Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; David Remnick: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

Tonight I'm excited to welcome Dave Remnick to Cambridge to discuss his book The Bridge to Life and Rise of Barack Obama. Mr. Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1980 1998. Having previously been a staff writer for the magazine and The Washington Post's Moscow correspondent has written five previous books including King of the world a biography of Muhammad Ali which the New York Times named one of the best nonfiction books of 1998 and Lenin's tomb which earned Mr. Remnick a Pulitzer Prize in 1900 for his newest book The Bridge is a biography of Barack Obama. There have been a number of books written about the president but Mr. Remnick has taken a journalistic approach to offering a detailed multifaceted and complete account of the president's life through interviews with those who have known Obama best close readings of the president's writings and interviews with Obama himself. Mr. Remnick presents not just the facts of the president's life but an interpretation of Obama's role in American history and insights into Obama's own understanding of his place in the narrative of our country. The New York Times called the book incisive filled with insight and nuance. And when I full interview for The Washington Post said of the bridge

run it deserves credit for telling Obama's story more completely than others for lending a reporter's zeal to the task for not ducking the discussion of race and for peeling back several layers of The Onion. That is Barack Obama. Thank you very much I've never been in the pulpit before. Not this kind. Thanks for having me. And it's my experience in these circumstances that they happen every day to me that it's a great deal more fun to have a conversation that rather than me speechify let me just say a few things first. It is a good feeling to be here for many reasons. One of them though is that the origins of this book are are here and maybe I should explain. I have a day job. I haven't written a book since that day job began. The last book I read the last real last book I read the last real book I've written

was a book called King of the world which is about Muhammad Ali and race in America in the late 50s and early 60s. And about five and a half seconds after that book came out through circumstances too bizarre to recount here at the moment I became the editor of The New Yorker. I became the editor of The New Yorker having had the previous editing experience of having been the editor of the Pascal Valley smoke signal. Which is the school newspaper as you all know of the pasch Valley fighting wait for it Indians Indians smoke signal. Very clever and probably illegal by now or should be. And I published that book and that was it. And I've been working ever since happily ecstatically and hard. On doing what I can each week with The New Yorker which is a joyfully

difficult and interesting job. And along the way in order to get out of the House some people go to the beach. Some people take a trip to Europe. Some people take a walk or some people are said to enjoy the great outdoors. As Woody Allen once said I am it too with nature and I'm very happy to print all kinds of pieces about the environment and we're very ferociously defended in our comments section elsewhere in the magazine. But I'm glad it's there. For you. I'm an indoor sport kind of guy and but what I like to do once in a while instead of wearing a deep well worn groove between where I live in the West 80s in New York and Times Square where my office is once in a while to get out of the house I write a story for the magazine a kind of busman's holiday.

And one of the pieces that I wrote was in the thick of the election campaign now of great memory but it was a bonanza for my business I have to say. And I and I think in the end perhaps even for the country but I wrote a piece in a special election issue for the magazine called the Joshua generation which came out the week after the Obamas election and we took a leap of faith and thought that he would win. And there was that issue of the magazine that had four pieces in it one by George Packer about the potential for Obama to become a Roosevelt democratic reformer. We can talk about that how that's gone so far. There was a piece about the ill fated McCain campaign by David Grann who's written a wonderful book that I recommend everybody called The Lost City of Z. And there was a piece. Yes by my colleague in the Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza about the Obama ground game in other words the mechanics of the election and how and

how he won. And my piece was about race and politics and Obama. Find the pieces published November happened. I went back to work and then something horrific happened in the history of our magazine probably our most exalted contributor and I think in many ways the most exalted contributor in the history of the magazine no matter what you may think of Wyatt or Thurber or or or Salinger or anybody else but certainly the most longstanding astonishing contribute to the magazine. John Updike died and I went to the funeral which was north of Boston in a very modest APUs Kaboul church it was not a memorial service a glamorous memorial service New York or Boston style where glamorous people get up and give amusing speeches about the qualities of the dearly beloved. Friend but rather it was a very serious traditional Episcopal service. My friend and colleague Henry Fincher and

I attended and I came back here and stayed here on for a couple of extra days. I don't know why but I called up various colleagues of Barack Obama teachers of Barack Obama Harvard Law School thinking maybe there's a something in here something something more than the piece I wrote. And I went to see Laurence Tribe. A constitutional lawyer whose name you probably know Martha Minow who is now the dean of the law school Charles Ogletree spoke to a number of people David Wilkins other people at the law school and the more I spoke to them or listened to them better to say the more I realized that despite the two years of constant journalism about Barack Obama the more I drill down about just this very net seemingly narrow episode in the life of Barack Obama the more it seemed to me that this was a very rich

a rich life and that it was possible maybe possible that while Obama was still in office with maybe a lot of time left on the clock. Whether it's three years or maybe seven that it might be possible to write what I would call a biography a journalistic biography of Obama using the techniques of journalism. People are still around people are interviewer both things are readable and. With some of the tools of scholarship whatever you want to call it reporting is what I call it the thing very fancy to try to write this book about Barack Obama's life up to the White House door up to the White House door. The book is called The Bridge for a very simple set of reasons. The first is the opening scene of the book and this is a book largely about race not only but after all

what's the radical thing about Barack Obama not his politics his politics or rather conventional center left politics of the Democratic Party. It's not that much space in between her and Hillary Clinton in the campaign. Save on one issue in particular Iraq what's radical about Barack Obama is that he's the first African-American president how did this happen. Because I got to tell you as much of a genius as I may be. When the 2004 Senate campaign was happening and our writer Bill Finnegan came into the office and said we must do a profile of this guy Barack Obama. Not only do I think he's going to win the Senate seat but he may well become a presidential contender my reaction was not printable. Not for the first time did someone say with a name like Barack Hussein Obama in post-9 11 America the chances of him being a national

politician much less a presidential winner seemed. I don't know. In phantasmal and at that moment I started making bets around the office of The New Yorker all of which I lost. And I'm a poor man for it. You may be a richer country for it though. And so the book is called the bridge because the opening scene of the book is at a very distinct bridge the Edmund Pettus Bridge you know this bridge it's a bridge that spans the Alabama River in Selma. It's the scene of one of the great violent moments in the history of the civil rights movement in March 1965 Bloody Sunday led by. Now Congressman from Atlanta John Lewis. And when hundreds of civil rights demonstrators having picked Selma as a place to demonstrate the

injustice of the disenfranchisement of southern. America African-Americans began their march and were cut off by Alabama state troopers and police and vigilantes and beaten near to death gassed horses dogs the whole the whole imagery that we know very well from Taylor Branch and other histories of that period that happened at the Edmund Pettus Bridge Edmund Pettus by the way the last Confederate soldier to be a senator in the U.S. Capitol. It's also called the bridge because Barack Obama's political personality is such that he proposes from the very first book before he's even a politician to be someone who bridges American communities American ethnicities because he has lived in so many of them. So there's a metaphorical bridge that Obama is their historical bridge that Obama is part of in terms of his

historical epic in progress. And also there's a very specific bridge. So I came to Harvard Law School and began to discuss After all he was a law student big deal. But in fact the more you talk in the more you listen and come back and listen and listen you discover that the person who's now the present United States in some small way or maybe in a very large way discovered both his political personality at the law school here and also his sense of greater ambition. What do I mean by that. Well his political personality is one that prides itself deeply on his sense of his capacity to be a conciliator. Is someone who because he's a kind of cultural translator someone who was born in the odd circumstances he was in multicultural Honolulu but multicultural lacking African-Americans except on military bases. As someone who grew up with the illusive ghost. Of a

Kenyan father and the presence. Of a Kansas Kansas mother and grandparents who raised him that he was somebody who had built this personality who had come to this personality over time. And when he ran for the most exalted office at Harvard Law School has to offer the presidency of the Law Review. I mean some of you would think big deal. It's a student run academic journal that no one reads. And you would be right. But. But here at Harvard Law School which does not lack for ego where everyone in the class no doubt imagine thems imagines himself or herself to be a potential. A great leader or captain of industry or a captain of an investment bank or or worse. And when all some preposterous number of people run for this office Obama prevails. Why did he prevail. He prevailed at

a time when there was a liberal majority at the Harvard Law School but a growing conservative conservative constituency from the Federalist Society and The Federalist kids were under no illusion that Obama was a conservative but the Federalist constituency at the at the lower if you voted for Obama as well as many of the liberals and that was his. That was his victory. That's how he won. He beat a fellow liberal. And the next morning Obama is in the word within the within a week he's in the New York Times he's in the Boston Globe and news of his selection as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review is national news imagine you're a kid whose biggest accomplishment before that had been I don't know graduating. Now you're national news. So there's the birth of his ambition is right here. The birth to some degree of his political personality is right here. And so each step of the way what the book tries to do with the bridge tries to do

is dive deep into personal episodes whether it's family history or his schooling or his experience as a community organizer. Or completely missing from his own autobiography his whole political life as a state senator and the as a as a losing congressional candidate. And look at how this plays out. And race is a gigantic and predominant theme throughout and we can discuss this each step along the way whether it's him losing to Bobby Rush a former power in the in the Black Panthers in Illinois. Or how he won his Senate race in 2004 because his political personality had been transformed further from 2000 to 2004. And the other aspect of the book is the way all of this personal history which seems rather straightforward intersects with big chunks of American history whether it's the intersection of Chicago and racial

politics whether it's the strangeness of Honolulu whether it's the powerful personality also quite missing from his own autobiography not of his father. But of his mother. Who is not a simple character at all who's not just a kind of naive 60s figure that we kind of got in a lot of the press accounts during the campaign. So history as it as it clashes with as it intersects with weaves with. The growth of a man and how he becomes himself how he pursues his own identity is the is the shape of this book. Now this is a story that I think we all have lived with. You don't have to have I'm guessing that very few of you have read this book it's only been out for a couple of weeks and it's one more than one reviewer has described it charitably as exhaustive which in my experience as

an editor is a euphemism for long. So you can be forgiven for not having read this but you know you know the frame of the story a little bit. So I thought we'd begin a discussion we can talk about various episodes of Obama's life in response to questions so if anybody has them. I'm here as long as you are. And Just lie back of one thing and have them be questions rather than kind of petitions or statements or things that I can't respond to. Well you made a very good development of character and book to the extent they read it and my question comes from take of Aristotle spore ethics that character reveals the seven action and my question is as you also have great imagination as a writer. If the situation is that young and reasonable doubt three different independent sources

inform Obama have the nuclear weapons and in line with even the previous moderate presidents said they are willing to use it to nuke Israel and Obama is confronted with this information as you mention bethink support you had to bet you had but you can't predict the future. Which way would you bet. What would you do. I'm glad to say that gambling is illegal in both the states of New York and Massachusetts to my right. OK. Look this you've you've you've heard me not for well let's sneak it on under the wire here. You've asked a terrific question to which if I were you know on television and playing the role of the journalist on television I'd immediately have to come up with a flip answer I have no flip answer. I don't know. Let's start with that premise. OK here's the problem. There is no good outcome to

any of this. Your description of Iran is not wrong. Iran is led by people who make no bones of their analysis both of history and their view of the Middle East and their act to end their relationship with Syria has been you know it all. And their confrontation with Israel is well known. A nuclear armed Israel I might add. And I should add. What is the United States to do. Well the thing that we're doing now and the thing that we've been engaged in for a very long time is the worst option which is to say almost nothing. It seems to me that anything in between has not come to fruition which is to say sanctions and that's what Obama is engaged in now. And so the next couple of weeks are said to be telling about the trying to coalesce coalesce a force for serious sanctions against Iran.

In terms of its nuclear program I mean if it gets to the next stage which is to say the United States or Israel are both attacking Iran. God help us all. It is not you know it is this is not a Cyrix. And one reactor in the middle of the Iraqi desert 30 years ago you know what I'm you know this is well as I do that was dangerous enough and successful. Well we don't know that. We don't know that for sure do it. So I think I think that he's making all the efforts he can in terms of sanctions but it's been it's been sadly sadly the action I think I've answered your question. OK. Good evening. I look forward to reading your book. Thank you. And I enjoyed the New Yorker every week. I should say that I should say this year. I'm a little footnotes where this is concerned OK I like to

thank. Yeah Unitarian so I should get my guitar. And my wife as a card carrying Unitarian. OK I'm going to caution I should although there's no good where this this could go wrong in so many ways. I don't have a car. I have a much more general non-nuclear question for you given that you're you're describing Barack Obama as many people have as a as a conciliator at heart. I mean that's sort of what's in his blood perhaps he can try but he you know the health care drama tells us that. Good luck with that. And you know these are now hours of conciliation with the Republican Party came to naught. Right. And any any successful conciliation that was done was within his own party. So much so it's a hell of a lot easier to become the Harvard Law School Law Review president. And in the end while it's happening again a kind of self regard for the in terms of the power of conciliation but when it comes to politics in the modern

world this is a hell of a thing but it's and that was essentially what I wanted to have you discuss further is the challenges that he faces being a conciliator at heart and yet in a highly partisan environment in Washington. Look let's be honest. This business of being a conciliator is is nice during the campaign. It's a fine thing if if we lived in a political culture where this could. Be you know the Republican Party were a more diverse party for say that. When I was a kid there were such there were creatures that walked the earth called liberal Republicans. Even moderate Republicans it was Jacob job. I mean you know you know that history right church. Sure. And now you have parties like like this although I would argue and I don't think this is a partisan argument I think it's borne out that the Republican Party has moved much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has has

budged. I think that's true in fact in fact one could easily argue that there are more conservative Democrats now than there were even in the Reagan year although of course during the Johnson era and before the Democratic Party was a readout of segregationist politics. So you know what. Good luck on that conciliation thing is what I would say I mean look this is this is not something that's been very promising so far. Thank you. Yes sir. I'm afraid I'm a New Yorker subscriber too. Don't be afraid. And I am not afraid. I am as the pope. I haven't read your book but I noticed that you said that a dominant theme was race. So my question simply is this. What role is race playing right now in the opposition to not only the Democratic party's proposals in the Congress but to Obama himself. And I'm struck by what I think of as the exaggerated rhetoric

that's been used particularly in the Tea Party movement and so on communist thug socialist so on that kind of thing the birther movement. And I'm just wondering as a reporter as well as an editor what is the racial issue really a driving force in the opposite I don't think with everybody but I think that when you hear rhetoric about we want our country back. It can't just mean the marginal tax rate which hasn't changed. So look something radical happened in this country really too late. Far later than it should of. But something radical occurred in this country. You have. A black president. You have a man named Barack Hussein Obama and this does not and Obama never expected it to and we should never have expected to to sit easily with every single citizen in the United States. That's not to say there isn't a legitimate conservative opposition

as there should be and ferocious political debate as there should be. But some part of this rhetoric both. On the air and elsewhere. I don't need to be more specific than that's pretty obvious. It is alarming is alarming and I don't mean just a couple of you know messages put on John Lewis's machine I'm sure he's got messages like that before. But I mean to hear some of the rhetoric coming out of some of the lead politicians who are gaining from this whether it's some vision of votes down the line or media dollars in the interim the language of divide that plays on these fears and anxieties is alarming. DAVID It's really nice to see you again. Thank you. I haven't

had a chance to read the new biography yet. I did read the biography of Ali and really enjoyed I'm looking forward to this new one. So the question that I want to ask relates to a question I asked you the last time I saw you at the Brattle Theater. You know I the question I asked you then was about Mayor Bloomberg in New York City and his stance his position on gun violence and the gun issue in America. So without having read this biography that's really the question I want to ask you about President Obama's position stance on let's call it the gun issue in America. I know for instance in the magazine a New Yorker. He campaigned once with I think Senator Webb in Virginia and I can almost remember the quote he said he won in what Webb and he said told those people he said I'm not going to take your guns away. The hunters sell.

Based on all of the work you've done I wonder if you would comment on it. Thank you. Thanks. Look. Clearly there's a big difference between taking shotguns away from bird hunters and the problems we have in the country with handguns or automatic weapons things that plague our cities things that plague our country. But it's very very difficult as you know to win a national election and start parsing the gun issue and expect to win independent voters. It's very very difficult. This is one of these things that's very particular to American politics now. There are so this is this is one of the amazing things about Obama that in a campaign because of who he is because of his particular rhetorical talents and yes even to some degree because of race was able to channel and. A certain degree of what you would

call the prophetic voice in American politics whether it was King or anybody else but keep in mind always that Barack Obama is not an outsider pressuring power he is power itself he was running for power and now he is power. And despite these skills here there's a different pressure on him and different set of strictures on him and we should also put pressure on it as journalists and citizens. Now do I believe when he goes home at night that Barack Obama gives a damn if gay men and women marry. I really do not. However as a politician he won't go that far. Not yet because he thinks that is way way way too many people that he would be getting out too far ahead of to win election and on guns it's another instance to I think Barack Obama. Wants to see the volume of guns on the

street that we have in America today I know I don't. But I think this is one of those areas like. Gay marriage where he has been withholding. Let's just put it that way and I think I'm being charitable that way has not been bold at all. Thank you. Right. I believe you covered in your book. The theory of World Net Daily columnist Jack Cashel. Yeah. That Bill Ayres had a significant role in helping Barack Obama should for everybody else can I fill in the background. Yes there was a theory on the Internet by a man named Jack Cashel that Bill Ayres was the ghost writer. For Barack Obama's first book the highly praised first book and it was a theory that got great currency on online. And Rush Limbaugh who has an

enormous audience also propounded it. That's the background. I don't endorse this view. Are you aware of the book by Christopher Andersen Shellenberger Rocket Man I am where he endorsers that theory and I believe he has a number of other sources on that. He I don't I don't buy it. I don't buy it is completely unconvincing. I think you know I have to say something. There's a long history in this country beginning with the slave narratives of. Black men and women writing books and white audiences doubting their literacy. Frederick Douglass had to get an endorsement from Garrison. Right. Had to get an endorsement from Garrison who wrote on the book Frederick Douglass is the author of this book the great abolitionist. Now I would

hope that in the modern era we wouldn't have to do this anymore because the evidence for this evidence that Barack Obama somehow didn't write his book is nil. So why would this for Anderson. He really let me just finish name a source for Christopher Anderson's theories. He doesn't know he doesn't however. The book is a pro-life book. He had no vested interest as far as I can see. He has no sir all I can tell you is that I respectfully disagree. So I know it's OK. That last time I answered her questions her best as I could. I just started right at the part of page 55 where his father was. It's not my fault. But. Just the first question I asked you to project. I'm going to ask you to react. You touched on a little bit. Sure and I just want to make one general point I come from a different world than you do well here I'm from when

I'm back in England now and you know back in where so when Massachusetts on the way to John Updike's funeral. Itself itself it was a long way for me to I got here but it's it's a different world and I mean you told me when I was 15 year old kid that I'd be associated with John Updike in anything other than buying a paperback at a drugstore. You couldn't knock me down with a feather. But go ahead. But what I see is from my friends from high school who didn't go on the college and a living their lives and it's reflected nationally in some of the numbers and I believe there was definitely were racist element to the view that it's not explicit but it's there. They we really don't like this guy even despite you just touched on the gun issue. You know despite what hasn't happened is it There's a mistrust you never know when these people are just not going to be there Aleck Charlie.

And you know if they're not mobile I can say serious that history comes hard. And there was there was never a question. And I have to say having interviewed Obama about this I think his answer about this and it comes in the end of the book in the epilogue in which hundreds of pages from where you are but you I swear you'll get there I mean by around the time that we're playing you in the playoffs. OK. You'll get there. Well Paula we're going to win football player. Football players I don't I don't see it for us this much but if I just want to know but I mean let me answer your question. You're right. You're right and Obama had this problem even when he was facing Hillary. You're talking about white working class voters not least men and he has this problem his favorite bill is probably about 25 percent with a high school education and less is my guess that I haven't seen it lately. This is a big political problem for him I we're not disagreeing. I'll get your mail and I

also want to say I don't think everybody who somehow opposes Barack Obama is even remotely a racist. I want to be completely clear about this particular group in my personal experience that includes reading my book not yours I had Yeah it was before you guys came out but this will happen. I was sitting in my little daytime restaurant somebody who's in who's got the Barack Obama's stick is me and I yell or scream he's ruining my kid's future so I stood up and told him to leave and he did but you know that's you know but it's what we all do. It was very unpleasant but just the one question I had in terms of projections. What really struck me during healthcare was when he sat down with the Republican members of the Senate and I don't I think there were House members that so and just ate their lunch. They had I mean the thing that was televised no one for whom you know we read your book a lot it was like that was when I was six I was anyway.

Oh thank you. But I just I just I you know you you I your point is your point is a good well I don't have a point of a quite the question oh I'm sorry. Was that what does that tell us about him as we get you know his beard what tells him what tells this is that different people have had a different are farther along or less far along in that absorbing this new historical thing under the sun period. OK I was wondering what the most surprising thing you learned reporting the book with the most surprising thing that I've read. Many many many many many things but certainly what well one thing is how much good fortune has smiled on him too. And we tend to forget that. Take the Senate race of 2004. You know this story. It's an incredible story. Here's a guy who was a state senator. EVERYBODY RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW YOUR state senator

is. OK well this is a pretty educated bunch. OK. Can I tell you a. State Senator in the state of Illinois is not. Let's just say it's not like you know being president of the world or anything. It's it's retail politics. Your constituents know who you are some don't. Barack Obama was a state senator in the south side. He ran unopposed practically unopposed. Some symbolic you know campaigns against him. Then he ran for Congress in 2000 against Bobby Rush. Not a good idea. And he lost by more than two to one. He was sick of Springfield. His wife said Look darling you're finished with politics you can do good in you. You were the president the Harvard Law Review time to you know a little bit of money would be nice. You can do well by you can do good and do

well maybe run a foundation anough. This is a woman who grew up on the south side she had the kind of skepticism of electoral politics that anybody who's grown up in the South Side of Chicago would have. He basically prevailed in an argument said Give me one more chance one more chance and if I lose I'll go teach a little write a little make some money and we'll be fine. So he runs for Senate in 2000 and for completely open race because Carol Moseley Braun. Weirdly inexplicably decided not to run for Senate but for president. And Obama runs for Senate in a wide open race in Illinois in 2004 and he on the Democratic side for the primary there's a guy named Blair Hall Blair Hall who the hell is that. Blair home made his money first playing cat counting cards in blackjack and then he made a fortune in the

financial services industry and Blair Hall was prepared to spend money like Mike Bloomberg and he did it and Blair whole despite being not the most capable politician in the world was leading the race. This wide open race Barack Obama was doing OK. He was planning to run a lot of commercials toward the end and he was he was quite possibly going to make a move. But he was behind then the Chicago Tribune forced open Blair wholes divorce records and they were filled with things like getting his wife all sorts of things that you would want to say even in a Unitarian church. Even accompanied by any musical instrument you can a. Stroke of Luck number one. Then he gets a phone call from the Democratic Party in Boston saying state Senator Obama would you like to be the keynote speaker at the convention in Boston and.

So a stroke of luck number two and he becomes a national figure. Also his Republican candidate was going to be very strong his name is Jack Ryan incredibly handsome. He made a fortune at an investment bank that's had a very very bad week this week. But it didn't stop there he then did. Having done done well he did good and give a lot of his money to schools for underprivileged African-American kids predominantly on the south side and even taught there. So he's a very attractive figure you know a conservative but he that was going to be a clash until his divorce records were open. He had been married to you Star Trek fans will recall and Boston Public fans recall Jerry Jerry Ryan. And let's keep it modest here. If French sex clubs were involved

let's just say that Jack Ryan withdrew his name from the candidacy and who did Barack Obama end up running for again in 2004 for Senate. Alan Keyes let me just say in American politics if you're only a. Gateway between you and the kingdom of heaven is Alan Keyes. You don't need a cage. Barack Obama was bring in so much money for that campaign that he started giving it away to other races around the country. So. One chapter is very quite long chapter is devoted to this political Odyssey and The morning after winning the morning after winning and becoming by the way the only black senator and one of very few of course since Reconstruction. One of the first questions directed at Barack Obama five and a half seconds after leaving the exalted state house of Springfield Illinois. When are you running for

president. So this element too is important to understand and to kind of limb out and in the political drama of Barack Obama. Yes ma'am. Thank you. Thank you for all you do with the New Yorker. Thank you. The book I wanted to harken back to the point at which he actually got elected and ask you what your feeling is. You know my There's a lot of optimism around the fact that we actually elected a black president. And yet you know what strikes me is that it's maybe kind of a false optimism because it was really neck and neck with McCain in August and September you know and then the economy collapsed and then the economy collapsed. And if the economy had not collapsed and McCain had it McCain did not equate himself well when this happened I mean he really kind of went you know he says not my forte. You know and so I know

that's not a good thing to say. He really he really put Obama really pulled ahead when the economy collapsed. And I just was wondering whether that struck you. You know what really brought to your analysis is right I don't I don't know you know if you're if you're projecting toward the next presidential candidate if I learn anything as a reporter if you've learned anything as a citizen to start predicting what's going to happen in a presidential race three years out two and a half years out is nuts not that we don't do it every Sunday morning on those shows that Calvin Trillin once memorably called the Sabbath gas bags. So don't let me add to the hot air I don't know. Right. I don't know. I wasn't thinking of you know the future. Yeah I was thinking of the sense of optimism in the country that we might have. Well it's a voter it wasn't really about like it is James Carville so

memorably put it it's the economy stupid and when you have 9.7 What is the unemployment rate now 9.7 or so. That's very high and it's nice that the stock market is higher. Especially if you live in certain precincts of America. But a jobless rate is really staring. And he's sitting president in the face that's really difficult. And we're in Afghanistan and our putative ally seems to have become a kind of figure out of Garcia Marquez. And a lot of other things. So it's nothing is ever a lock. I was hoping you could come into a little bit about. Motivation or identity politics and sort of what you think is sort of the motivation behind this guy Obama. OBAMA Yeah yeah. So look I think he's a terrifically ambitious guy. Well that's my point sometimes it's almost. But I don't see anything wrong with

that. Well no no no. But it almost feels like I mean we can talk about it almost feels like it brings up you know archetypes that we have in our heads. It makes for a very good story. But thank you. It's real life. And I I I'm the son of African immigrants. When I moved to Boston I moved to a section of the square from Ethiopian. I have a graduate degree. When I moved to Boston I moved to a section of the city that a very working class white. And I just recently got interested in politics when i going for the simple things in life going you know what I mean what's the question though with the question the question is Why do you think this guy is doing well after speaking with us with his law school professors after speaking with people who've known him. Why would anybody want to do this. Oh. I can I be honest with you. I think anybody who ever ever wants to do this is some component crazy. I

mean just the act of ego to go in front of an entire nation and propose yourself as the ideal person to lead it. It's the stuff of which psychotherapeutic sessions are made. However. Thankfully some are less crazy than others. I'm older than you are remember Richard Nixon and. And Obama's very funny about this too I think in one of the pieces to one of the chapters. Obama even talked about the slightly unhinged aspect of the prospect of running for president. Look I think as he proved in his as a young man there's a big element of idealism there. There's also a big element of ambition and that's where they that's where they come together in politics. Hi thanks for coming. Obama must have been a momentous experience for you both personally and for your book and I was wondering if you could just describe that experience and

offer any personal sure's and sure and reflections as a reporter of the editor you know. You know truth in advertising there aren't. You know skins of interviews here there are a couple but you know the last time I saw him was when the Oval Office. And it was like out of an Edgar Allan Poe story right. The Oval Office is the least decorated room one can imagine it's very spare. Obama speaks very deliberately especially with a print interview he's forming whole paragraphs and transcribing it as a piece of cake you never have to stop the tape and there's never a comma or semi-colon or clause out of out of position. And because of this deliberate atmosphere you can hear in the background click click click click of the grandfather clock right there. It is a little. Unnerving

but it's not it's not a torrent. You know to interview Bill Clinton is to be on the receiving end of a fascinating torrent of language and ideas. And have you read this and have you read that and that reminds me of this. It's a very different experience Obama. Now remember he's in office so he's more careful than he would have been X years ago. But it's a very deliberate feel. That's how I describe it. That's what I'd love to hear your thoughts about Obama and the personal projection of power which is you know a fundamental element that a president has to draw on when you're talking more and more in the media unsure about how Europe and the Republican leadership and what is that words that come from within his person. Is that a is there a strength there that you see. How does he project it. What does he have to learn I think back to you know the first Kennedy crucial dialogue.

Well and then the first Kennedy Khrushchev Yeah I logged Kennedy got his backside attacked. He was wet behind the ears. I will say this about Obama one thing where he's a neophyte. Thank you. One thing where he's a neophyte. Is that he has not succeeded in making close relationships with foreign leaders. This is not unimportant. It's not everything. I mean we're grown ups we know that policy is the most important thing. But there is a personal element to politics in a lot of foreign political leaders and I don't mean just Bibi Netanyahu. Have been frustrated in their attempts however clumsy However however they've done. So to get a warmer more cohesive sense of their relationship with him. I was just talking with a German very well connected German journalist the other day who was saying that even though America is the European that gets talked about in the most glowing terms in the White House she's frustrated with her ability to connect in a way that she was able to connect with Bush now Bush was in office for a hell of a lot

and gave massages that's true. Surprisingly enough. But that's there's that element there too. Given your knowledge and also the president whose presidency will his most resemble I don't know. I really think about it maybe after the last question I'll see if I can come up with an answer were eloquently not. I'll try. I'll try. That's right. I remember you know I was one second away from getting away. You want to talk about the cover from a year and a half ago the cover the controversy. I thought it was really smart. Not everybody got it. I don't know not everyone got it. Do you think that there's

that sort of misconception. Like from the cover. All I can say is let me remind those few who don't remember this. A year ago last July was the silly season of the presidential race these races all have a certain rhythm to it Jalozai is what you already know who the candidates are. But the general election campaign hasn't begun which tends to begin after the conventions in August. It was not lost on us at the New Yorker and probably not lost on you that some unbelievable percentage of Americans and what the gentleman was talking about before some unbelievable percentage an alarming percentage of Americans had come to believe whether on their own are much more likely thanks to certain media outlets that Barack Obama was lying about his religion that he wasn't

born in Honolulu that he wasn't a citizen that he was a closet radical that he was soft on terrorism that his wife was the second coming of Angela Davis. That in all somehow something deeply deeply conspiratorial and deceptive. Was going on. Polls showed. Enormous numbers very disturbing numbers and do today on certain of these things. I mean this is the I haven't been asked you the last question or so unless you're going to ask me Was he born in Honolulu This is the first time I've had one of these sessions where I haven't gotten that question. But a lot of people believe this. So Barry Blitt who is a satirist and who had done I don't know how many covers about the Bush administration and Ahmadinejad and all this rest and he's not gentle about it took these fantastical images and put it all into one. And had the Obamas doing the so-called terrorist fist jab as they pronounced it on

on Fox terrorist fist jab I think I first saw that in the NBA when I was 10. By that well-known terrorist Cedric Maxwell or something or. A great player by the way. Even even I admit this readily a great great player. And put this in and the image was called The Politics of Fear. The Obama people didn't like it so much. OK. Can I just say one thing. As somebody as an editor has been criticized for being soft on Obama. We don't publish for the president the United States. We don't publish for politicians high opinion. I'm sorry if somebody's sort of sorry. If somebody is offended but that's the nature of satire sometimes it's going to piss people off. Sometimes it's going to provoke discussion. Some times it's going to engender agreement and all those things happened then and I'll say this and not for the first time I know at the

risk of being repetitious the most. And I got thousands of e-mails and letters a lot of them a form in form various organizations doing a kind of e-mail bomb my e-mail look like a cash register. A particularly lucrative cash register and the most dominant comment was I got it. But those people out there. They won't get it and they will use it as some sort of dangerous tool. That never happened and I have to say the notion that people out there are stupid and that we here get it is disturbing to me. I totally respect everybody in the room and everybody in the audience and beyond and beyond who disagrees with me who thought that went too far who thought it didn't read right or something I totally respect that. But the notion that somehow I get it everybody else is stupid that I have a bigger problem with. And. And so when's the spur. And I will tell

you. And I will tell you thank you thank you. I heard you. As they told me to say in management school. I will I do the coda to this. You don't have to sit all the way in the back. I will say the coda to this to show you the Obamas deep and abiding hatred for me in the New Yorker afterwards. I picked up People Magazine six months later and I saw there was a little interview with Michelle Obama. What do you do to relax. Well I watch some junk TV and I love to read The New Yorker. Two months later I get a phone call we Obama was having I had a really bad time. He was in the health care thing was going nowhere fast. And we did a Barry Blitt same artist did a cover a four panel cover of Obama walking on water. And then in the last panel he falls in. The magazine comes out Monday morning Monday at 10 15 I get a phone call from Eric

Loesser the assistant to David Axelrod. David the president and David Axelrod were just in here laughing and laughing and laughing. Could you send the president a signed copy of the cover. So Barry got a signed copy that signed it nice or Dear Mr. President please stay dry. Yours. Yours Barry Blitt. Given such is the pernicious relationship between power and the press. Given Obama's caution characterised in March and. His training in law school do you have an insight into the reason why he would have tried to cross swords at the State of the Union speech with the Supreme Court. So notably. Well I don't think he thought that was off limits. I think he thought. Look I'm not a mind reader but it's pretty self-evident that he if he included it he thought it

that this is a particularly far reaching decision that's going to have a deleterious effect on American politics and this from someone. Who I hasten to remind you when given the opportunity. For when tis say forewent. Yes for when Thank you. Thank forwent his pledge and decided it would be advantageous to his presidential campaign to take any and all monies and he outspend John McCain by a tremendous amount. So he is not a purist and an idealist where this is concerned. But I think he look I think a lot of politics hides in plain sight. A lot of us want to think about the secrets is Obama really this is really I think a lot of it hides in plain sight and I think this is another instance of that. So with that I thank you I wish I could come up with that that somebody asked me what was the last question.

What president is he like. I think we won't know till the end which is a lame way to end this presentation but I really thank you for coming out and I suppose I'll sign books here if you got it right.