MixedChicago TribunePresidential memoirs are maybe a fool’s errand. Perhaps the job of the presidency itself is a fool’s errand ... Yet, Barack Obama’s tome of a memoir, A Promised Land, suggests by its mere length and detail that one of the most significant tasks of the job is the work of legacy maintenance ... The Obama that shines through the text is certainly brilliant and analytical, but with little philosophical or ideological heft ... In 2017, I went with a friend to Obama’s farewell speech at McCormick Place. At the end of this speech, I felt a distinct emptiness ... What was missing, which maybe was always missing, was a direction. This president, it seems, has never been clear, to himself or to us, on what values he meant us to be in service of. Service was the value; activity was the value ... At the end of the night, my friend and I left and bought a few souvenir shirts for family members. The shirts, like the man, like the book, like the movement, carried no meaningful slogans or central principles beyond the name and face etched proudly for all to wear, for all to find some fit inside. It all meant something but what it meant we could not say.
