I read an extract of Barack Obama's autobiography - A Promised Land - over my tea and toast this morning, it's
serialised in The Sunday Times, and I think it might be one of those great books about or by former presidents and their terms in office. I grew up reading Arthur Schlesinger's accounts of the Kennedy's, and found them fairly compelling, and have always been drawn to trying to understand the mindsets of great leaders, people who have risen to unimaginable heights of power.
Obama is maybe the only US president who couldn't afford even the slightest blemish in his personal life to be made public, given the history that was invested in him. Imagine if he had the character faults, peccadillos and allegations hanging over him that were routine for 42, and 45. But imagine if he had only one thousandth of their faults. He carried a burden they'd never have known. Obama is a man who personifies dignity in office, and while I'm not overly familiar with his domestic achievements, and I didn't rate him too highly on the international stage, I always admired the man, and his family. They had so much negative scrutiny that their behaviour and class was their best advertisement.
Interesting beginning to the extract:
“And how are you holding up?” Valerie asked me.
I stopped at the top of the stairs to search my jacket pockets for some notes I needed for the meeting we were about to attend. “I’m good,” I said.
“You sure?” Her eyes narrowed as she searched my face like a doctor examining a patient for symptoms. I found what I was looking for and started walking again.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “Why? Do I seem different to you?”
Valerie [Jarrett, one of Obama’s senior advisers] shook her head. “No,” she said. “You seem exactly the same. That’s what I don’t understand.”
It wasn’t the first time Valerie had commented on how little the presidency had changed me. I understood that she meant it as a compliment — her way of expressing relief that I hadn’t gotten too full of myself, lost my sense of humour, or turned into a bitter, angry jerk. But as war and the economic crisis dragged on and our political problems began to mount, she started worrying that maybe I was acting a little too calm, that I was just bottling up all the stress.
She wasn’t the only one. Friends started sending notes of encouragement, sombre and heartfelt, as if they’d just learned that I had a serious illness. Marty Nesbitt and Eric Whitaker discussed flying in to hang out and watch a ball game — a “boys’ night”, they said, just to take my mind off things. Mama Kaye, arriving for a visit, expressed genuine surprise at how well I looked in person.
It seems he had a rare virtue in politics, and life: "I’d discovered about myself during the campaign, obstacles and struggles rarely shook me to the core."
Interestingly too, given a discussion we had above about how the media operates and tries to drive a narrative, he says:
What I hadn’t fully appreciated, though, at least not until I scanned a few news broadcasts, was how the images producers used in stories about my administration had shifted of late. Back when we were riding high, toward the end of the campaign and the start of my presidency, most news footage showed me active and smiling, shaking hands or speaking in front of dramatic backdrops, my gestures and facial expressions exuding energy and command. Now that most of the stories were negative, a different version of me appeared: older-looking, walking alone along the colonnade or across the South Lawn to Marine One, my shoulders slumped, my eyes downcast, my face weary and creased with the burdens of the office.
The media, as we know, will report news while also giving it their own slant in the headlines, in the photographs etc. In fact, he says, "life as I was experiencing it didn’t feel nearly so dire."
I think this will be an interesting book for anyone interested in politics. One segment stuck out in particular for me, when he discusses performers coming to the White House:
Every genre was represented: Motown and Broadway show tunes; classic blues and a Fiesta Latina; gospel and hip-hop; country, jazz, and classical. The musicians typically rehearsed the day before they were scheduled to appear, and if I happened to be upstairs in the residence as they were running through their set, I could hear the sounds of drums and bass and electric guitar reverberating through the Treaty Room floor. Sometimes I’d sneak down the back stairs of the residence and slip into the East Room, standing in the rear so as not to attract attention, and just watch the artists at work: a duet figuring out their harmonies, a headliner tweaking an arrangement with the house band. I’d marvel at everyone’s mastery of their instruments, the generosity they showed toward one another as they blended mind, body, and spirit, and I’d feel a pang of envy at the pure, unambiguous joy of their endeavours, such a contrast to the political path I had chosen.
This is poignant, but also it made me think of Pericles and Marcus Aurelio and and all the great and powerful leaders throughout history, who might be likewise so cultured, they might also sneak a peak at the players of their time rehearsing, and feed a similar hunger they felt. It's a timeless scene, and one that gives another view of him, among so many of them, actually, in this short extract...
