Obama- An Oral History

by Brian Abrams

  BARBARA BOXER

  We had a great bill, and that bill got so many votes. The comprehensive immigration reform was so good for the economy. It was fair to everybody, and it died because John Boehner would not bring it up.

  TYLER MORAN

  Boehner’s a true believer on immigration, but, you know, it went from the Republican Study Committee to the Freedom Caucus, and . . . I can’t speak for him, but I think he just had to make strategic decisions about rocking the boat. He’d already rolled them on the debt limit. I guess you had to pick and choose when to do that.

  LUIS GUTIÉRREZ

  We passed it in the Senate. We never got it done in the House. Then I went back to Obama because Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, called him “deporter in chief,” and that really stung Obama.

  TYLER MORAN

  The advocates started getting really restless. Instead of turning on the House as their focus for accountability, they turned on the White House . . . You know, trying to push for immigration reform, there was a feeling that [the White House] needed to show the American public that you believed in enforcement, and [that we weren’t pushing for] open borders. But in hindsight, I was like, What did we get for that? We deported more people than ever before. All these families separated, and Republicans didn’t give him one ounce of credit. There may as well have been open borders for five years.

  * * *

  124 “When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as, quote, ‘the biggest, coldest power play,’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry . . . because that $716 billion is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that he had in his own budget. You got to get one thing. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.” —President Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, Time Warner Cable Arena, Charlotte, North Carolina, September 5, 2012.

  125 “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it . . . These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect, and he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in some cases, emotion, whether they like the guy or not . . .” —Mitt Romney, at a May 17, 2012, fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida. His remarks were recorded surreptitiously by a bartender who catered the $50,000-per-plate dinner.

  126 David Corn’s “SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters,” Mother Jones, September 17, 2012.

  127 October 3, 2012 at the University of Denver, Colorado.

  128 “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet [in Massachusetts]. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women . . . the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all fifty states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.” —Governor Romney at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012.

  129 “Russia I indicated is a ‘geopolitical foe’ . . . Russia does continue to battle us in the UN time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin.” —Governor Romney at Lynn University, Boca Raton, Florida, October 22, 2012.

  130 “Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s ‘No. 1 geopolitical foe.’ His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender . . . There are real threats out there: al-Qaeda and its imitators, Iran, North Korea, economic stresses. Mr. Romney owes Americans a discussion of the real challenges facing this country and his solutions to them.” —“The Never-Ending Cold War,” New York Times, March 28, 2012.

  131 In an attempt to show sensitivity to those affected by Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast, at the last minute the Romney campaign transformed what was supposed to be a scheduled rally in Dayton into “a storm-relief event.” Concerned that the charity drive might not prove successful, staff made the miscalculation of stocking a rental truck with $5,000 of goods before donors arrived.

  132 Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, after spending months reviewing the Romney-Ryan loss, issued the Growth & Opportunity Project, a hundred-page report that detailed strategies for GOP victories in future presidential elections—e.g., the need for congressional Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform. (The standout data point was the failure to attain more than 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012.)

  133 December 16, 2012.

  134 The Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia, was carried out by twenty-eight-year-old Martin Bryant on April 28–29 in 1996. Thirty-five people were killed and twenty-three wounded, the youngest victims aged three and six. As a result of the mass shooting, Prime Minister John Howard led an effort to convince the Australian states to adopt the National Firearms Agreement, which severely restricted the purchase and ownership of semiautomatic and fully automatic weapons, created a national gun registry, and instituted a temporary federal gun-buyback program. There have been no mass shootings of five or more people in Australia since the adoption of the NFA, and in 2015 gun homicide rates decreased by nearly 60 percent.

  135 On April 17, 2013, Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican, cosponsored a compromise amendment that would expand background checks to cover gun shows and internet sales. The bill was initially expected to pass, until five Democrats voted against it and only four Republicans voted in favor of the measure. President Obama called it “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

  136 A term coined by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to describe the alarming combination of budgetary actions that would go into effect January 1, 2013: the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts coupled with the Budget Control Act’s middle-class tax increases and slashing of defense and entitlement programs. If the tax increases and spending cuts weren’t prevented with a substitute agreement before December 31, 2012, the economy was expected to fall back into a recession.

  137 “The FBI Criminal Investigative Division ranked complex financial crimes as the lowest of the six ranked criminal threats within its area of responsibility, and ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest subcategory threat within the complex financial crimes category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not listed as a priority, for FBI field offices in the locations we visited, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.” —Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud, US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division, March 2014.

  138 “To be clear, the decision of whether to indict a corporation, defer prosecution, or decline altogether is not one that I, or anyone in the Criminal Division, take lightly. We are frequently on the receiving end of presentations from defense counsel, CEOs, and economists who argue that the collateral consequences of an indictment would be devastating for their client. In my conference room, over the years, I have heard sober predictions that a company or bank might fail if we indict, that innocent employees could lose their jobs, that entire industries may be affected, and e
ven that global markets will feel the effects.” —Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, US Department of Justice, September 13, 2012.

  139 “It does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do . . . bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy . . . It has an inhibiting influence, impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate.” —US Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, March 6, 2013.

  140 Previously, anyone convicted of possession of crack cocaine would be sentenced to prison one year for every five grams, and anyone convicted of possession of cocaine powder would be sentenced one year for every five hundred grams.

  141 In November 2015, President Obama ordered federal agencies to delay inquiries about job applicants’ criminal history until later in the hiring process, while encouraging Congress to take up legislation to do the same for federal contractors, to “prevent candidates from being eliminated before they have a chance to demonstrate their qualifications.”

  142 “If there is any identified constitutional violation within NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, the Court’s broad power to fashion injunctive relief is not at odds with robust efforts to protect the public. To the contrary, where there exists a systemic pattern of police misconduct, the entry of injunctive relief to correct that conduct inures to the benefit of safe and effective policing, not to its detriment. The City has argued that implementing Plaintiffs’ requested relief will negatively impact NYPD’s capacity to combat crime. In the experience of the United States, however, reform through a court-ordered process improves public confidence, makes officers’ jobs safer, and increases the ability of the department to fight crime.”

  143 On May 26, 2009, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to replace Justice David Souter, a George H. W. Bush pick who had announced his retirement. Sotomayor, confirmed by the Senate three months later on a 68–31 vote, had served as a district judge for New York; President Clinton nominated her to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997.

  On May 10, 2010, one month after Justice John Paul Stevens, a Gerald R. Ford nominee, announced his retirement, Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the bench. Kagan taught constitutional law at Harvard and had served in the Clinton administration. She was the first female SG for the Department of Justice. The Senate confirmed her nomination on a 63–37 vote on August 5, 2010.

  144 January 3, 2013 to January 3, 2015.

  145 In November 2013, Senate Majority Leader Reid updated parliamentary procedure so that the confirmation of federal judges and executive-office appointees no longer required the standard sixty-vote supermajority, but only a fifty-one-vote simple majority.

  146 “I will provide our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national-security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.” —Senator Obama, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, August 1, 2007.

  147 Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona), Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

  148 The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, a.k.a. S.744, proposed a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants in exchange for funding line items such as posting US Border Patrol agents “every 1,000 feet along the southern border,” an electronic exit-tracking system, and approximately seven hundred miles of fencing.

  2013–2014

  Some foreign-policy critics pointed to Iraq’s dilapidation as a direct result of the withdrawal of US military forces, a breakdown they claimed allowed al-Qaeda to resurface, and, in turn, ISIS to occupy various territories within the war-torn country. The State Department’s Jonathan Finer considered this a common misconception. “A cataclysmic civil war erupted right next door in a country with a very fluid border region,” he said. “It created both a climate that was conducive to the return of extremists and foreign fighters.”

  Stateside, the national-security community did not foresee the Syrian civil war as the last pair of American boots crossed the border out of Iraq and into Kuwait. Had Obama and al-Maliki signed a status-of-forces agreement, Finer explained, the intended minimal troop levels would not have provided enough of a presence to deter the neighboring conflict between the Syrian government and several rebel factions. And it wouldn’t have prevented Syria’s president of thirteen years, Bashar al-Assad, from attacking his own people with sarin gas.

  At an August 24, 2013, intelligence meeting, President Obama had been told that al-Assad was responsible for the deaths of at least 1,429 innocent civilians three days prior in Ghouta, a suburb outside of Damascus; UN inspectors continued their investigation during a cease-fire while the White House readied strategies for a military strike, without the approval of Congress.

  Four US Navy destroyers, stocked with hundreds of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, awaited orders in the eastern Mediterranean Sea from their commander in chief, who, some believed, might very well be pushing the limits of the president’s war powers—an argument that was not dissimilar to candidate Obama’s own criticisms of President Bush years prior. Speaker Boehner hinted a threat of impeachment. “It is essential you address on what basis any use of force would be legally justified,” the Speaker wrote in an August 28 memo to the White House, “and how the justification comports with the exclusive authority of Congressional authorization under Article I of the Constitution.” The House of Representatives, still in summer recess, would not return to Capitol Hill to deliberate on such matters until September, but the United States wasn’t the only democracy considering strikes against the al-Assad regime.

  The following day, British Parliament voted against military action, and Prime Minister David Cameron reassured the House of Commons that “the government will act accordingly.” The UK’s decision, likely combined with an NBC News poll that showed 80 percent of Americans wanting the president to seek congressional approval for war, must have given pause. On Friday, Obama spent forty-five minutes walking the South Lawn with Denis McDonough, a longtime national-security confidant who was seven months into his position as White House chief of staff. The contents of their discussion were not divulged to the public; it was only later that evening that the two would reconvene with advisors in the Oval. “I have a pretty big idea I want to test with you guys,” Obama said.

  PETE SOUZA

  I photographed him walking along the south grounds. I photographed him with Rahm. I photographed him with Denis, and I don’t remember exactly why I didn’t photograph that particular walk, because I usually would. It may have been because it was already dark, but I was there when they came back into the Oval [on August 30] and he called in his national-security [team]. It was late, definitely after six thirty, which was usually about the time he went home. But I remember him walking in. I could tell by the look on his face that something was up.

  Clockwise from Obama: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors; National Security Advisor Susan Rice; Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken; Deputy White House Counsel Brian Egan; NSC Chief of Staff Brian McKeon; Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer; White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough (standing); Deputy National Security Advisor
Ben Rhodes. Pete Souza, White House

  PETE SOUZA

  The president had basically laid out what he and Denis had just talked about on their walk, that he was now gonna turn to Congress to authorize strikes.

  DAN SHAPIRO

  It became pretty apparent, first with the vote in the British Parliament and then as they began to whip the vote in Congress, that there was not much of an appetite for US military engagement. Polling also showed, widely, that there was not much support among the American people. So essentially, if you were to do the military strike, you’d be doing it without the political support one ideally wanted and needed, especially if it’s going to be sustainable for military action, opening the possibility of a deeper and longer military involvement, as these things would often lead to. That’s when he made the decision that there was a better option.

  DENNIS ROSS

  Senior Director for the Central Region, National Security Council, White House (2009–2011)

  I left the administration at the end of 2011. I was running a back channel between the Israelis and the Palestinians at that time . . . So my view on [the decision to not attack Assad] would be from the outside, not from the inside. I was up on the Hill, though, after the president made his decision, and what I heard mostly from Democrats was that they regretted that the president didn’t act—that by throwing the ball to them, this was a way of not acting, and, had he acted, he would have actually had support. That came from some Senate Democrats.