Excerpts from "A Promised Land", Barack Obama's memoir
Excerpts from chapter 10 of "A Promised Land", the memoir of former US President Barack Obama, are reproduced below.
Although he had visited the White House on several occasions as a United States Senator, he had never been in the Oval Office before being elected president. The room is smaller than you might expect - it doesn't reach eleven meters on the longest side, two meters less on the other - but the ceiling is high and impressive, and its appearance matches the photos and images of the newscasts. "
“Most of the eight years of my mandate I spent in that room, listening intently to intelligence reports, receiving heads of state, persuading members of Congress, competing with allies and adversaries, and posing in front of the cameras alongside thousands of visitors. There I laughed with the members of my government team, I also cursed and on more than one occasion I had to hold back my tears. Eventually I ended up feeling comfortable enough to prop my feet up or sit on the desk, roll on the floor with a child, or take a nap on the couch. I once had the fantasy of going out the East gate and walking down the driveway, past the security checkpoint and wrought iron gates, getting lost in the crowded streets and going back to my old life.
"But I never completely lost the feeling of respect that came over me every time I entered the Oval Office, the feeling that I was entering not an office but a sanctuary of democracy."
"My first visit to the Oval Office happened a few days after the election, when, following an old tradition, the Bushes invited Michelle and me on a tour of what would soon be our home."
“The president and the first lady, Laura Bush, received us in the South Portico, and after the obligatory greeting to the reporters, President Bush and I went to the Oval Office, while Michelle and Mrs. the tea. After a few more photographs and after a young butler offered us refreshments, the president invited me to take a seat.
-Y? - He asked me - What does it feel like?
"It's too much," I said, smiling. You sure remember.
Yes, I remember. It seems like yesterday. ”He nodded energetically. Although, I warn you ... it is quite a journey that you are about to begin. There is nothing like it. It must be remembered every day to value it.
Whether it was out of respect for the institution, his father's experience, or bad memories of his own transition (there were rumors that some Clinton employees had removed the letter w from White House computers before leaving), Or perhaps just out of elementary courtesy, President Bush ended up doing everything in his power to keep things going smoothly during the eleven weeks between my election and his departure. All White House dispatches had a detailed "instruction manual." The staff had offered to meet with their successors, answer questions and even allow them to be present while they still fulfilled their duties. Bush's daughters, Barbara and Jenna, already young girls, rearranged their schedules to give Malia and Sasha their own tour of the "funniest" places in the White House. I promised myself that when the time came, I would treat my successor the same way.
The president and I chatted on a wide range of topics - the economy, Iraq, the accredited media, Congress - during that first week without him abandoning his teasing and slightly uneasy tone. He gave me candid assessments of some foreign leaders, warned me that people from my own party would end up causing me some of the worst headaches, and kindly agreed to host a luncheon with all the living ex-presidents at some point before the inauguration.
He knew there were certain unavoidable limits to a president's honesty vis-Ã -vis his successor; especially against one who had opposed much of his record. At the same time, I was aware that beyond the apparent good humor of President Bush, my presence in the office that I was about to leave must arouse mixed feelings in him. I followed his example and avoided going too deep into politics. More than anything, I dedicated myself to listening. "
“Upon returning to Chicago, our life abruptly changed. At home nothing seemed very different. We made breakfast and got the girls ready for school, spent mornings returning calls, and chatting with team members. But once any of us crossed the threshold of the door, it was a new world. The journalists had settled in the corner, behind some recently erected concrete barriers. Secret Service snipers stood guard on the roof, dressed in black. A visit to Marty and Anita's house, just a few blocks away, took a lot of effort; a trip to my old gym was already unthinkable. On the way to our temporary offices downtown, I realized that the empty roads Malia had discussed on election night were now the new normal. All my entrances and exits to buildings were through the cargo areas and service elevators, completely cleared except for a few security guards. I felt as if I lived in a particular, eternal and portable ghost town.
She spent the afternoons forming the Government. A new Administration generates less change than most people think. Of the more than three million people employed by the federal government, civilians and military men, only a few thousand are called political positions, who serve according to the will of the president. Among those, the president has a habitual, significant deal, with less than a hundred senior officials and personal assistants. Presidents have the power to articulate an image and set a direction for the country; the power to promote a healthy institutional culture, establishing chains of responsibility and very clear accountability measures. At the end of the day, I was going to be the one to make the final decisions on the relevant issues and I was going to have to explain them to the country. To do this, like the presidents who had preceded me, I would depend on the handful of people to act as my eyes, ears, hands, and feet; of those who were to become my administrators, implementers, facilitators, analysts, organizers, team leaders, communicators, mediators, problem solvers, bulletproof vests, sincere negotiators, sounding boards, constructive critics, and loyal soldiers. It was essential, therefore, to choose those first appointments well; starting with the person who was to be my chief of staff. Unfortunately, the initial response from the first candidate on the list was half-hearted: 'No way.'
“About the same time my financial team was finishing making decisions, I asked my collaborators and Secret Service agents to arrange a private meeting at the Ronald Reagan National Airport fire station. When I arrived, the facilities were empty, the trucks had been relocated to accommodate our entourage. I walked into a room where refreshments had been served and greeted the small, graying man in a gray suit who sat inside.
"Mr. Secretary," I said as I shook his hand. Thanks for your time.
"Congratulations, President-elect," Robert Gates replied with an uncompromising gaze and a tight smile, before we sat down and got to work.
It can be said that President Bush's Secretary of Defense and I did not hang out in the same circles. In fact, beyond our common roots in Kansas (Gates was born and raised in Wichita), it is difficult to imagine two individuals with such different backgrounds arriving in the same place. Gates was an eagle scout, an Air Force intelligence officer, an expert on Russia, and a CIA recruit. At the height of the Cold War, he had served on the National Security Council with Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and at the agency with Reagan, before becoming director of the CIA with George H. W. Bush. "
“He was a Republican, a Cold War hawk, a credited member of the establishment on matters of national security, a former champion of international interventions that I had surely protested at university, and current Secretary of Defense to a president whose war policies he hated. Still, I was at the fire station that day to ask Bob Gates to remain in office as my Secretary of Defense.
As with the financial appointments, my motives were practical. With 180,000 US troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, any large-scale change in the Defense Department seemed fraught with risk. In fact, despite the differences that Gates and I may have had regarding the initial decision to invade Iraq, circumstances had pushed us to share some idea of the way forward. When President Bush - at the recommendation of Gates - ordered a US troop "surge" in Iraq in early 2007, I was skeptical, not because I doubted the ability of US soldiers to reduce violence there, but because it was posed as an open-ended commitment.
However, under Gates' leadership, the Petraeus-led surge (and the negotiated alliance with Sunni tribes in Ambar province) not only significantly reduced violence, but had given Iraqis time and space to engage in politics. With the help of the meticulous diplomacy of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and especially the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, Iraq was on the path to forming a legitimate government, with elections scheduled for late January. Midway through my transition, the Bush Administration had even announced a Status of Forces Agreement with the Maliki government for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in late 2011; schedule that fully reflected what I had proposed during the campaign. At the same time, Gates had publicly emphasized the need for the United States to refocus attention on Afghanistan, one of the central proposals of my foreign policy program. He still had some doubts about peace, resources and personnel. But the main strategy of gradually reducing military operations in Iraq and enhancing our efforts in Afghanistan was firmly established; and at least for the moment no one was in a better position to execute that strategy than the current Secretary of Defense.
Furthermore, there were powerful political motives for keeping Gates in office. I had promised to end partisan rancor, and Gates's presence in my cabinet showed that he had serious intentions to keep that promise. Retaining him would serve to build trust between the military community and the different organizations that made up the United States intelligence (known as CI). Having a military budget larger than that of the next thirty-seven countries combined meant that senior officials in the Defense Department and the CI were men of firm convictions, skilled in internal bureaucratic struggles and inclined to continue. doing things always the same. That didn't intimidate me. Broadly speaking, he knew what he wanted to do and understood that the customs derived from the chain of command - like saluting and executing the commander-in-chief's orders, even those with which one strongly disagreed - were deeply ingrained.
Still, he knew that steering the American national security apparatus in a new direction had not been easy for any president. If Eisenhower - former Supreme Allied Commander and one of the architects of D-Day - had at times felt blocked by what he called the 'military-industrial complex', there was a good chance that pushing for reform would be even more difficult for an African American president. newly elected, who had never served in uniform, who had opposed a mission to which many had dedicated their lives, who wanted to curb the military budget, and who had most certainly lost the Pentagon vote by a considerable margin . To get this over with, and not put it off for a year or two, what he needed was a person like Gates, who knew how the structure worked and where the traps were; someone who already had a respect that I - despite my position - would have to earn myself in some way.
There was one last reason I wanted Gates on my team, and that was to resist my own biases. The image of myself that had emerged in the campaign - the romantic idealist who instinctively opposed military action and believed that all problems on the international stage could be solved through moralistic dialogue - had never been entirely correct. In fact, he believed in diplomacy and believed that war should be the last resort. He believed in multilateral cooperation to tackle issues such as climate change and that a strong spread of democracy, economic development and human rights around the world would help fulfill our long-term national security interests. Those who voted for me or worked on my campaign were inclined to share those beliefs, and most likely they were in my Administration.
But my views on foreign policy - and certainly my opposition to the invasion of Iraq as well - were indebted almost in equal proportion to the "realist" school, an approach that appreciated control, took imperfect information and unintended consequences for granted. , and he tempered the belief in the exceptionality of the United States with a certain humility when thinking about our real capacity to remake the world in our image. He often surprised people by naming George H. W. Bush as one of the last presidents whose foreign policy he admired. Bush, along with James Baker, Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, had skillfully managed the end of the Cold War and the successful development of the Gulf War.
Gates had grown up working with these men, and in his campaign management in Iraq he had seen enough overlap between our views to be confident that we could work together. Having his opinion at the table, along with that of others like Jim Jones - a retired four-star general and former head of the European Command, whom I had appointed as my first adviser on national security issues - guaranteed that I would hear different insights before making any major decisions, and that I would constantly test my deepest beliefs in front of people who were hierarchical and confident enough to tell me if I was wrong.
Obviously all of that depended on a basic level of trust between Gates and me. When I asked a colleague to test his possible willingness to continue in office, Gates responded with a list of questions. How long did you want him to stay? Was I willing to be flexible in withdrawing troops from Iraq? How was he going to approach the staffing and budget of the Department of Defense?
Sitting in this room at the fire station, Gates recognized that it was unusual for a potential cabinet member to interrogate their future boss in this way. He hoped I didn't consider it impertinence. I assured him that I did not care and that his frankness and clear mind were exactly what I was looking for. We go over your list of questions. For my part, I had also brought some. Forty-five minutes later, we shook hands and slipped away in separate groups.
-Y? Axelrod asked me when I got back.
"Sign up," I replied. I like –and I added–: we'll see if he likes me too. "
“The day of the investiture arrived, bright, windy and cold. Knowing that the events had been organized with military precision, and since I tend to live my life about fifteen minutes behind schedule, I set two alarms to make sure I was getting up on time. A run on the treadmill, breakfast, a shower, and a shave, several attempts before getting the knot in the tie acceptable, and at 8:45, Michelle and I were making the two-minute drive from Blair House to St. John's Episcopal Church, where we had invited a friend, Pastor TD Jakes from Dallas, to run a private service. "
“Some people in the church began to applaud and I smiled at them acknowledging their words. But my thoughts went to the night before, when after dinner I apologized to my family, climbed the stairs to one of the many superior rooms of the Blair House, and received instructions from the White House Military Office on the ' ball'; the small leather-clad briefcase that accompanies the president all the time and contains the codes necessary to authorize a nuclear attack. One of the military assistants responsible for carrying the ball explained the protocols to me with the same calm and meticulousness that someone could describe how to program a tape recorder. The subtext was obvious.
I was soon to be given the authority to blow up the world.
The night before, Michael Chertoff, the Bush Administration's Secretary of Homeland Security, had called to inform us that reliable intelligence services had detected that four Somali nationals were planning a terrorist attack at the inauguration ceremony. Because of that, the already huge security deployment on the National Mall was going to be reinforced. The suspects - young men believed to be crossing the Canadian border - were still at large. No one doubted that we were going to continue with the events of the following days, but to be sure, we reviewed various interventions with Chertoff and his team, and then I assigned Ax to write the evacuation instructions that I should give to the crowd in case of an attack happening while I was on stage.
Reverend Jakes concluded his sermon. The last song of the choir filled the church. Except for a handful of team members, no one else knew about the terrorist threat. He hadn't even told Michelle, he didn't want to add more stress to the day. Nobody was thinking of a nuclear war or terrorist attacks. Nobody except me. As I went over the people sitting on the benches - friends, family members, colleagues, some caught my attention and smiled excitedly - I realized that from that moment on, it was all part of my job: maintaining an attitude of normality, defending against everyone the fiction that we live in a safe and orderly world, while staring at the dark hole of possibilities and preparing myself as best I could for the alternative that any day, at any moment, chaos would open He passed."
“It was my first time riding the Beast, the huge limousine assigned to the president. Ruggedized to withstand a bomb blast, it weighs several tons, has luxurious black leather seats and the presidential seal stitched to a leather panel above the phone and armrest. When it is closed, the doors of the Beast are sealed and do not let any sound through. As our party crept up Pennsylvania Avenue and chatted trivia with President Bush, I could see through the armored windows how many people were still on their way to the National Mall or had already taken their seats on the parade route. Most seemed in a cheerful mood, cheering and saluting when they saw the procession go by. But when we turned a corner towards the last stretch of the route, we ran into a group of protesters with megaphones holding up signs that read ‘Condemn Bush’ and ‘War Criminal’.
I don't know if the president saw them; he was overly enthusiastic about a description of brush clearing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was leaving as soon as the ceremony was over. But I was quietly annoyed with them on their behalf. It seemed unnecessary and out of place to protest against a man in the last hour of his presidency. In general, I was concerned about what those last minute protests showed about the divisions that roiled the entire country, and the weakening of the barriers of decorum that had once regulated politics.
I suppose there was a trace of selfishness in my feelings. In a few hours he would be traveling alone in the backseat of the Beast. I figured it wouldn't be long before those megaphones and billboards were addressed to me. And that was also going to be part of my job: finding a way not to take those attacks personally, but without avoiding the temptation to isolate myself from the screaming on the other side of the glass, as perhaps my predecessor had done too much. frequency."
“Ted Sorensen, friend, confidant, and head of John F. Kennedy's group of speechwriters, had been one of my early supporters. When we met he was almost eighty years old, but he was lucid, with a keen intelligence. He even took trips for me, he was a convincing campaign understudy, if a little hard to please. (On one occasion, as our entourage sped down the freeway during a storm in Iowa, he leaned over and yelled at the agent behind the wheel: 'Son, I'm half blind, but even I can see you're too close to! That car! ') Ted had also become a favorite of my young team of speechwriters, giving them generous advice, and occasionally commenting on a draft of his. As he had co-written Kennedy's inaugural speech ('Don't ask what your country can do for you ...'), he was once asked what the secret had been to writing one of the four or five best speeches in the history of Kennedy. United States. Very easy, he replied, whenever he and Kennedy sat down to write, they said to themselves, "We're going to do it well enough that one day it will be in the book of the best speeches."
I don't know if Ted was trying to motivate my team or just confuse it.
What I do know is that my own speech fell short of Kennedy's. During the days that followed, it received far less attention than the calculations of the influx, the inclement cold, the Aretha Franklin hat, and the small technical failure during the oath between the Chief Justice, John Roberts, and myself. so we had to meet in the Map room of the White House the next day to redo it. Some analysts found the speech unnecessarily gloomy. Others thought they saw inappropriate criticism of the previous Administration.
Still, when I finished I was satisfied because I had spoken with honesty and conviction. I was also relieved that the note to use in the event of a terrorist incident was still in the pocket next to my chest. "
