In an uncanny bit of political symmetry, every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has had a brother who seemed hell-bent on embarrassing him or exploiting his presidency for all it’s worth … or both.
Jimmy Carter had to cope not only with his brother Billy’s hillbilly bon mots, which made Jimmy’s political sound bites seem like religious platitudes, but also with Billy’s shady business ventures, which included leading a delegation to do business in Libya because, as he famously said, “there is a hell of a lot more Arabians than there is Jews [sic].”
Bill Clinton had to cope not only with his half-brother Roger’s conviction on drugs charges, which stood in mocking contrast to Bill’s famous line about trying marijuana “but I didn’t inhale,” but also with Roger thanking him for using a presidential pardon to erase his criminal record by making a public spectacle of lobbying him to do the same for his drug-dealing buddies.
Incidentally, all indications are that Hillary will have to cope twofold if she succeeds Obama in 2016. Because she has two brothers, Hugh and Tony, who tried to exploit their brother-in-law’s presidency as much as Roger tried to embarrass him.
Most notably, they tried to leverage Bill’s presidency to establish a $100 million business importing hazelnuts from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Unfortunately, the Georgian partner they chose was a major political rival of the Georgian president – who the United States happened to be aggressively wooing away from having any affinity for, or association with, Russia.
Now Barack Obama is having to cope not only with his half-brother Mark’s version of the Obama family story, but also with Mark dissing much of Barack’s own version of that story, which he told in his 1995 bestseller, Dreams From My Father.
Never mind that the overriding theme of Obama’s version is that what little he knew about his absentee father came from family folklore and mythology, which, like any kid, he took at face value. He hardly knew the man, after all. More to the point, he recounts in poignant fashion having most, if not all, of his “dreams” dashed upon learning the sober realities of his father’s alcohol-fueled abuses and professional shortcomings.
But nothing betrays Mark’s intent to exploit his brother’s fame quite like the fact that he only began using the Obama name after Barack became a global phenomenon and the presumptive president of the United States. Such was his (understandable) contempt for his and Barack’s Kenyan father that, for all of his adult life, he used only his Tanzanian stepfather’s name, Ndesandjo.
In fact, Mark had so utterly disowned everyone associated with the Obama name that, in remarking on his decision to sever ties, Barack quotes him in Dreams saying the following:
I don’t feel much of an attachment [to Kenya]. Just another poor African country… You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots … Well, you’re right.
This is why Mark’s counter-narrative is as specious as it is spiteful. Yet he’s now peddling his third volume since Obama’s election in 2009. Significantly, his latest, An Obama’s Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery Across Three Cultures, is far more noteworthy for what he writes about the “factual errors” in Obama’s Dreams than for what he writes about his self-discovery. Whether this one will finally be a bestseller is probably immaterial to him. Because his motive for writing seems as old as that which motivated Cain to smite Able: jealousy and resentment.
After all, his (now-famous) brother shows little interest in having any kind of relationship with him – perhaps even giving the impression that he sees in Mark all the sins of their father that he’d just as soon forget he ever learned about. Mind you, if Barack were just a law professor, Mark would probably be showing even less interest in having any kind of relationship with him. But, given their circumstances, Barack’s disinterest must be all the more galling for Mark considering that, by all accounts, their Kenyan father’s two marriages to White, liberal American women produced two boys who now bear a striking resemblance, right down to their mannerisms.
To be fair, though, Obama probably knew even less, first hand, about his half-brother growing up than he knew about his father. Meanwhile, Mark concedes, or boasts, that he didn’t even know Barack’s name before they first met in 1988. And he can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they’ve had “very awkward, cold meeting[s]” since then.
Yet there’s enough fodder about their relationship, even in the public domain, for a sibling rivalry of, well, Biblical proportions. That Barack is the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, seems reason enough to incite visceral jealousy and resentment in Mark. Not least because the ambitious Mark is just an English teacher in China, having relocated there, of all places, after losing his job as an IT technician in the United States. Therefore, what else could he do to seem as good as, if not better than, his brother than to bring Barack down a few pegs by “exposing” him as a fantasist and a fabricator?
Interestingly enough, Mark may have unwittingly given some insight into his self-righteous and self-serving motivation when he said the following during an interview for the March 23, 2014 edition of the South China Morning Post:
It’s funny… In Dreams, Barack says sons often spend their lives trying to achieve their father’s dreams or correct their errors. That polarity defines my relationship with Barack. I’ve been trying to correct the issues I experienced with my father my whole life. Barack, on the other hand, has been achieving my father’s goals and dreams.
NOTE: Barack has a number of other alleged half-brothers and half-sisters. However, none of them seem as determined as Mark is to embarrass him or exploit his presidency.