This book has a silly and callow title, hastily borrowed from some undistinguished preacher of uplift when Barack Obama was in urgent need of an applause line. It also has an overly portentous subtitle: Martin Luther King was a distinguished preacher who inspired genuine uplift, but his “dream” rhetoric has long been a refuge for the lazy and the demagogic and for all those who prefer feeling to thinking. And this is a pity, because the author of the ensuing pages is a serious and thoughtful young man, whose charm is the reflection of his own personality rather than the cheap confection of managers and handlers and publishers.

Obama’s open and engaging style can be found on almost every page. Describing the Niagara of favourable publicity that has cascaded over him since he wowed the Democratic convention in 2004 and then went on to become a senator from the great state of Illinois, he writes: “No doubt some of this had to do with my status as an underdog in my senate primary, as well as my novelty as a black candidate with an exotic background. Maybe it also had something to do with my style of communicating, which can be rambling, hesitant, and overly verbose (both my staff and Michelle often remind me of this), but which perhaps finds sympathy in the literary class.”

Without its closing nine words, that would be a standard – and somewhat arch – claim to likeability by any candidate who wants to show he’s human and who uses his staff and his wife for the purpose. But please notice that there’s a little sting in that tail. Obama knows that he is the darling of the press, and the spoilt pet of the Democratic rank and file, and he also knows that adoration of this kind could either make him the first black President of the United States or snap him like a twig. (Incidentally, from some incidents in this book and also from some recent episodes in public, it appears that his lovely “Michelle” is also acutely conscious of this trap.)

This is not Obama’s first book. That was Dreams from My Father (there goes the dream-theme again), which was a bestseller because of its freshness and honesty. You probably all know the story: black father, white American mother, early family break-up and some stepfathering that wasn’t too ghastly; boyhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, some energetic “community organising” in Chicago and then a stellar success at Harvard Law School. The whole tale told with a remarkable humour and absence of self-pity, all helping to fulfil another dream altogether, which is the yearning of millions of white Americans to clear their consciences by finally electing a black president. Indeed, make that a truly “African-American” president: Obama’s father was a Kenyan.

The expression “easy in his skin” could have been coined for this author, whose most amusing chapter describes the Republican challenger he faced in his Senate race. Not only was Alan Keyes very black and very Harvard-educated, but he was also (and still is) a foam-flecked Christian fundamentalist. The stupid Republicans of Illinois may have thought it was clever to play the colour card and match their champion against the Democrats’ rising star, but it’s no exaggeration to say that they turned a livid white when they saw their mistake. Keyes attacked Obama for being insufficiently black, and for not being the descendant of slaves. Well, the United States is secretly relieved to have many voluntary black immigrants who did not come there in chains, and Senator Obama (there will never be a Senator Keyes) is the living proof that “Black Power” resentment – and from the right at that – can be defeated by a little wit and a little self-deprecation. A win-win, as they say.

However, charm is not the same as charisma and Chicago is a notoriously hard school of politics in which idealism usually gives way to interest-groups. We can credit Obama with knowing this, but not with having a good answer to the Capitol Hill reporter whom he quotes as asking him whether this book could be as interesting as his last one. The answer to that, I fear, is an emphatic “no”. The paralysis of American politics already has its lock on his jaw. Globalisation? Good idea, but needs to be implemented more slowly. (Slowly?) War in the Middle East? Fine in principle, but not really doable without lots of allies. (Then where’s the principle?) Government? Too small now, but always in danger of being too big. Religion in politics? Not a great idea, but more or less excusable if voiced with enough “compassion”. Great sheets of think-tank boilerplate separate the extremely few moments of zest or originality.

Still, Obama does possess one faculty that is almost unbelievably rare among today’s candidates. He is an internationalist, has lived in other countries and cultures and likes to travel. In making an otherwise boring point about “energy independence”, he notices that when he was in Ukraine the whole promise of the democratic revolution there was negated by the simple fact that Moscow could cut off the gas and the oil. He describes the atmosphere of Jakarta – a city that he rightly says most Americans cannot locate on a map – with a rather evocative power. Like many politicians he has an eye for the effective quotation but one never quite gets the feeling that these excerpts have been supplied by staffers, and when he cites Justice Louis Brandeis as saying that “in a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen”, he does so with feeling. It is flashes such as this, in an overlong book that obviously hopes to please too many people in too many ways, that make us wish that one so young would not learn the dreary rules of the game so early. One might have hoped, in short, for a little more audacity.

A little circumspection

Although engaging, The Audacity of Hope is markedly less candid than Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father. In the earlier memoir, Obama was quite happy to talk about his youthful indiscretions, and to admit in particular to having “maybe a little blow” as a youngster to help “blur the edges of my memory”. Compare this to Bill Clinton, who on the campaign trail in 1992 admitted he’d “experimented” with marijuana but didn’t “inhale”.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE by Barack Obama

Canongate £14.99 pp383

Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £13.49 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585 and timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Read on.... books: http://www.barackobama.com/ Obama’s website

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy