The measure of the man
It was only when he was overseas that James Kloppenberg began seriously thinking about Barack Obama. “When I was in England in the fall of 2008, I discovered that there was so much interest in Obama as a phenomenon,” he recalled. “In order to understand him better, I re-read his books.” At the time, Kloppenberg, chair of the History Department and Charles Warren Professor of American History, was lecturing at the University of Cambridge in England. “I had given seven lectures on American political thought and was about to write my eighth and final lecture when I discovered that all of the themes in the preceding seven lectures are played out in Obama’s books,” said Kloppenberg. “Obama is a sophisticated and incisive student of American history, American law, and American political thought,” he said. “It’s somewhat surprising that people consider him to be enigmatic, because we haven’t had another president who has given...