I tend to think in cycles. When one thing happens in one way, the other way is not far off. Things tend to balance out.
Why have we just had such an awful president, unwilling to read or listen, reacting in petty, superficial ways, uneducated and uncaring? Unable to consider anything other than his own thinking? Because just before him, we had one of the most literate, if not the most literate, presidents ever, one who thought deeply about nearly everything and cared that deeply, too.
Just pick up Barack Obama's first part of his presidential autobiography, A Promised Land, and read any stretch of ten pages. That's all you'll have to do. It's quite measured, in a way, but so is he. It's quite profound, too, as he has always been. It left me with an even deeper remorse for what we lost, the vacuum of deep thought, the self-control, the empathy.
It is a primer in economics. It has to be, from the person who managed to get out in front of the Great Recession of 2008-14 (I'm approximating here), and who helped save Greece from imploding and going completely bankrupt (and why that was vital). He tries hard to explain the damage of subprime mortgages on interest rates and the sapping of people's savings to render them nearly helpless against their ravages. He makes it clear that we just can't have that kind of fat-catting any longer.
It is a primer in foreign affairs. It is a sifting of what's vital in that realm with what isn't. The right-wing echo chamber nearly lost its mind when he deigned to bow in the presence of a powerless Japanese emperor Akihito, but gave him no credit (which he does here, in great and gleeful detail) when he crashed a clandestine meeting of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) leaders at the otherwise doomed and largely moribund Copenhagen climate summit in 2010 in gangsta style, getting them to make a more inclusive joint statement of needed improvements in the reduction of fossil fuels. Yes, literally crashed it: The idea of the meeting, in an obscure upstairs room, was that it would exclude the United States in lieu of making any new movements to improve the minimum of what they were doing on climate issues, rendering it out of touch, in a kind of ambush. Instead, Obama ambushed them: His intercedence showed what real American power looks like, selective and meaningful, not pushing small countries' leaders aside for an egotistical photo-op.
And the Middle East? Well, he devotes a significant amount of the book to it. Why anyone would want to take on that part of the world is beyond me. And it gives me chills to think that Jarod Kushner, green behind the gills and no doubt deeply invested economically, was given that much authority to conduct talks and make deals.
It is a primer in management. He learned that while he hired a goodly representation of women to vital positions in his administration, the same old guardrails of mansplaining and dominance were beginning to emerge. So he had the ladies in for dinner, had a good listen, and spread the word. Yet, he also gently admonished them: Don't take it from them. If you get cut off, demand to finish statements. Say (like Kamala Harris did with Mike Pence later on), I'm talking here.
It is a primer in conduct. Notice there were almost no scandals in his administration, or at least nothing approximating the absolute plethora of them in the latest one (save Stanley McChrystal and later David Petraeus, both in the military realm where discipline is supposed to be paramount). He does make it a point to say that there was zero tolerance for them. Some Cabinet positions got more attention than others, yes, but that was inevitable: State, Defense, Legal, National Security. He had to let some of it go, barring a genuine crisis, from his direction: There was only so much time to devote to Agriculture, Labor and Education, only so many hours in the day. Besides, the President's Daily Briefing, the summary that 45 refuses to examine, didn't follow the crop yields or test scores. But at least he read it.
It is a primer in handling disasters. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the "spot" of Macbeth that would not so easily wash out. But while it happened on his watch, the real problem was multi-faceted and filled with land mines that, if discussed openly, would reveal increasing barrels of helplessness rather than appropriate but futile analysis, something that would deepen the political damage. The real core issues were: Reliance on big business to handle its own problems; the dependance of this society on fossil fuels; and a previous scandal that his administration wasn't responsible for. They were obscured behind an explosion that left everyone scratching their heads while by far the worst environmental disaster in our history unfolded before our very eyes, day by day, hour by hour, as thousands of gallons of raw oil flowed unabated into the Gulf of Mexico.
Consider this: The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, an unsung hero if there ever was one, took personal command of the solution and pulled it off, though it took weeks. 45's Secretary of Energy was Rick Perry.
The biggest concern among Obama's personal staff was not that the burdens of the office were taking the inevitable toll, it's that it didn't seem to. No-Drama Obama was as immersed as anyone who has ever held the office, but he seemed to be dealing with things with his normal modicum of emotionality, while others were tearing their hair out and barking at each other. Nobody could know it at the time, but it was exactly what the country needed as the edges were moving toward the center: Someone who could stay serene regardless, who represented whatever of a center remained. When Obama's temper got short and he chewed some people out, more often than not, at least within these pages, he blames himself. Imagine that.
It's not as if he ignored the common people, either. He got hundreds of letters per day, and commanded aides to daily get him the ten best ones they found among them. Reading them was often the last thing he did before turning in, and he did answer many. Some of them are in another book called To Obama. They are humorous, sad, and profoundly moving; he mentions them more than once. But at least he had a barometer about what was going on in the enormous country he governed.
All while this is happening, he must deal with a wife who's trying to both guard their two young daughters from too much scrutiny (at which, if you recall, they do succeed without pulling them out of town) and bring him back home whenever he can to sustain a challenging marriage (for more on that, and there's plenty more, try Michelle Obama's book Becoming). The book is loaded with delightful anecdotes that demonstrate that Michelle, Malia and Sasha are the ballast that he needs to provide enough perspective to prevent him from ever taking it all too seriously, if that's at all possible. His presence in the above Copenhagen climate summit, for instance, a meeting he was loath to attend, is blended with the cute story of a backdrop of saving the dwindling habitat of tigers, so he could report to Malia that he was, indeed, doing something about it.
The biggest hurdle he had to vault to get to the White House at all was intrafamilial, convincing Michelle that it was worth it--and that took some serious explaining, partly because his rise to the top was so meteoric, so fast as to spin heads, and she was already tired of keeping the homefires burning at night while he was out saving the world. She's college-graduated and a well-established professional herself. They got to know each other because she was his mentor; he always had plenty of information, but she carried the urn of wisdom. Talk about role-conflicted!
The Obamas also took a page from Kennedy and made the White House a cornucopia of culture, inviting writers, artists, and musicians from all walks. They celebrated hip-hop and Yo-Yo Ma, invited Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.
Snotty, you say? Elitist? Those people rushed to the White House to demonstrate their skills. Asked to give performances, they couldn't get there fast enough. In doing so, they celebrated America's accomplishments in a decidedly apolitical way, unlike Ted Nugent and Kanye West, who were used by 45 no less than he used other living props in an endless striving of legitimization.
If this sounds a little damn near too perfect, just the kind of guy you want to be your president, it should. It wasn't long ago that we had exactly that guy in the White House, where he was endlessly attacked on vaguely racial grounds. They nit-picked at him because there was really nothing so terrible about him that could be that deeply attacked. So, as they continue to do right up to today, they either make stuff up or do their darnedest to try to convince a half-attentive public that the world will fall apart unless they take it over again.
No matter what happens now, 45 can't outdo Obama. He's taken his four years to try to destroy everything Obama stood for. He's certainly disrupted a great deal of it, but Obamacare survived every court challenge 45 commandeered. 45 trashed much of the international goodwill that Obama created and sustained; that may take longer to replenish, if it can be at all. He has shown what quite the opposite of Obama can be--amoral, crude, unfinished, insulting, gluttony. While Obama had little governmental experience but learned and grew from it, 45 had none whatsoever when he entered the gauntlet and learned nothing. Whoever he hires to ghostwrite his story will have a confusing array of non-facts to choose from. I don't envy him/her when he/she sits down and tries to figure out just what to say.
But that will be for that person to do. For now, what we have in front of us is a marvelous re-telling of a time of great challenge, met by someone whose skills at first had to overcome his lack of experience. When they caught up with each other, they produced this volume of history. It is written with impeccable literary style. It is a great reminder of a time; you find yourself going, "Ohhhhhh, yeah...."
You ask yourself, "Is it possible that this brilliant author was president, too? Were we really that lucky? Did we really deserve all that?" Kind of like asking yourself if, in counterpoise, we deserved what we've gotten in the last four years, too. But things tend to balance out.
Please understand: I did not support all Obama's policies, especially in the area of education, where I made something of a fleeting contribution at the national level, through my union, during much of the decade before he took over. He tried to be too much a a centrist, and set the nation on a course it has still to reckon completely with, mis-analyzing what the problem really was. I wonder if he wishes he had that one back. Yet, what has taken place in that realm the last four years, true to form, has been a reflection on the secretary's boss: incompetent, jealous of someone else's success, strangely angry, an absolute disaster.
It has occurred to me, too, that if the natural processes play out, this will be the first president I will not outlive. That has a strangely calming effect: that whenever my demise takes place, what I am leaving behind will be this hybrid of a man who represents the best of what America can yet become--half-white, half-not; urbane; cultured; thoughtful; caring; sighing in acceptance but always striving to be better. Ex-presidents have had differentiating effects in their later years, some great, some minimal. This one's contribution, through this book, cannot be otherwise than lasting. It's not cheap, but well worth your while.
And to think there's another one coming: this one ends in 2011, with bin Laden's death. He has a second term to go. I can barely wait.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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