I learned a lot about politics from reading this, and also a developed a fondness for Obama. He comes across as thoughtful and introspective and was really fascinating to understand the inner tension that exists in all major decisions.
Great bedtime reading: interesting enough to hold my attention while also lulling me to sleep.
Highlights
First and foremost, I hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office—not just a historical record of key events that happened on my watch and important figures with whom I interacted but also an account of some of the political, economic, and cultural crosscurrents that helped determine the challenges my administration faced and the choices my team and I made in response. (Location 81)
the court of the conqueror has no capacity to recognize the just claims of the conquered. (Location 112)
More than anyone, this book is for those young people—an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us. (Location 136)
Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies, I tell my daughters—and at least that was true for me at Harvard. (Location 449)
The truth is, I’ve never been a big believer in destiny. I worry that it encourages resignation in the down-and-out and complacency among the powerful. I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt. (Location 1304)
Which is how the United States and other advanced democracies came to create the modern social contract. As our society grew more complex, more and more of the government’s function took the form of social insurance, with each of us chipping in through our tax dollars to protect ourselves collectively—for disaster relief if our house was destroyed in a hurricane; unemployment insurance if we lost a job; Social Security and Medicare to lessen the indignities of old age; reliable electricity and phone service for those who lived in rural areas where utility companies wouldn’t otherwise make a profit; public schools and universities to make education more egalitarian. (Location 5182)
A deep and suffocating cynicism took hold. Indeed, it became axiomatic among political consultants of both parties that restoring trust in the government or in any of our major institutions was a lost cause, and that the battle between Democrats and Republicans each election cycle now came down to whether America’s squeezed middle class was more likely to identify the wealthy and powerful or the poor and minorities as the reason they weren’t doing better. (Location 5211)
What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. (Location 5548)
Spiraling healthcare costs also burdened American businesses: Japanese and German automakers didn’t have to worry about the extra $1,500 in worker and retiree healthcare costs that Detroit had to build into the price of every car rolling off the assembly line. (Location 7057)
It was precisely the ability of a judge to understand the context of his or her decisions, to know what life was like for a pregnant teen as well as for a Catholic priest, a self-made tycoon as well as an assembly-line worker, the minority as well as the majority, that was the wellspring of objectivity. (Location 7310)
We’d grown skilled at suppressing our reactions to minor slights, ever ready to give white colleagues the benefit of the doubt, remaining mindful that all but the most careful discussions of race risked triggering in them a mild panic. (Location 7466)
and that they might someday think back on our trips together and be reminded that they were so worthy of love, so fascinating and electric with life, that there was nothing their parents would rather do than share those vistas with them. (Location 7547)
This awareness didn’t stop me from believing we should contain the spread of Marxist totalitarianism. But (Location 8529)
Instead, the evils of the Soviet system struck me as a variation on a broader human tragedy: The way abstract theories and rigid orthodoxy can curdle into repression. (Location 8531)
For the entirety of their lives, China’s system had lifted them and their families along an upward trajectory, while from a distance, at least, Western democracies seemed stuck in neutral, full of civic discord and economic inefficiency. (Location 8980)
In other words, FDR understood that to be effective, governance couldn’t be so antiseptic that it set aside the basic stuff of politics: You had to sell your program, reward supporters, punch back against opponents, and amplify the facts that helped your cause while fudging the details that didn’t. (Location 9765)
Indeed, a strong majority of white evangelicals—the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc—believed that the creation and gradual expansion of Israel fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham and heralded Christ’s eventual return. On (Location 11671)
In that sense, there wasn’t much difference between Trump and Boehner or McConnell. They, too, understood that it didn’t matter whether what they said was true. They didn’t have to actually believe that I was bankrupting the country or that Obamacare promoted euthanasia. In fact, the only difference between Trump’s style of politics and theirs was Trump’s lack of inhibition. (Location 12567)
What I knew was that he was a spectacle, and in the United States of America in 2011, that was a form of power. (Location 12898)
