"Months before Barack Obama knew Mitt Romney would be his political opponent in 2012, the president knew the identity of his foremost literary challenger: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Maraniss, who had been reaching out to Obama’s old friends, classmates and lovers for the past several years.
The product of his big dig, “Barack Obama: The Story,” seems to be a nuanced, even sympathetic portrayal culled from people who still admire Obama. Yet, make no mistake, this is a dangerous book for Obama, and White House staffers have been fretting about it in a low-grade way for a long, long time — in part because it could redefine the self-portrait Obama skillfully created for himself in 1995 with “Dreams from My Father.”
The success of “Dreams” has given Obama nearly complete control of his own life narrative, an appealing tale that has been the foundation of his political success. But Maraniss’s biography threatens that narrative by questioning it: Was Obama’s journey entirely spiritual and intellectual? Or was it also grounded in the lower realms of ambition and calculation?
In the handful of excerpts released so far, there are no new bombshells involving personal or political corruption or indiscretion beyond anything Obama has already revealed, though the book isn’t out until June 19.
But a little White House anxiety might be in order. Maraniss is a biographer in search of real insight, not Drudge links or Colbert appearances, a writer and researcher who can’t be dismissed as a cheap hack or fortune hunter, a label Obama’s aides hang on lesser writers with regularity. If ever anyone could find the strand that unravels the sweater, it’s Maraniss, a Washington Post associate editor who defies the news cycle.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75865.html
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