Obama's Father Authored Long-Lost Article

Politico: Essay Surfaces After 43 Years And Offers Insight Into The Kenyan's Mind and Politics

(The Politico)  This story was written by Ben Smith and Jeffrey Ressner.

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Barack Obama's dad was such an important 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. (Click here to read it on Politico.com (PDF))

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 ULA'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 important 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 ownership.

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.

[apolloknowsa]

so...Obama''s thrice-polygamist father, who purchased his first wife for thirteen cows is a socialist, too?

What a nice family story! Sounds like he belongs in Texas at that compound!

[farnsworth30]

"You apparently didn''''t read the rest of the article which stated pretty simply that Kenya was developing a socialist Government and Obama was arguing that the way they were going about it would fail."

Precisely - the way they went about it would fail, meaning he had a better way to bring socialism to Kenya. Don''t deny it Taddles, your a socialist just like Barack and his pimp daddy Barak. Why do leftists always try to hide their true identity? You had one honest leftist in Congress that actually called himself a socialist (Bernie Sanders, now a Senator) and all the other Demunists made him change to Independent because he was making them look bad. Just be honest and let the voters decide what kind of government they want!

[taddles-2009]

""We live in the greatest country in the world, now help me change it!" Baracko
another winner quote from Baracko

ps - change it to what?

Posted by badaxmofo at 07:51 PM : Apr 15, 2008

I believe it really was ''''Change from'''' .... If you can''''t understand that, look around you and think. Cheers!

Posted by parrot123 at 01:28 PM : Apr 16, 2008"


I believe that if you''d spend 2 minutes doing a little research you would find that the quote attributed to Barak Obama was in fact a "joke quote" attributed to a journalist friend of the blogger who was posting about it.

Barak never said those words.

[taddles-2009]

"If this isn''''t socialist, then poop don''''t stink.

Posted by farnsworth30 at 02:27 PM : Apr 16, 2008"



You apparently didn''t read the rest of the article which stated pretty simply that Kenya was developing a socialist Government and Obama was arguing that the way they were going about it would fail...which it did. Was your other favorite part of the article the pretty pictures?

[farnsworth30]

My favorite quote of Obama''s absentee daddy is, when talking about the few individuals in Kenya that make enough money to be able to save - %u201CWhat is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains [i.e., their savings] to the benefit of all and at the same time be able to channel some of these gains to future production.%u201D If this isn''t socialist, then poop don''t stink.

[parrot123-2009]

"We live in the greatest country in the world, now help me change it!" Baracko
another winner quote from Baracko

ps - change it to what?

Posted by badaxmofo at 07:51 PM : Apr 15, 2008

I believe it really was ''Change from'' .... If you can''t understand that, look around you and think. Cheers!

[parrot123-2009]

Do we want a President who''''s more interested in Kenya than he is the United States?
Posted by phillysage at 04:50 PM : Apr 15, 2008


Well written article. I''''m sure the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the uber right will raise it as containing "serious" questions abour Barak without having read, let alone understood the contents of the paper.

But thinking was never much part of the right-wing agenda.
Posted by briannorwood at 04:48 PM : Apr 15, 2008

Phillysage - I didn''t have to respond to you. Hope it helped. Cheers!

[libh8er]

Obama''s Father Authored ''The Farma Sutra''

[libh8er]

Obama''''s Father Authored ''The Grand Wizard of Oz''

[obama8years]

CBS HAS FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE REAL OBAMA! AMAZING ARTICLE!
BRAVE JOUNALIST


Click on Opinion and Read "Bad Company of Barack"

[libh8er]

Obama''s Father Authored ''Raisin In The Sun''

[iamthequeen-]

I could care less about Obama''s so-called father since he obviously couldn''t have cared less about his son. But it''s interesting that Obama chooses his absent father(s) to write about instead of the mother and grandparents that gave him a better upbringing in America than he would have had in either Kenya or Indonesia. That''s why I can''t understand his wife and pastor''s unpatriotic leanings and that they must have an obvious influence on Obama. There are too many dichotomies about Obama that make me uncomfortable about his true loyalties, especially about being president.

[fuzzybear9]

Hello Viewers

and might we just note that Barrak keeps his fathers book on his his night stand next to ``How to become a Kennedy without really Trying by Martin Luther King ``

Oh the Bitterness
All those Pennsylvania Taxpayers Dollars taken by the Kennedy foundation to support Illiterate Kenya Students at
Hawvard

Oh the Bitterness of it All

sincerely voting for somebudy else Bear
Fuzzy

[blackspirit3]

IN 1992 THE CLINTONS WENT TO THE WHITE HOUSE TO FIX THINGS

- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates*
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
- First president sued for sexual harassment.
- First president accused of rape.
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- First president to be held in contempt of court
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
- First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court

IN 2008 LETS SEND THEM BACK TO FINISH THEIR JOB

[badexcuse]

Hate to hear liberals telling others to stop smud slinging and go beyond race and vote for the son of mao tse tung. We are smart enough to see Talent when it shines.

[obie94]

Kenya for those unable to emerge from their myopia of gross and blatant ignorance is a CAPITALIST state, has always been a CAPITALIST state and continues to be a CAPITALIST nation.

''Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 on African Socialism and its application to planning in Kenya'' was a Kenya government policy paper that laid out the long term strategy of how the government planned to correct regional imbalances, eradicate poverty, ignorance and disease.

These policies were indeed adopted and Kenya before and after embraced capitalism in its broadest sense which is evident in Kenya''s vibrant, young and growing capitalist economy.

Those who demonstrate their ignorance and waste time debating another country''s capitalist economic policies dating back to the 1960s would do their country good by learning more about their own economy and what ails it then obsessing over an official Government sessional paper for a country they likely could not pinpoint on a map without extraordinary effort.

[ranger1948]

If obama is our only hope, then God save America because it will take a miracle.

[ranger1948]

rowdytexan2
You have to remember obama''s followers are a bunch of brain dead sheep. You cannot educate them. They will n ot accept facts

[ranger1948]

taddles your name calling only shows your immaturity and lack of knowledge. Isn''t it past your bed time and don''t forget to take your meds.

[ranger1948]

skyk
If obama had been truthful instead of a typical politician then we would have somethig to respect.