The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama

As modest proposals go, it's a tricky one: getting across the idea that the certain conviction one should be the "leader of the free world" is born of nothing beyond a humble wish to serve. The Democratic contender Barack Obama, in writing a fairly chunky book exploring the matter, and publishing it as he hits the presidential campaign trail, has chosen to offer a fairly comprehensive exposition of his paradoxical position.

It helps, of course, that he can write, in an easy, casual, but careful style. Mellifluous and friendly, it hints rather than boasts at an underlying intelligence and determination rather more steely than this gentle, scrupulously fair-minded, but sweeping and generalised text might necessarily confirm. It helps, too, that he has no hesitation in becoming intimate with the reader, offering a touching vignette here of the courtship of his wife, Michelle, and a moving glimpse there of the all-conquering wonder of breathing the scent of a little daughter's hair.

He does jokes too, self-deprecating ones that acknowledge the distance from ordinary experience that senators inevitably develop, like when he has to admit that his first experience of flying by private jet was "nice". Edgier ones suggest a refreshing relaxation about political correctness, like when a senator turns to him during an impassioned speech by a black firebrand about racism and its iniquities to confess that the speaker's trouble is that he makes him feel "too white". Obama doesn't want anyone to feel too anything, except perhaps too lucky not to want to share it round.

Obama famously emerged from the junior ranks of the US Senate to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention that seemed to remind delegates what exactly it was that they stood for, and how exactly they could get that across to "the people". He's pitched as the unity candidate, a man who personally encapsulates the splendid inclusiveness of being American, and is able to express it in ideological and idealistic terms that are humane and tender without being comically clichéd or overly sentimental.

There are times when he fails to manage the latter, at least as far as the British sensibility is concerned. "Please stay who you are, they will say to me. Please don't disappoint us," he reports from the stump. "I feel cleansed afterwards for the work I have chosen." Imagine one of our guys trying that one out. It would quite definitely add to the gaiety of the nation, and not much else.

Obama's primary concern, as it comes across in the course of the book, is to cherish the story of the US, the wisdom of its Founding Fathers, the genius of the constitution and its other founding texts, and the broad justice of the development of government from that time onwards. At the same time, he argues firmly that the time is ripe for not a few operational tweaks.

His analysis of the strengths and the pitfalls of the free market in a globalised economy is, I think, spot on, although I'm aware that this may be because it is in almost every detail exactly the same as my own.

He's unafraid, at times, to show disgust at the cynicism of the exploitative manner in which some Republicans seek to carve up the consequences of globalisation in order to protect the prerogatives of the elites they represent. He tells with cold revulsion of a Republican colleague who was resisting any immigration legislation that would legalise the status of undocumented workers, on the official grounds that it would damage the job prospects of Americans. Obama asked him privately why a bill giving citizens and migrant workers equal pay would damage US jobs when surely there would, on the contrary, be less incentive to employ migrant workers if they cost the same as citizens. The Senator said: "Cause let's face it Barack. These Mexicans are just willing to work harder than Americans do."

Obama feels sure that Americans would prefer not to "tolerate the hypocrisy of a servant class in their midst", although you do feel like pointing out that it has never really had to manage without one.

Obama's description of the social forces hampering a more equitable spread of US prosperity chimes powerfully with the British pattern. Many of his prescriptions for change have been tried already by the Blair government, and have so far failed to resemble the magic bullet a logical liberal would assume them to be. Obama talks of improving people's diets to improve their health, for example, when over here we already know such initiatives start unravelling into baffling controversy at the "how to label healthy food" stage.

He also talks of disregarding many of the shibboleths adhered to by opposing political parties, and instead choosing "what works". He's black Blair really, and with all the same appeal.

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