Obama- An Oral History

by Brian Abrams

  She had to win that nomination on her own right. We can debate the merits of whether or not the deck was stacked. I mean, a lot of what came out afterward vindicated our view that the process was not as fair and balanced as it should have been.

  ROB O’DONNELL

  There’s no question the DNC was culpable, and Bernie supporters had every right to be upset. I didn’t even know how the DNC set their debate schedule, but the process from an outsider’s perspective felt like most of the DNC folks were Clinton supporters or had ties there. They should have—similar to what the president would do, particularly around the Russian-hack stuff—gone out of their way to make the entire process look like it was a big tent and that Bernie’s team felt like they had a say. They just didn’t do that, and there’s no question that it felt to Bernie supporters, and even to an objective person, that the scales had been tipped a bit.

  JOEL BENENSON

  His diagnosis of a rigged political and economic system for working people was spot on. He just tried to make her more of the cause of that than she deserved or that was necessary or productive, when it was clear he wasn’t going to get the nomination.

  MICHAEL FROMAN

  Given the politics around this election, it was understandable that she took the position she did with [opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership]. I didn’t think it was fundamentally about what was in the agreement, which itself was sound, but the politics became unmanageable. It was difficult to push back against a fact-free debate, or a postfact debate, with the complexities of international trade.

  JONATHAN FINER

  Senator Sanders never supported it. Secretary Clinton did write in her book very positive things about TPP, but in the end their positions were not all that different. The sort of pro–free trade community in the United States had for a long time underestimated some of the dislocations and disaffections related to trade, and I think that, plus a series of other factors, led to a shift in our politics that was not very well foreseen. It caught a lot of people by surprise . . . What it cost us, strategically, was our partners and allies in Asia [who began] to question whether this new commitment encapsulated in the rebalance was real.

  JENNIFER GRANHOLM

  It was all about jobs and uncertainty, and we were in this era of accelerations, accelerations related to technology displacing workers in addition to global-ization. The combination, for Michigan, had been so powerful. Each technology platform was moving so fast that the training for people to keep up wasn’t as adequate as one would have hoped.

  JEFF WEAVER

  The president certainly came to us through back channels many times, on how he was under a tremendous amount of pressure to endorse Secretary Clinton and to be supportive of her much earlier in the process. It’s never a positive when the sitting Democratic president was going to endorse your opponent, but we did obviously know it was coming.

  TAD DEVINE

  We all knew where the campaign was at that juncture. It was obvious that Hillary was going to be the nominee of the party. The question was, how was that all going to be accomplished? What was the choreography behind it? You know, I think Bernie had spoken to the president and the vice president several times during the course of the campaign. They were always constructive meetings and conversations, and I expected the same would be true when he met with the president at the White House.

  CODY KEENAN

  I was walking out of West Exec on the day Bernie had come to a meeting in the EOB, and a bunch of young staffers on the top of the steps were just trying to get a glimpse of Bernie Sanders showing up. My first thought was, This is not viewing hours. Fall in line. Get back to work.

  ROB O’DONNELL

  It was important for the president to sit down with Senator Sanders, hear his views, and make sure that, moving forward, we would incorporate them. He had defied expectations beyond anyone’s imagination, and it was really important that we showed him the respect as he wound down his campaign.

  GENE SPERLING

  I wasn’t in every conversation, but I didn’t think there was anything that transactional. I really did not believe in any way that there was some agreement about 2016. This was a president who had a bit of loyalty toward his secretary of state and thought that she was the best hope to be elected and protect his legacy. I didn’t think it was more complicated than that. If Biden had run, he would have been in a difficult position. My guess is he would have stayed out of it. Who could have even imagined the circumstances that would lead to that?

  TAD DEVINE

  I thought Obama, and Biden in particular, were very much in sync with Bernie’s message. I think if Biden had run, he would have delivered the same message that Bernie was delivering about the economy and about ideas like tuition-free public colleges. I think Biden was very much on board, and he made that clear in the Rose Garden when he spoke about not running and also the agenda that he thought the country should follow.

  JEFF WEAVER

  I did think that the president, and the vice president as well, frankly, did a commendable job of trying, despite tremendous internal pressure, to stay out of it and let the voters decide.

  DANIELLE CRUTCHFIELD

  Going out stumping for HRC took him back to the campaign trail, the old days when the bubble was smaller. That’s genuine. He legitimately loved it and he fed off the crowd, too.

  ROB O’DONNELL

  The president would make the case for Secretary Clinton in interviews, speeches, and videos. We were doing prep for one of these interviews right before the DNC. It was [White House Press Secretary] Josh Earnest, Jen Psaki, myself, and maybe Ben Rhodes, and he really made the case for how strongly he felt about her candidacy. Everything he said was really true about Secretary Clinton. For me, as someone who had been an Obama guy since 2008, I was always skeptical and hesitant, but that was what really turned me around. That day forward I was like, Okay, I’m fully on board with the Clinton campaign.

  LUIS GUTIÉRREZ

  Nobody ever remembers me speaking at the conventions, except you know which convention people remember me speaking at? This last one, they put me at eight o’clock on Monday189—Hillary Clinton. Maybe I should have endorsed her in 2008!

  JOEL BENENSON

  And, you know, Bernie endorsed her. He campaigned for her. He did all those things, but with two third-party candidates on the ballot, there was a comfortable place for disaffected Bernie Sanders voters to go, based on a message he drove for thirteen months. And for some other voters, when that message was reinforced in the Republican campaign, it added another brick to the load you’re carrying.

  * * *

  163 Vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, 2007-2015.

  164 Hydrofluorocarbons.

  165 February 14-15, 2014.

  166 Leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change published their post-2020 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), consisting of what actions they would take to achieve global emission-reduction goals in the context of their “national priorities, circumstances, and capabilities.” Once the accord was finalized and a country formally joined the Paris Agreement, the “intended” was dropped from the moniker, and an INDC became a Nationally Determined Contribution.

  167 September 24, 2014.

  168 “I very rarely hear him say the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America. I do hear him criticize America much more often than other American presidents . . . It sounds like he’s more of a critic than he is a supporter. You can be a patriotic American and be a critic, but then you’re not expressing that kind of love that we’re used to from a president.” —Rudy Giuliani, Fox & Friends, February 19, 2015.

  169 March 26 to April 2, 2015.

  170 March 9, 2015.

  171 March 3, 2015.

  172 April 12, 2015.

  173 June 1
6, 2015.

  174 “Change for many of our LGBT brothers and sisters must have seemed so slow for so long. But compared to so many other issues, America’s shift has been so quick. I know that Americans of goodwill continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact, recognize different viewpoints, revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.

  But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shifts in hearts and minds is possible, and those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them. Because for all our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone. That’s always been our story.” —President Obama, White House Rose Garden, June 26, 2015.

  175 On June 17, 2015, at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, white supremacist Dylann Roof entered Wednesday-night prayer meeting and shot and killed nine members of the congregation, including senior pastor and state senator Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

  176 Following the Charleston shooting, calls increased for the removal of the Confederate flag from state government buildings. President Obama agreed, stating that the flag “belongs in a museum.” On July 10, the flag was taken down from the South Carolina Capitol, where it had flown for fifty-four years.

  177 Trade-promotion authority, also known as fast-track authority, is a temporary power granted to POTUS to negotiate trade agreements. In 2012, President Obama indicated interest in renewing the authority after it had expired in 2007, in order to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Legislation granting Obama fast-track authority narrowly passed the House by 218–208, and then passed the Senate on June 24, 2015, 60–38.

  178 As governor of South Carolina, Haley called for the immediate removal of the Confederate flag from State House grounds on June 22, 2015, five days after the mass shooting in Charleston. “What I realize now more than ever,” she said, “is people were driving by and they felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain.”

  179 The 6–3 decision in King v. Burwell was the second Supreme Court case to have ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act. In 2012’s National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al., several businesses (joined by attorneys general from twenty-six states) argued that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated the Constitution by enforcing the “individual mandate,” which required most Americans to either purchase health insurance coverage or pay a “penalty.” In a 5–4 decision, SCOTUS determined “that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power to ‘lay and collect taxes.’”

  180 July 1, 2015: Following fifty-four years of strained diplomatic relations, President Obama announced that Cuba and the United States would reopen their respective embassies, which had been shuttered under the Eisenhower administration. Both embassies began officially operating on July 20, and Secretary of State John Kerry presided over a reopening ceremony at the US embassy in Havana on August 14, the first time the US’s top diplomat had visited the country since 1945.

  181 On July 23, 2015, the First Lady and Education Secretary Arne Duncan hosted 140 college-bound students at the “Beating the Odds” summit, part of FLOTUS’s Reach Higher initiative to complete education past high school.

  182 December 10–11, 2015.

  183 Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, 2012–2016.

  184 “Developed country Parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economywide absolute emission reduction targets. Developing country Parties should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances.”

  185 Fabius’s banging of the gavel the evening of Saturday, December 12, 2015, confirmed the political commitments of 190-plus countries to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “This is truly a historic moment. For the first time, we have a truly universal agreement on climate change, one of the most crucial problems on Earth.”

  186 People United Means Action, aka Party Unity, My Ass!

  187 March 15, 2016: After clinching primary victories in North Carolina, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, Secretary Clinton beat out Sanders by 1,531 votes in Missouri. The Vermont senator’s spokesman reassured the press that the candidate would not request a recount in the interest of saving “taxpayers of Missouri some money.” Instead, his focus would remain on “taking the contest all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.”

  188 Sanders served on the committee during his years in the House of Representatives (1991-2007).

  189 July 25, 2016.

  2016–2017

  The month of October delivered no shortage of favorable news for President Obama’s presumed successor. The media crowned Hillary Clinton the victor of all three presidential debates against Donald Trump. When the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement fingering the Kremlin as the perpetrator behind the Democratic National Committee’s email hack, the Clinton camp expected headlines sympathetic to its cause. But the same afternoon, the news cycle became consumed by a video in which the leader of the Republican Party bragged on a hot mic about groping women. “When you’re a star,” Trump said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”

  One White House aide felt at the time that the jaw-dropping footage, recorded in 2005, was “a deal breaker for a lot of undecided voters and maybe decided voters.” Not so. The true October surprise of the election didn’t come from either campaign’s opposition-research teams, but from the director of the FBI. On October 28, James Comey, months after closing his investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, alerted Congress to possible new findings related to Email-gate. “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations,” Comey wrote, “but here I feel an obligation to do so, given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”

  The Democratic Party nominee’s lead narrowed, and caution pervaded the West Wing. “The polls are right until they’re not,” suggested Brian Deese during one meeting on the Friday before Election Day. Communications staffer Rob O’Donnell interpreted the quip to mean that “if the American public decided over the weekend that they liked Hillary Clinton but they were gonna vote for Trump, then that could happen. The polls were only as good as Snapchat, in that they captured that moment.” The world watched with trepidation. “It tended to be with many, if not most, countries the sort of first topic that everybody asked about,” Jonathan Finer recalled. “‘Is it true that Mr. Trump might win?’”

  KORI SCHULMAN

  The evening before the election, I was there late, until midnight or so. I was the last person in my office and had been watching the Philly rally on TV. It was really quiet. I walked out of the EEOB, and the lights were on in the White House. I remember thinking, Tomorrow when I leave, we’ll know. I felt some calm in that.

  ROB O’DONNELL

  I had spoken to Clinton-campaign folks even up until the afternoon on Election Day, and they were pretty much, You know, it’s going to be a normal day. We feel pretty confident. [At the White House] we were all talking through Hillary Clinton coming to visit on Thursday, how we would manage that, and what people were doing for election-night celebrations. I was at a victory party for Senator [-elect] Van Hollen because my brother worked on the campaign, and, unlike the 2012 Election Day, where you’re sitting on pins and needles all day long, we pretty much took it for granted.

  DAVID CUSACK

  We had become very tightly knit crews, family-like, and so we decided, since it was such a historic occasion, that we would watc
h it together in our offices. So we had a whole pizza-and-beer-and-wine party to watch, and I was there with my brother, who was actually Al Gore’s body person from ’96 to 2000. Everyone else there was under the age of thirty, and by nine thirty or so, we started to get an inkling that something was amiss.

  JEN PSAKI

  No one thought he was going to win—no one in the White House that I talked to in the days leading up to it. The president was out there the whole day on Monday. He did a bunch of stuff Tuesday. It was the overnight, from Tuesday to Wednesday, when everybody was in a complete state of shock.

  VALERIE JARRETT

  It was brutal. I didn’t see it coming.

  CODY KEENAN

  I’d been awake all night, watching returns with Ben Rhodes, Dan Pfeiffer, and my wife, Kristen. The president called at two a.m. “We’re going to have to rework tomorrow’s remarks a little bit.” He suggested a few things he wanted to say. Then I sobered up and got to work.

  DAVID CUSACK

  We were there until about one thirty in the morning. There was already a team with POTUS setting up all the phone calls, but we had to think about protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue, making sure to tell the Secret Service how we were planning to handle all that stuff. So I was watching all these young people put aside the personal feelings about how the election turned, and just be able to flip a switch and think about everything that we needed to do around campus.

  KORI SCHULMAN

  I woke up every hour to check my phone to see where things stood—if more ballots were going to be counted. I tried to convince myself that there was some kind of path.

  JOHN DINGELL

  She had that damned election won. I voted for her, and the end result was Trump, who everybody thought couldn’t win and wouldn’t win. They thought he was crazy. By golly, he wasn’t a majority winner, but he did get a majority of the votes in the electoral college.