The Dream Begins: How Hawai’i Shaped Barack Obama / When Sen. Barack Obama returned to Hawai’i on vacation in August, thousands of supporters gathered at Ke’ehi Lagoon to welcome him home. Mayor Mufi Hannemann gave a brief introduction and compared the senator to President John F. Kennedy, who visited Hawai’i in 1963 and gave a memorable speech on his arrival.

In their new book The Dream Begins: How Hawai’i Shaped Barack Obama (Watermark Publishing, 2008), Stu Glauberman and Jerry Burris write about President Kennedy’s remarks to a national meeting of mayors about ensuring the civil rights of African Americans. “Upon his arrival at the airport, Kennedy delivered remarks highlighting what he envisioned as the ideal mixing of races on the island of O’ahu: ‘Reaching into the Pacific, yet part of the United States, this island represents all that we are and all that we hope to be.’” Kennedy’s quote would foreshadow Obama’s rise to power four decades later.

The mainstream press hasn’t covered Obama’s upbringing in Hawai’i in much depth, and Glauberman and Burris do a good job of showing how deep his roots are in the Islands. In the book, his wife Michelle says, “You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawai’i.” In their lean but colorful prose, the authors paint an intriguing portrait of Obama and the forces that shaped him.

The Kennedy comparison

In the first chapter, the authors compare the unlikely presidential campaigns of Kennedy and Obama. “In 1960, many people had dismissed U.S. Senator John Kennedy’s chances of becoming president because he was a Catholic and there had never been a Catholic president before him. Half a century later, here was Obama daring Americans to choose as their next president a man of mixed race who chose emphatically to define himself as an African-American…Could this be the man who could help Americans bridge painful, centuries-old, historical racial and regional differences?”

Although the authors don’t expand on the comparison between the two leaders, now is a good time to take a fresh look at Obama’s similarities and differences to Kennedy–especially after the last eight years of destructive wars, spiraling debt and economic downturns. Both were bright, young Democratic senators fighting against older, more aggressive Republicans known for their hawkish policies and hardball politics. Both Democrats were bold, historic leaders who broke through religious and racial barriers. And both were eloquent speakers and best-selling authors who promised to usher in a new age of reform and change. But when it comes to their family histories, there’s a world of difference.

Kennedy was born into one of the wealthiest and most powerful dynasties in the country, with extensive ties to powerful players in the military, politics and business. Obama, on the other hand, was born into a broken home and raised by a single mother and later by his grandparents. Yet Obama is heir to many of the changes that President Kennedy supported, including the civil rights movement and international missions like the Peace Corps and the East-West Center.

School days

Obama wrestled with his identity as one of the few poor, black students at an institution that was “traditionally regarded as a school for ‘haole rich kids.’” But during the course of his time at Punahou, Obama seems to have undergone a personal transformation. He went from being a pudgy kid named Barack, who was confused about his mixed racial identity, to being a leaner, more confident African-American teenager who called himself Barry.

Part of his newfound confidence came when he discovered his love of basketball. Craig Robinson, Obama’s brother-in-law, says that Obama “didn’t know who he was until he found basketball.” Robinson adds, “It was the first time he really met black people.”

Nicknamed “Barry O’Bomber,” Obama’s trademark move became his long, fade-away jump shots. He went on to become a member of Punahou’s all-star basketball team that won the state championship during his senior year. “Before he was a politician in a well-tailored suit,” the authors write, “he was a lanky kid with a trimmed Afro who loved to bodysurf and dreamed of moving to the mainland to be an NBA star.”

Although Obama is sometimes portrayed as an effete intellectual or a member of the cultural elite, he earned plenty of street cred playing ball at the city’s roughest public parks. He and his friends also used to drive out to Sandy Beach, where they would bodysurf in some of Hawai’i’s most dangerous waves. “He and his pals would escape to ‘Sandys’ on weekends to bodysurf, hang out and escape the weekday pressures of Punahou,” the authors write.

In the classroom, on the basketball court and in the face of Sandy’s “bone-crushing waves,” Barack learned a mental and physical toughness that would serve him well in the rough-and-tumble world of modern politics. He never fulfilled his “hoop dreams” of becoming an NBA star, yet after law school, he began to see a future in politics. His run for the Illinois Senate may have seemed like a long shot at first, but “Barry O’Bomber” always kept his eyes on the prize and, the authors say, never forgot where he came from.

A “third senator”

In the introduction to The Dream Begins, Rep. Neil Abercrombie writes, “At an event at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki to celebrate his election as Hawai’i’s ‘third senator,’ Barack was visibly moved. It was apparent that the enthusiasm of the crowd that night was the beginning of a great wave that would roll across the nation.”

During his recent visit to Hawai’i, Obama returned to Sandy Beach, and photographers captured a shot of him bodysurfing like a pro. Abercrombie and many others in Hawai’i hope that the senator will ride this current wave of popularity all the way to the White House.

Although Obama is often portrayed as a dreamer, he seems to be the only candidate with realistic plans to repair our faltering economy and sick health care system and a real desire to heal our divisions at home and abroad. “I learned very early on in Hawai’i how to bring people together,” he says at the end of The Dream Begins, “all the different cultures and that spirit of aloha that’s so important.”

At the rally where Hannemann welcomed Barack Obama back home this summer, the mayor told the crowd that this native son personifies the “spirit of aloha…wherever he goes throughout the country.” Welcoming him to the stage, Hannemann shouted what many in the crowd were already thinking and hoping to be true: “Here is the man we’ve been waiting for, Honolulu’s latest and greatest gift to the world and the next President of the United States, Senator Barack Obama!”

Honolulu writer Stuart Coleman is the author of Eddie Would Go.