Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  Still, I understood that moving America’s national security apparatus in a new direction wasn’t easy for any president. If President Eisenhower—the former Supreme Allied Commander and one of the architects of D-Day—had occasionally felt stymied by what he called the “military-industrial complex,” there was a high likelihood that pushing reform might be harder for a newly elected African American president who’d never served in uniform, had opposed a mission that many had devoted their lives to achieving, wanted to rein in the military budget, and had surely lost the Pentagon vote by a sizable margin. To get things done now, rather than in a year or two down the line, I needed someone like Gates, who knew how the building worked and where the traps were laid; someone who already had the respect that I—regardless of my title—would in some ways have to earn.

  There was a final reason I wanted Gates on my team, and that was to push against my own biases. The image of me that had emerged from the campaign—the starry-eyed idealist who instinctively opposed military action and believed that every problem on the international stage could be solved through high-minded dialogue—had never been entirely accurate. Yes, I believed in diplomacy and thought war should be a last resort. I believed in multilateral cooperation to address problems like climate change, and I believed that the steady promotion of democracy, economic development, and human rights around the world served our long-term national security interests. Those who voted for me or had worked on my campaign tended to share those beliefs, and they were most likely to populate my administration.

  But my foreign policy views—and, indeed, my early opposition to the invasion of Iraq—owed at least as much to the “realist” school, an approach that valued restraint, assumed imperfect information and unintended consequences, and tempered a belief in American exceptionalism with a humility about our ability to remake the world in our image. I would often surprise people by citing George H. W. Bush as a recent president whose foreign policy I admired. Bush, along with James Baker, Colin Powell, and Brent Scowcroft, had deftly managed the end of the Cold War and the successful prosecution of the Gulf War.

  Gates had come of age working with such men, and in his handling of the Iraq campaign I saw enough overlap between our views to feel confident that we could work together. Having his voice at the table, along with those of people like Jim Jones—the retired four-star general and former head of European Command, whom I had slated as my first national security advisor—guaranteed that I’d hear a broad range of perspectives before making major decisions, and that I would have to continually test even my deepest assumptions against people who had the stature and confidence to tell me when I was wrong.

  Of course, all this depended on a basic level of trust between me and Gates. When I had asked a colleague to reach out to him about his possible willingness to stay on, Gates had sent back a list of questions. How long would I expect him to serve? Would I be willing to exercise flexibility in the drawdown of troops from Iraq? How would I approach the Defense Department staffing and budget?

  As we sat together in the firehouse, Gates acknowledged that it wasn’t typical for a potential cabinet appointee to quiz his or her future boss this way. He hoped I hadn’t found it presumptuous. I assured him that I didn’t mind, and that his candor and clear thinking were precisely what I was looking for. We went through his list of questions. I had a few of my own. After forty-five minutes, we shook hands and were whisked away in our separate motorcades.

  “So?” Axelrod asked upon my return.

  “He’s in,” I said. “I like him.” Then I added, “We’ll see if he likes me back.”

  * * *

  —

  WITHOUT MUCH FUSS, the other pieces of my national security team fell into place: longtime friend and former diplomat Susan Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Leon Panetta, a former California congressman and Clinton chief of staff with a well-earned reputation for bipartisanship, as director of the CIA; and retired admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Many of my closest advisors from the campaign took on key staff roles, including my debate drill sergeant Tom Donilon as deputy national security advisor, young hotshots Denis McDonough, Mark Lippert, and Ben Rhodes as assistant deputies at the NSC, and Samantha Power in an NSC position newly focused on atrocity prevention and the advancement of human rights.

  Just one remaining potential appointee caused any kind of stir. I wanted Hillary Clinton to be my secretary of state.

  Observers put forth various theories about my rationale for choosing Hillary: that I needed to unify a still-divided Democratic Party, that I was worried about her second-guessing me from her seat in the Senate, that I had been influenced by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals and was self-consciously mimicking Lincoln by placing a former political opponent in my cabinet.

  But really it was simpler than that. I thought Hillary was the best person for the job. Throughout the campaign, I had witnessed her intelligence, preparation, and work ethic. Whatever her feelings toward me, I trusted her patriotism and commitment to duty. Most of all, I was convinced that at a time when diplomatic relations around the world were either strained or suffering from chronic neglect, having a secretary of state with Hillary’s star power, relationships, and comfort on the world stage would give us added bandwidth in a way that nobody else could.

  With the scars of the campaign still fresh in their minds, not everybody in my camp was convinced. (“You sure you want a secretary of state who ran TV ads saying you weren’t ready to be commander in chief?” a friend asked. I had to remind him that my soon-to-be vice president had said the same thing.) Hillary was wary too, and when I first offered her the job, at a meeting in our transition office in Chicago about ten days after the election, I found myself politely rebuffed. She was tired, she said, and looked forward to settling into the more predictable Senate schedule. She still had campaign debt she needed to retire. And then there was Bill to consider. His work in global development and public health at the Clinton Foundation had made a real difference around the world, and both Hillary and I knew that the need to avoid even an appearance of conflicts—particularly with respect to fundraising—would likely place him and the foundation under new constraints.

  The concerns she voiced were valid, but I considered them manageable. I asked her to take some time and think it over. Over the course of the next week, I enlisted Podesta, Rahm, Joe Biden, several of our Senate colleagues, and whoever else I could think of to reach out and help make the case to Hillary. Despite the full-court press, when we spoke next, on a late-night phone call, she told me she was still inclined to turn me down. Again I persisted, certain that whatever remaining doubts she might have had less to do with the job and more to do with our potential relationship. I elicited her views on Iraq, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, and human rights. I asked her how she might revitalize the State Department. I assured her that she’d have constant and direct access to me, and the ability to choose her own team. “You’re too important for me to take no as an answer,” I said at the end of the call.

  By the next morning, Hillary had decided to accept my offer and join the administration. A week and a half later, I introduced her and the rest of my national security team—along with my choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, and my Department of Homeland Security nominee, Governor Janet Napolitano—at a Chicago press conference. Looking at the men and women assembled onstage, I couldn’t help noticing that almost all of them were far older than I was, possessed of decades more experience in the highest levels of government, and that at least a couple of them had originally supported someone else for president, unmoved by talk of hope and change. A team of rivals after all, I thought. I’d find out soon enough whether this indicated a well-founded confidence in my ability to lead—or the naïve faith of a novice about to get rolled.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON was
elected president in 1789, Washington, D.C., didn’t yet exist. The president-elect had to make a seven-day trip by barge and horse-drawn buggy from his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, to New York City’s Federal Hall—the temporary seat of the new national government—for his swearing in. A crowd of ten thousand greeted him. The oath of office was administered, followed by a shout of “Long live George Washington” and a thirteen-gun salute. Washington delivered a muted, fifteen-minute inaugural address, not to the crowd but to the members of Congress within their ill-lit, makeshift chamber. He then headed to a service at a nearby church.

  With that, the Father of Our Country was free to get on with the business of making sure America outlasted his tenure.

  Over time, presidential inaugurations grew more elaborate. In 1809, Dolley Madison hosted the first inaugural ball in the new capital, with four hundred people shelling out four dollars each for the privilege of attending what to that point was the largest social event ever held in Washington, D.C. Befitting his populist reputation, Andrew Jackson threw open the White House doors to several thousand of his supporters for his inauguration in 1829; the drunken crowd got so rowdy that Jackson was said to have escaped through a window.

  For his second inauguration, Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t content with military processions and marching bands—he threw in a passel of cowboys and the Apache chief Geronimo. And by the time it was John F. Kennedy’s turn in 1961, the inauguration had become a multiday televised spectacle, complete with performances by famous musical artists, a reading by poet laureate Robert Frost, and several fancy balls where Hollywood’s leading celebrities could sprinkle stardust on the new president’s bankrollers and ward heelers. (Frank Sinatra apparently pulled out all the stops to make the parties Camelot-worthy—although he was forced into what must have been an awkward conversation with his friend and fellow Rat Packer Sammy Davis, Jr., when Joe Kennedy sent word that the presence of Davis and his very white Swedish wife at the inaugural balls might not sit so well with JFK’s southern supporters and should therefore be discouraged.)

  Given the excitement our campaign had generated, expectations for my inauguration—scheduled for January 20, 2009—were high. As with the Democratic convention, I didn’t have much to do with the details of putting it together, confident that the committee we’d set up and my campaign’s organizational whiz Alyssa Mastromonaco (then slated to be my Director of Running Stuff) had everything well in hand. Instead, while stages were being erected and bleachers set up along the D.C. parade route, Michelle, the girls, and I went to Hawaii for Christmas, where—in between sorting out my final cabinet appointments, daily consultations with my economic team, and early work on my inaugural address—I tried to catch my breath.

  Maya and I spent an afternoon going through Toot’s personal effects and then walked the same rocky outcropping near Hanauma Bay where we’d said a final farewell to our mother and scattered her ashes over the ocean below. I pulled together a pickup basketball game with some of my old high school teammates. Our families sang Christmas carols, baked cookies, and debuted what would end up becoming an annual talent show (the dads were fairly judged to be the least talented). I even had a chance to bodysurf at Sandy Beach, one of my favorite haunts as a youth. Shooting down a gently breaking wave, the light curling with the sweep of water and the sky etched with a flight of birds, I could pretend for a moment that I wasn’t surrounded by several wet-suited Navy SEALs, that the Coast Guard cutter in the distance had nothing to do with me, that pictures of me shirtless wouldn’t later end up on the front pages of newspapers around the world with headlines like FIT FOR OFFICE. When I finally signaled that I was ready to go, the leader of my security team that day—a sardonic agent named Dave Beach who’d been with me from the start and knew me as a friend—tilted his head, shook the water out of his ears, and said matter-of-factly, “I hope you enjoyed that, ’cause it’s the last time you’ll be able to do it for a long, long while.”

  I laughed, knowing he was joking…or was he? The campaign and its immediate aftermath had offered no time for reflection, so it was only during this brief tropical interlude that all of us—friends, family, staffers, Secret Service—had a chance to wrap our heads around what had happened and try to envision what was yet to come. Everyone seemed happy but slightly tentative, unsure whether it was okay to acknowledge the strangeness of things, trying to figure out what had changed and what had not. And although she didn’t show it, no one felt this uncertainty more keenly than the soon-to-be First Lady of the United States.

  Over the course of the campaign, I’d watched Michelle adapt to our new circumstances with unerring grace—charming voters, nailing interviews, perfecting a style that showed her to be both chic and accessible. It was less a transformation than an amplification, her essential “Miche-ness” burnished to a high shine. But for all her growing comfort with being in the public eye, behind the scenes Michelle was desperate to carve out some zone of normalcy for our family, a place beyond the distorting reach of politics and fame.

  In the weeks after the election, this meant throwing herself into the tasks any couple might go through when having to relocate for a new job. With typical efficiency, she sorted. She packed. She closed accounts, made sure our mail would get forwarded, and helped the University of Chicago Medical Center plan for her replacement.

  Her overriding focus, though, was on our daughters. The day after the election she had already arranged for a tour of D.C. schools (both Malia and Sasha crossed the all-girls schools off their list, settling instead on Sidwell Friends, a private school founded by Quakers and the same school Chelsea Clinton had attended) and talked to teachers about managing the girls’ transfer into classes midyear. She sought advice from Hillary and from Laura Bush on how to insulate them from the press and grilled the Secret Service on ways to avoid having the girls’ security detail disrupt playdates and soccer games. She familiarized herself with the operations of the White House residence and made sure the furniture in the girls’ bedrooms wouldn’t look like something out of Monticello.

  It’s not as if I didn’t share Michelle’s stress. Malia and, especially, Sasha were so young in 2008, all pigtails and braids, missing teeth and round cheeks. How would the White House shape their childhoods? Would it isolate them? Make them moody or entitled? At night, I would listen intently as Michelle gave me the latest intel she’d gathered, then offer my thoughts on this or that issue that was nagging her, providing her with assurances that a sullen remark or small piece of mischief from either of the girls didn’t indicate the early effects of their suddenly topsy-turvy world.

  But as had been true during so much of the last ten years, the day-to-day burden of parenting rested largely on Michelle. And as she watched how—before I had even assumed office—the vortex of work pulled me in, as she saw her own career sidelined, her tight-knit circle of friends soon to be hundreds of miles away as she made her way in a city where so many people’s motives were necessarily suspect, the prospect of loneliness settled on her like a cloud.

  All of which helps explain why Michelle asked her mom to come live with us in the White House. That Marian Robinson was even willing to consider it came as something of a surprise to me, for by nature my mother-in-law was cautious, finding satisfaction in steady work, familiar routines, a small circle of family and friends that she’d known for years. She had lived in the same house since the 1960s and rarely ventured out of Chicago; her one extravagance was an annual three-day trip to Vegas with her sister-in-law Yvonne and Mama Kaye to play the slots. And although she adored her grandchildren and had agreed to retire early to help Michelle look after the girls once the campaign heated up, she had always made a point of not hanging around our Chicago home or staying for dinner once her work was done.

  “I am not going to be one of those old ladies,” she’d say with a huff, “who won’t leave their kids alone just ’cause they’ve got nothing better to do.”

&n
bsp; Still, when Michelle asked her to move to Washington with us, Marian didn’t put up much resistance. She knew her daughter wouldn’t ask unless it was really important.

  There was the practical stuff, of course. For the first few years we were in the White House, it would be Marian who accompanied Malia and Sasha to school every morning and kept them company after school if Michelle was at work. But it was more than that. What really mattered—what wouldn’t stop mattering long after the girls had outgrown the need for babysitting—was the way Marian’s mere presence kept our family grounded.

  My mother-in-law didn’t act like she was better than anybody else, so our daughters never even considered that an option. She lived by a doctrine of no fuss and no drama and was unimpressed by any form of opulence or hype. When Michelle came back from a photo shoot or a black-tie dinner, where her every move had been monitored or her hairstyle scrutinized by the press, she could shed her designer dress, throw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and know that her mom was upstairs in her suite on the top floor of the White House, always willing to sit and watch TV with her and talk about the girls or folks back home—or about nothing in particular.