Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  On paper, we all thought the idea made sense. Why not use the prosecution of Guantánamo’s most notorious prisoners to showcase the U.S. criminal justice system’s ability to handle terrorist cases in a fair, aboveboard manner? And what better venue to deliver justice than one in the city that had suffered the most from that horrific crime, in a courtroom just a few blocks from Ground Zero? After months of painstaking work, Eric and his team felt sure that the case against the 9/11 plotters could be made without relying on information obtained through “enhanced interrogations”—in part because we now had more cooperation from other countries that had previously been reluctant to get involved. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg had endorsed Eric’s plan. So had New York’s senior senator, Democrat Chuck Schumer.

  Then, in the weeks surrounding the attempted Christmas Day bombing, the prevailing opinion in New York spun a dizzying 180 degrees. A group of families of 9/11 victims organized a series of demonstrations to protest Eric’s decision. We found out later that its leader, the sister of one of the pilots killed in the Pentagon attack, had formed an organization dedicated to opposing any and all efforts to reverse Bush-era national security policies—and funded by conservative donors and supported by prominent Republicans (including Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter). Next, Mayor Bloomberg—who was reportedly getting pressure from real estate interests concerned about what a trial might do to their redevelopment plans—abruptly withdrew his support, claiming a trial would be too expensive and disruptive. Chuck Schumer quickly followed suit, as did Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein. With New York officials, a vocal contingent of 9/11 families, and influential members of our own party all lined up against us, Eric felt he had no choice but to beat a tactical retreat, confirming that while he remained determined to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in civilian rather than military courts, the Justice Department would explore venues outside of New York.

  It was a significant setback for our overall strategy to close Gitmo, and civil liberties groups and progressive columnists faulted me and the rest of the White House for not having anticipated political pushback to the trials, and for not mounting a more vigorous defense once the plan ran into trouble. They may have been right. Maybe if we had focused all of our attention on it for a month or so, to the exclusion of our efforts on healthcare or financial reform or climate change or the economy, we might have rallied the public to our side and forced New York City officials to back down. I would have enjoyed that fight. No doubt, it was a fight worth having.

  But at the time, at least, it was a fight that none of us in the White House thought we could win. Certainly, Rahm was happy to see Eric’s plan tabled, since he was the one who had to field calls all day from terrified congressional Democrats, begging us to stop trying to push so many boulders up the hill. For the truth was, after an ambitious first year in office, I didn’t have a lot of political capital left—and what little remained we were husbanding to try to get as many initiatives as we could through Congress before the 2010 midterms brought about a possible shift in party control.

  In fact, Rahm would get frustrated with me for wading into a related controversy at the end of that summer, when the same group of 9/11 families that opposed the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan launched a campaign to block the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero, saying it was offensive to them and the memory of those who’d died in the World Trade Center attacks. To his credit, Mayor Bloomberg forcefully defended the project on the grounds of religious freedom, as did other city officials and even some 9/11 families. Nevertheless, right-wing commentators quickly seized on the issue, often in nakedly anti-Islamic terms; national polls showed that a majority of Americans were opposed to the mosque’s location; and GOP political operatives spotted an opportunity to make life uncomfortable for Democrats running in the midterms.

  As it so happened, the controversy reached a boiling point the same week we had a scheduled White House iftar dinner with an assortment of Muslim American leaders to mark the month of Ramadan. The gathering was meant to be a low-key affair, a way to extend the same recognition to Muslims that we did to members of other faiths during their key religious holidays—but the next time Rahm and I talked, I told him that I intended to use the occasion to publicly come down on the side of those building the mosque.

  “Last I checked, this is America,” I said, stuffing files in my briefcase before I headed up to the residence for dinner. “And in America, you can’t single out one religious group and tell them they can’t build a house of worship on their own property.”

  “I get it, Mr. President,” Rahm said. “But you need to know that if you say something, it’s going to be hung around the necks of our candidates in every swing district around the country.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I answered as I walked to the door. “But if we can’t speak out on something this basic, then I don’t know what the point is of us being here.”

  Rahm sighed. “At the rate we’re going,” he said, “we may not be.”

  * * *

  —

  IN AUGUST, MY FAMILY and I flew up to Martha’s Vineyard for a ten-day vacation. We’d first visited the island off the coast of Cape Cod fifteen or so years earlier, at the invitation of one of my law firm’s partners, Allison Davis, and with the encouragement of Valerie, who’d spent summers there with her family when she was growing up. With its broad beaches and windswept dunes, the fishing boats coming into dock, the small farms and green meadows framed by oak forests and old stone walls, the place had a quiet beauty and unhurried vibe that suited us. We appreciated, as well, the Vineyard’s history: Freed slaves had been part of its earliest settlements, and Black families had rented summer homes there for generations, making it that rare resort community where Blacks and whites seemed equally at home. We had taken the girls there for a week or two every other summer, usually renting a small place in Oak Bluffs, close enough to town that you could bike there and with a porch where you could sit and watch the sun go down. Together with Valerie and other friends, we’d spend lazy days with our feet in the sand and a book in hand, swimming in water that the girls loved but was a little too cold for my Hawaiian tastes, sometimes spotting a pod of seals close to shore. Later, we’d walk to Nancy’s to eat the best fried shrimp on earth, and then Malia and Sasha would run off with their friends to get ice cream or ride the small carousel or play games at the local arcade.

  We couldn’t do things quite the same way now that we were the First Family. Instead of taking the ferry into Oak Bluffs, we now arrived on the Marine One helicopter. The house we now rented was a twenty-eight-acre estate on a tonier part of the island, large enough to accommodate staff and Secret Service and isolated enough to maintain a secure perimeter. Arrangements were made for us to go to a private beach, empty for a mile in either direction; our bike rides now followed a tightly prescribed loop, which the girls rode exactly once to indulge me before declaring it “kind of lame.” Even on vacation, I started my day with the PDB and a briefing from Denis or John Brennan concerning the assorted mayhem transpiring around the world, and crowds of people and TV crews were always waiting for us when we went to a restaurant for dinner.

  Still, the smell of the ocean and sparkle of sunlight against the late summer leaves, the walks along the beach with Michelle, and the sight of Malia and Sasha toasting marshmallows around a bonfire, their faces set in Zen-like concentration—those things remained. And with each day of extra sleep, laughter, and uninterrupted time with those I loved, I could feel my energy returning, my confidence restored. So much so that by the time we returned to Washington, on August 29, 2010, I’d managed to convince myself that we still had a chance to win the midterms and keep Democrats in charge of both the House and the Senate, the polls and conventional wisdom be damned.

  And why not? The truth was that we had saved the economy from a like
ly depression. We had stabilized the global financial system and yanked the U.S. auto industry back from the brink of collapse. We had put guardrails on Wall Street and made historic investments in clean energy and the nation’s infrastructure; protected public lands and reduced air pollution; connected rural schools to the internet and reformed student loan programs so that tens of billions of dollars that had once gone into bank coffers would instead be used to provide direct grants to thousands of young people who otherwise might not be able to afford college.

  Taken together, our administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress could rightly claim to have gotten more done, to have delivered more significant legislation that made a real impact on the lives of the American people, than any single session of Congress in the past forty years. And if we had much work yet to do—if too many people were still out of work and at risk of losing their homes; if we hadn’t yet passed climate change legislation or fixed a broken immigration system—then it was directly attributable to the size of the mess we’d inherited, along with Republican obstruction and filibusters, all of which American voters could change by casting their ballots in November.

  “The problem is I’ve been cooped up in this building,” I said to Favs as we sat together in the Oval working up my stump speech. “Voters just hear these sound bites coming out of Washington—Pelosi said this, McConnell said that—and they have no way to sort out what’s true and what’s not. This is our chance to get back out there and find a way to cut through that. Tell a clear story about what’s really happened to the economy—how the last time Republicans were behind the wheel, they drove the car into the ditch, and how we’ve spent the last two years pushing it out…and now that we’ve just about got the car running again, the last thing the American people can afford to do is to give them back the keys!” I paused to look at Favs, who’d been busy typing on his computer. “What do you think? I think that works.”

  “It might,” Favs said, although not as enthusiastically as I would have hoped.

  In the six weeks leading up to the election, I barnstormed the country, trying to rally support for Democratic candidates, from Portland, Oregon, to Richmond, Virginia, from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Coral Gables, Florida. The crowds were energized, filling up basketball auditoriums and public parks, chanting, “Yes we can!” and “Fired up! Ready to go!” as loudly as they had when I ran for president, hoisting signs, cheering wildly when I introduced the Democratic congresswoman or governor who needed their vote, having a hoot as I told them we couldn’t afford to give the keys to the car back to Republicans. On the surface, at least, it was just like old times.

  But even without looking at the polls, I could sense a change in the atmosphere on the campaign trail: an air of doubt hovering over each rally, a forced, almost desperate quality to the cheers and laughter, as if the crowds and I were a couple at the end of a whirlwind romance, trying to muster up feelings that had started to fade. How could I blame them? They had expected my election to transform our country, to make government work for ordinary people, to restore some sense of civility in Washington. Instead, many of their lives had grown harder, and Washington seemed just as broken, distant, and bitterly partisan as ever.

  During the presidential campaign, I’d grown accustomed to the occasional heckler or two turning up at our rallies, usually anti-abortion protesters who’d shout at me before being drowned out by a chorus of boos and gently escorted out by security. But more often now the hecklers would turn out to be those whose causes I supported—activists let down by what they considered to be a lack of progress on their issues. I was greeted at several stops by protesters holding up signs calling for an end to “Obama’s wars.” Young Hispanics asked why my administration was still deporting undocumented workers and separating families at the border. LGBTQ activists demanded to know why I hadn’t ended the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which forced non-straight members of the military to hide their sexual orientation. A group of particularly loud and persistent college students shouted about AIDS funding for Africa.

  “Didn’t we increase AIDS funding?” I asked Gibbs as we left a rally where I’d been interrupted three or four times.

  “We did,” he said. “They’re saying you didn’t increase it enough.”

  I soldiered on through the end of October, coming off the trail only to spend a day or two in meetings at the White House before hitting the road again, my voice increasingly hoarse as I made my last-minute appeals. Whatever irrational optimism I’d carried with me from vacation had been long extinguished, and by Election Day—November 2, 2010—the question was no longer whether we’d lose the House, but only how badly. Moving between a terrorism threat briefing in the Situation Room and a session in the Oval with Bob Gates, I stopped by Axe’s office, where he and Jim Messina had been tracking early turnout data coming in from swing districts across the country.

  “What’s it looking like?” I asked.

  Axe shook his head. “We’ll lose at least thirty seats. Maybe more.”

  Rather than stick around for the wake, I headed up to the residence at my usual time, telling Axe I’d check in once most of the polls had closed and asking my assistant Katie to send up a list of likely calls I’d have to make that night—first to the four congressional leaders, and later to any Democratic incumbents who’d lost. Not until I’d had dinner and tucked in the girls at bedtime did I call Axe from the Treaty Room to receive the news: Turnout had been low, with only four out of every ten eligible voters casting ballots, and a profound drop in the numbers of young people voting. The Democrats had been routed, tracking toward a loss of sixty-three House seats, the worst beating the party had taken since sacrificing seventy-two seats at the midpoint of FDR’s second term. Worse yet, many of our most promising young House members had gone down, folks like Tom Perriello of Virginia and John Boccieri of Ohio, Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania and Betsy Markey of Colorado—the ones who had taken the tough votes on healthcare and the Recovery Act; the ones who, despite being from swing districts, had consistently stood up to lobbyists’ pressure and the polls and even the advice of their political staffs to do what they thought was right.

  “They all deserved better,” I said to Axe.

  “Yes,” he said. “They did.”

  Axe signed off, promising to give me a more detailed readout in the morning. I sat alone with the phone receiver in my hand, one finger depressing the switch hook, my head congested with thoughts. After a minute, I dialed the White House operator.

  “I’ve got some calls I need to make,” I said.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” she said. “Katie sent us the list. Who would you like to start with?”

  CHAPTER 24

  “WHOSE BID IS IT?”

  Pete Souza and I sat opposite Marvin and Reggie at the Air Force One conference room table, all of us a bit bleary-eyed as we sorted through our cards. We were on our way to Mumbai—the first leg of a nine-day trip to Asia that would include not only my first visit to India but also a stop in Jakarta, a G20 meeting in Seoul, and an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Yokohama, Japan. The plane had been humming with activity earlier in the flight, with staffers working on laptops and policy advisors huddling over the schedule. After ten hours in the air, with a refueling stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, almost everybody on board (including Michelle, in the forward cabin; Valerie, on the couch outside the conference room; and several senior staffers stretched out at odd angles on the floor) had gone to sleep. Unable to wind down, I’d enlisted our regular foursome for a game of Spades, and I was trying to read through my briefing book and signing a stack of correspondence between plays. My divided attention—along with Reggie’s second gin and tonic—may have accounted for the fact that Marvin and Pete were up six games to two on us, at ten dollars a pop.

  “It’s your bid, sir,” Marvin said.

  “What you got, Reg?” I asked.

/>   “Maybe one,” Reggie said.

  “We’ll go board,” I said.

  “We’re going eight,” Pete said.

  Reggie shook his head in disgust. “We’re switching decks after the next hand,” he muttered, taking another sip of his drink. “These cards are cursed.”

  * * *

  —

  ONLY THREE DAYS had passed since the midterm elections, and I was grateful for the chance to get out of Washington. The results had left Democrats shell-shocked and Republicans exuberant, and I’d woken up the next morning with a mix of weariness, hurt, anger, and shame, the way a boxer must feel after coming out on the wrong end of a heavyweight bout. The dominant story line in the postelection coverage suggested that the conventional wisdom had been right all along: that I’d attempted to do too much and hadn’t stayed focused on the economy; that Obamacare was a fatal error; that I’d tried to resurrect the kind of big-spending, big-government liberalism that even Bill Clinton had pronounced dead years ago. The fact that in my press conference the day after the election I refused to admit as much, that I seemed to cling to the idea that my administration had pursued the right policies—even if we clearly hadn’t managed to sell them effectively—struck pundits as arrogant and delusional, the sign of a sinner who wasn’t contrite.

  The truth was, I didn’t regret paving the way for twenty million people to get health insurance. Nor did I regret the Recovery Act—the hard evidence showed that austerity in response to a recession would have been disastrous. I didn’t regret how we’d handled the financial crisis, given the choices we’d faced (although I did regret not having come up with a better plan to help stem the tide of foreclosures). And I sure as hell wasn’t sorry I’d proposed a climate change bill and pushed for immigration reform. I was just mad that I hadn’t yet gotten either item through Congress—mainly because, on my very first day in office, I hadn’t had the foresight to tell Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats to revise the chamber rules and get rid of the filibuster once and for all.