Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President

by Jack Cashill

Did Obama write his own books and is the story they tell true?“I've written two books,” Barack Obama told a crowd of teachers in July of 2008. “I actually wrote them myself.” The teachers exploded in laughter. They got the lesser politicians were not bright enough to do the same. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama supporters pointed to the first of those two books, the 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father , as proof of Obama’s superior intellect. Time magazine called Dreams “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.” The Obama campaign machine traded on the candidate’s literary reputation, encouraging volunteers to “get out the vote and keep talking to others about the genius of Barack Obama.”There was just one small flaw, as writer and literary detective Jack Cashill discovered months before the November 2008 nothing in Obama’s history suggested he was capable of writing either Dreams or his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope . In fact, as Cashill continued his research, he came to the shocking conclusion that the real craftsman behind Dreams was terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers.“This was a charge,” David Remnick admits in his definitive Obama biography, The Bridge , “that if ever proved true, or believed to be true among enough voters, could have been the end of the candidacy.”Deconstructing Obama tells the story of what happens when a citizen journalist discovers a game-changing reality that the media refuse to acknowledge. Despite their rejection, Cashill expanded his research into Obama’s literary canon. As he came to see, if Dreams serves as sacred text, the poem “Pop” is the Rosetta stone, the key to deciphering Obama’s shrouded past, his fragile psyche, and his uniquely cryptic political life. In unlocking that past, Cashill discovered that the story that Obama has been telling all his life varies from the true story in ways big and small. In fact, much of Obama’s life story appears to be a wholly constructed fabrication, one that Jack Cashill “deconstructs” to show the world just who Barack Obama really is.

Genres: Politics, Biography, Presidents

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2011

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of shockers here; I read it in a day (300 pages) because I was so enthralled with the untangling of all the lies that make up the liberal myth of Obama. The largest, most damaging piece of fraud is the virtual certainly that Bill Ayers (the unrepentant radical, formerly of the Weather Underground, who regrets not throwing more bombs) ghost-wrote all or nearly all of Obama's first book, _Dreams from my Father_. Radical as Ayers is, he is also a fine writer, teacher of writing, and "book doctor." If you are someone who is a stickler for correct grammar, who admires skillful writing, scorns bad writing, and knows the difference, Cashill will convince you of Ayers's authorship, unless of course your mind is completely closed to criticism of Obama. The Obamanauts have managed to keep the Ayers connection well hidden, with the bulk of the relationship under wraps, like an iceberg with only the tip showing above the surface ("just a fellow in the neighborhood). Equally hidden is Obama's relationship with his mentor Frank Marshall Davis, a devout Communist of the Stalinist camp, also noted for his poetry, photography, and pornography, with some nudes bearing striking resemblance to the young Stanley Ann Denham.

Interesting questions are also raised about the dates and purposes of Obama's travels, his intimate relationships, his paternity itself, and his mother's travels and relationships. I found the revelations and speculations shocking but not terribly surprising, since Obama is far more mysterious than any other POTUS. His grades, SAT and LSAT scores, friends at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, transcripts, mother's marriage license and divorce decree are either destroyed or sealed away where they can't be made public.

I knew nothing about Cashill when I started this book, but his other work is going on my to-read list.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is scary. If even half true shows a huge conspiratorial working that would seem to be the norm for politics. Some of it would seem so easy to have answered if Obama wanted to. Like his college LSATs scores etc.

[Alex Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presents a compelling argument that Bill Ayers had a very large role in the creation of "Dreams of My Father."

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in how Obama won the presidency in 2008, I would highyl recommend this book. Very informative and enlightening in some parts.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and brings up great points. Too bad more people don't read it and find out for themselves that we've been had.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the liberal media either doesn't know about Obama or chooses not to tell you. It wouldn't be hard for them to track down the facts it they were interested in them.

[Graham Seibert]

Lying is an essential art of statecraft and every President does it. Some of them, such as Johnson and Clinton, develop a great deal of practice lying in their private lives. I am sure that suppressing their amorous peccadilloes with a straight face prepared them for the sort of practical prevarication routinely demanded by diplomacy. However, never has there been the president before his entire life was constructed of lies. Mary McCarthy's great quip about Lillian Hellman, that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'" would seem to apply to Obama.

The author, Jack Cashill, goes into the kind of literary deconstruction that might have thrilled my High School English teacher, looking at the dangling participles, nautical images, malapropisms and the like which tie Obama's prose to that of 60s domestic terrorist William Ayres, who he claims wrote "Dreams Of My Father.” By the way, he also has a quote from William Ayres claiming that he wrote the book.

Just as interesting, and much easier to substantiate, are the repeated, egregious anachronisms in both Dreams of My Father and Audacity of Hope. The Obama life story just simply does not fit together. If Cashill is wrong, I am sure that the blogosphere would be alive with Obama Kool-Aid partisans saying as much. When did his father come to the United States? Did he ever marry Obama's mother? When did he leave Obama's mother? When did he leave the United States? When did Obama's mother move back to Washington state? Cashill makes the point that they tried to spin together a narrative to sell a product, Obama, and they had to force fit several pieces. It did not help that the author of Dreams, while a good writer, was an ideologue with his own agenda. It also did not help that Audacity was a committee project. In the final analysis, the Cashill makes a pretty convincing case that they don't fit together.

So what? Kennedy didn't write Profiles in Courage either. He did manage to keep that fact suppressed until after he was elected, and once elected he had enough chutzpah to carry it off. While it may be that with Obama we bought a pig in a poke, a true unknown who was very skillfully marketed, we have to ask if that matters.

One thing that comes through very clearly is that Obama was a very focused man, willing to throw
everybody who helped him, in turn, under the bus as he climbed to higher office. Bill Ayres himself went under that bus, and came out bitching. As did the Rev. Wright, recently, and many politicians who helped along the way. In politics you have to be a ruthless bastard to succeed. Part of Obama's success is apparently his ability to keep his dagger sheathed until the right moment for a sure stab in the back.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book is Cashill’s account of his own difficulties overcoming the
stumbling blocks thrown in his path by Obama's many protectors and supporters. It rings very true, and it makes you wonder where the vast right wing conspiracy is when it is needed. He fought a lonely battle trying to figure out what happened. The first-person aspect of the book adds greatly to its enjoy ability.

I got into very heated debates over the Swift boaters back in 2004. I read the book, I had served in
Vietnam, and it all rang true to me. There is still a large contingent who believe that the Swift boat story is an invention of the vast right wing conspiracy, and have put "Swiftboating" into the leftist vocabulary just as surely as "Borking” belongs to the right. I have a premonition that this book is going to be important enough in the upcoming election to get its own verb (gerund – thanks Mr. Cashill). Whether or not you want to believe it, it will probably be important to have read it. Obama will not be able to sweep it under the rug.

[Bittersweet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this years ago, just now getting around to my review. Obama is a fraud in more ways than one. But in this book you will see the evidence that this community disorganizer lies when he lists himself as the author of his second book. So much about Obama was covered up by leftist media. Only read if you can handled being really ticked off. If the media had done its job, this curse on America would never have entered the White House and many of the evil-doing and disasters happening in our Country recently and today would have been averted or never dreamed of.

[Ryan]

Some useful facts about the author and the paper he contributes to weekly.

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/201...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/world-...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/WND

Hope I can help at least one person.

[Sam Honeycutt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author makes a great case for Obama's books being ghost written by his bomb planting Hyde Park bro Bill Ayers.

[Grace Bellomy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Exposes Obama's real character.

[Howard Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book arguing that Bill Ayers actually wrote Dreams of My Father. The available evidence is that Ayers, at least, acted as a sort of hands-on editor, but I'm not sure if the case is made that he actually wrote the whole book. Of course, editing the book is bad enough as it shows just how intertwined Obama and Ayers were, despite all of the careful denials during the 2008 campaign. A fun detail: Ayers' books - and Dreams - are filled with nautical imagery because Ayers worked as a merchant seaman for a couple years.

[Matthew Goben · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, this is a very concise, well organized book. Easy to understand.

[Johns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love him or hate him, Jack Cashill writes with a lot of entertaining wit as he lays out a factual, compelling case that our current president is a total fraud. Read it yourself and then decide.