Well, there are probably other guys who are better than Sailer out there, but I haven’t dug them up? Any tips? I’m very interested in finding out, because the issue is kind of important (to say the least) ;).
I.e. is Obama still very comfortable with far left / racialist radicalism, or has he truly mellowed out in his old age? Is his pragmatism merely Alinskyite tactical moderation (for the sake of effectively pushing radicalism), or a genuine sign of being a “ball player”. Not clear yet.
I guess my central problems with Steve Sailer's take on Obama is first, that he accepts too much of "Dreams" at face value, and second, that he identifies too sympathetically, given his own background, with Obama's life story as published. That empathy also leads him to discount alternate viewpoints, as evidenced by his somewhat obsessive refutation of Cashill's ghostwriting theory. (Not to mention that Cashill's theory, if correct, would wreck Steve's work.)
To answer your question though, there's no one I know of, other than Sailer, that's made the attempt to interpret O's entire life, but there's quite a bit of analysis based on independent sources that yields quite a different picture of Obama. You could start with Stanley Kurtz, and in particular, "Senator Stealth," a long article analyzing the significance of his community organizer persona. One very interesting document Kurtz references, “Promising Practices in Revenue Generation for Community Organizing.” can be found here. Search the doc for the third instance of the word "Obama," and you find this sentence: "In the mid-1980s one such advisor was somewhat new to organizing but a great analyst and interpreter of organizing - Barack Obama."
In the "mid-80's"? Obama didn't get to Chicago until 1985, but according to this report, he was, right out of the starting block, a) involved with some of the most influential and wealthy Chicago figures, and more importantly, b) had already formulated the strategy of using "community groups" to, as Kurtz explains in this article and elsewhere, eventually propel and sustain his political career all the way to DC. That picture, of course, is a direct contrast to the one presented in "Dreams," where he portrays himself as a neophyte idealist seeking only to identify and redress the problems of Altgeld Gardens in the tradition of the civil rights movement.
Quite a contrast, and one of the many reasons that I view "Dreams," and what we are led to believe about Obama's history, with extreme skepticism. That's not to say there isn't some truth in the book, but, unlike Steve, I don't think you can formulate anywhere near a true picture of the man based on what he's written (with a large dollop of help in that writing contributed by someone else, but that's another topic).
You might also look at some of Spengler's writing on the subject, particularly this column, for his take on O's powers of persuasion (in spite of the article's title, written before the economic meltdown).
“I.e. is Obama still very comfortable with far left / racialist radicalism, or has he truly mellowed out in his old age?”
His old age?