The Amateur Hardcover – Illustrated, May 15, 2012

What's stunning about this book is that it doesn't come from Barack Obama's enemies. It comes largely from his friends. Democrats. Liberals. People who are, or used to be, in his camp.And what they have to say about him isn't good.Obama doesn't like people. He won't make the contacts with people necessary to govern. He won't keep in touch with the people he owes. He won't talk to Congress.He's prone to feelings of messianism. He has an unrealistic notion of his own ability to move the world, despite having been nearly invisible previously at the University of Chicago, in the Illinois legislature, at the U.S. Senate. He thinks political positioning can endlessly mask his real goals, a left-wing redistributionist policy.You have to weight for certain things in reading political books. Any president will make enough enemies to fuel plenty of bad press. Any president must struggle not to become isolated in the White House, dependent as he is upon his gatekeepers.Any book like this will reflect spin from sources who want to get even and to control the narrative.But this book suggests problems far, far beyond what can be attributed to spin.Obama alienated wealthy blacks who helped him get started -- the "Day One Club" in Chicago -- by ignoring them once he got elected.He alienated poorer blacks by failing to help them much. Obama has much more in common with white, leftist academics than he does with the black working class.He alienated black small businesspeople with his "corporatist" approach to government - where government governs through a few big corporations and unions, an approach hostile to small business.Obama alienated Jews, his most important white constituency for their reliable liberalism and deep pockets for same, by his heavy-handed treatment of Israel and his perceived tilt towards the Arab world.Obama drove off the Kennedys despite the visible and important backing of Ted Kennedy just before he died, and despite a Kenedy family split afterwards putting at least some on his side.Obama kept a distance from the Clintons, threatened by former president Bill and Obama's toughest primary rival Hillary. Bill Clinton says he hears more from George W. Bush than from this president of his own party. It is Clinton who dubbed Obama an "amateur".At one point I saw a parallel with Jimmy Carter. Both Carter and Obama came to the White House without much Washington experience and surrounded themselves with hometown loyalists.But while Carter's problem was micromanaging, trying to master every aspect of government and do too much, Obama was the opposite: abandoning large areas of governance and policy making to others, such as Democrats in Congress.Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first chief of staff, a pragmatist and former Congressman who understood how Washington works, left because he was tired of losing turf battles to Valerie Jarrett, Obama's top adviser and Michelle Obama's BFF. Obama is now on his fourth chief of staff. Emanuel was almost certainly a source for this, directly or indirectly, and his material might be discounted as payback to Jarrett. But Klein, a former New York Times editor, has so much more to support it with.Jarrett and Michelle Obama drove off Oprah Winfrey -- Obama's most valuable endorsement ever along with Teddy Kennedy, as she instantly gave Obama credibility both with blacks and a broad swath of white Middle America, no easy trick -- because they were threatened by her. Oprah's relations with the Obama camp are now cool and she isn't helping much with his reelection. How inept is this?The book has numerous anecdotes of powerful people - Oprah, Benjamin Netanyahu, Caroline Kennedy - dissed at the White House: left cooling their heels, kept waiting, not invited to lunch, not given the VIP treatment.A fast read, the book sticks to the point: that Obama is over his head, has no idea how to govern or run the White House. He's thin-skinned. He's kept isolated from critics by a fawning inner circle and a jealous wife threatened by the gaggles of women he attracts.The book avoids much rehash of Obama's earlier life. Every page was news to me. Klein doesn't bother with hot-button issues like where Obama was born, whether he's a Muslim or his murky and secret academic record. But he amplifies charges made elsewhere: that Obama wasn't vetted and instead protected by a mainstream media enthralled with him. Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rantings were first reported in early 2007 in Rolling Stone. No other news organ touched the story for more than a year after that. (Klein interviewed Wright for this book, documenting the Obama camp's attempt to bribe Wright into silence.)Klein predicts Obama's reelection campaign: a reprise of Harry Truman's 1948 campaign against the "Do Nothing Republican Congress", plus low-road attacks on Romney to mask Obama's lack of accomplishment. And indeed it's going that way.Truman, though, had 3 percent unemployment and a 6 percent growth rate on his side, an electorate that identified itself as 40 percent Democratic, fond memories of the New Deal, and an opponent who eased up believing victory certain.That's a long time ago, though. And a far cry from 2012, when Barack Obama must try to prove to an electorate - 8 percent unemployed, lefties angry that he's still in Gitmo and Afghanistan, righties angry at just about everything he does, independents wondering why he didn't do more on the economy when he could have - that he's somehow grown from amateur to professional. Good luck with that.

I bought Edward Klein's The Amateur the day it came out; the day Klein revealed on Sean Hannity's radio show that he had audio tapes of the pastor that Obama threw under the bus, Jeremiah Wright, stating that in 2008 Obama crony Eric Whitaker had offered him $150K to keep his mouth shut until after the election. Contrary to the naysayers of Klein's previous exposé on Hillary Clinton, critics' ad hominem attacks on Klein regarding The Amateur this time are ringing false, as the Top Ten slot on Amazon's best seller list shows. Klein names names, interviewing over two hundred people for the book, including Obama's two-decades-long former doctor, who makes the claim that Obama is basically a hollow shell, with no real emotion, and no connection to people. Klein "has the goods," so to speak: in regard to the Eric Whitaker bribery, it is not merely a hidden microphone that caught Wright stating this. It is within an open, 3 1/2 hour interview, where Wright not only states he was bribed, but has the email to prove it. Wright makes other statements, such as Obama's Muslim background, his fickle belief in Christianity, and his two-decades-long allegiance to Trinity United Church of Christ for purely political reasons.I downloaded the book to my Kindle within hours of its release, and read it over a day and a half period, only pausing to sleep. Probably the two most enjoyable-to-read revelations are that 1. Bill Clinton urged Hillary to challenge Obama in 2012. 2. The Kennedy clan despise Obama, despite deceased Ted Kennedy's tireless support of the Community Organizer-in-Chief.An anecdote is described where Bill and Hillary Clinton are having an argument that took place over several days (a screaming match actually, with a dozen people present); that, because Obama had basically destroyed the economy, caused the downgrade of the U.S.'s credit rating for the first time in history, etc., etc.; that Obama was, according to Bill Clinton, an "Amateur" (this is the source of the title of the book); that Hillary needed to challenge Obama in 2012 in order to save the country from sliding off the cliff.The Kennedy clan anecdote is jaw-dropping. All of the Kennedy clan (save Robert Kennedy, Jr.) had stood behind Obama in 2008. But after Obama's coronation and repeated miffs by the First Family: 1. The Obamas ignored an invitation to the Kennedy Compound while vacation at Martha's Vineyard. 2. Michelle Obama treated Caroline Kennedy (daughter of JFK) like hired help while at the White House, shaking her hand coldly, taking a quick photo, and making a quick exit--after these and other miffs the Kennedy royalty at a pow wow had had enough (at one point Robert Kennedy, Jr. shattered a glass in his hand) and got the message from the Obamas loud and clear: rich people are evil, and wanted no more to do with the former community organizers.Contrary to Obama's 'Attack Watch' claim of the book being totally discredited (whereby they don't actually reference anything in the book, but simply go on an ad hominem attack), the book is meticulously researched and at the same time highly readable. It is at the time of this writing #9 on Amazon's bestseller list, and hopefully it will reach #1, whereby at that point the majority of Americans will have read about the current "Amateur" in office being completely unqualified for the job; and realize that when a person is unqualified for a job, are incompetent, that the only remedy is either resignation or being fired.I vote for being fired.

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Prospective buyers of this book should be aware that this is a very partisan book. The author, former New York Times Magazine editor Edward Klein, is not a supporter of President Obama.But this is still a very interesting book. Over the course of a few years, Klein conducted interviews with a few hundred people who knew Barack Obama before and after he became President. The people interviewed ranged from Obama's former paster, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to members of Chicago's African-American elite who bankrolled Obama's first forays into campaigning for elected office, to leaders of the Jewish community who supported Obama in 2008 but became very disillusioned over his stance on Israel, Oprah Winfrey and some of Oprah's inner circle, members of the Kennedy clan, members of the Clintons' circle, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and many others.The portait of Barack Obama that emerges is not a flattering one. Michelle Obama, Obama advisors like Valerie Jarrett and most of Obama's inner circle do not fare much better.This book is certainly worth reading before the upcoming US Presidential election.

So much more could been made out of the information in this book had it not been a cross between a critique of the Obama Administration and a cheap political thriller. Too many throw away lines, no wonder it charmed Obama's critic but failed to dent his credibility.Style sometimes does matter , this book had little. forward tattle about the Clintons could make the beginnings of a real assult on Nillary 2016 but would need to appeal to a wider readership first.

AWESOME