of Obama referring to Inouye in publicly reported speeches throughout his career, though I’m happy to be corrected in this.)

In his 1994 introduction to Dreams from My Father, Obama explains that “for the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known,” and that various other liberties were taken in the text. While some license might be given for convenient symbolism in a eulogy, too, it appears that the president last weekend may have been indulging in some similar exaggeration, and in a more important, official context.

 

Links

TEXT "follow HawaiiFreePress" to 40404

Register to Vote

2aHawaii

808 Silent Majority

Aloha Pregnancy Care Center

AntiPlanner

Antonio Gramsci Reading List

A Place for Women in Waipio

Ballotpedia Hawaii

Broken Trust

Build More Hawaiian Homes Working Group

Christian Homeschoolers of Hawaii

Cliff Slater's Second Opinion

DVids Hawaii

FIRE

Fix Oahu!

Frontline: The Fixers

Genetic Literacy Project

Grassroot Institute

Habele.org

Hawaii Aquarium Fish Report

Hawaii Aviation Preservation Society

Hawaii Catholic TV

Hawaii Christian Coalition

Hawaii Cigar Association

Hawaii ConCon Info

Hawaii Debt Clock

Hawaii Defense Foundation

Hawaii Family Forum

Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United

Hawaii Farmer's Daughter

Hawaii Federalist Society

Hawaii Federation of Republican Women

Hawaii History Blog

Hawaii Homeschool Association

Hawaii Jihadi Trial

Hawaii Legal News

Hawaii Legal Short-Term Rental Alliance

Hawaii Matters

Hawaii's Partnership for Appropriate & Compassionate Care

Hawaii Public Charter School Network

Hawaii Rifle Association

Hawaii Shippers Council

Hawaii Smokers Alliance

Hawaii State Data Lab

Hawaii Together

HIEC.Coop

HiFiCo

Hiram Fong Papers

Homeschool Legal Defense Hawaii

Honolulu Moms for Liberty

Honolulu Navy League

Honolulu Traffic

House Minority Blog

Imua TMT

Inouye-Kwock, NYT 1992

Inside the Nature Conservancy

Inverse Condemnation

Investigative Project on Terrorism

July 4 in Hawaii

Kakaako Cares

Keep Hawaii's Heroes

Land and Power in Hawaii

Legislative Committee Analysis Tool

Lessons in Firearm Education

Lingle Years

Managed Care Matters -- Hawaii

Malama Pregnancy Center of Maui

MentalIllnessPolicy.org

Military Home Educators' Network Oahu

Missile Defense Advocacy

MIS Veterans Hawaii

NAMI Hawaii

Natatorium.org

National Christian Foundation Hawaii

National Parents Org Hawaii

NFIB Hawaii News

No GMO Means No Aloha

Not Dead Yet, Hawaii

NRA-ILA Hawaii

Oahu Alternative Transport

Obookiah

OHA Lies

Opt Out Today

OurFutureHawaii.com

Patients Rights Council Hawaii

PEACE Hawaii

People vs Machine

Practical Policy Institute of Hawaii

Pritchett Cartoons

Pro-GMO Hawaii

P.U.E.O.

RailRipoff.com

Rental by Owner Awareness Assn

ReRoute the Rail

Research Institute for Hawaii USA

Rick Hamada Show

RJ Rummel

Robotics Organizing Committee

School Choice in Hawaii

SenatorFong.com

Sink the Jones Act

Statehood for Guam

Talking Tax

Tax Foundation of Hawaii

The Real Hanabusa

Time Out Honolulu

Trustee Akina KWO Columns

UCC Truths

US Tax Foundation Hawaii Info

VAREP Honolulu

Waagey.org

West Maui Taxpayers Association

What Natalie Thinks

Whole Life Hawaii

Yes2TMT