Once Upon a Memoir

Before this fortnight is over, the United States will know their next president — though given the recent history of legally challenged results in that country, it may be wise not to hedge any bets on this. Perhaps, what can be counted upon with more confidence is that no matter which way the election goes, whether Barack Obama wins the elections or not, his will be the profile that most people will reassess with greater gusto, not Mitt Romney’s. Not since Gandhiji used the personal to rally ever more people towards very public and politically transformative causes has anyone updated, in real time, his biographical detail as vividly as Obama has done in an exercise in persuasive politics and diplomacy.

It used to be joked during his contest of the primaries against Hillary Clinton more than four years ago that he was making a bid for the most powerful office on earth just on the strength of two memoirs (Dreams From My Father, The Audacity of Hope), and not on an accumulation of experience to qualify for the job. So he may have, but by placing his life story at the heart of his policy prescriptions in such a way that every retelling of his story made the narrative yet more capacious to accommodate

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