Ask the Author: Barack Obama
Answered Questions (10)
Barack Obama
Stay involved in democracy. Fight for democracy. It can be messy and frustrating, believe me, I know. I understand why many Americans are frustrated by government and feel like it doesn’t make a difference. It’s not perfect, and not supposed to be. It’s only as good as we are, as what we choose to care about, as the people we elect. We’re never going to get 100 percent of what we want right away. But what if we got some of it right away, and protected it, and kept moving forward until we got the rest? That’s what voting is about. It’s not about making things perfect; it’s about making things better. It’s about putting us on track so that a generation from now, we can look back and say, “things got better starting now.” Voting is about using the power we have and pooling it together to get a government that’s more concerned, more responsive, more focused on the things that matter. This precious system of self-government is how we’ve come this far. It’s worth our time and effort. It’s worth protecting. I was heartened to see voter turnout leap this year over where it usually is. That’s great. Now imagine if we did that every time? Imagine if sixty or seventy percent of us, or even more, voted every time. We’d have a government that looks more representative, that’s full of life experience that’s more representative, that understands what people are going through and how we can work together to make people’s lives better. We’d have a government full of people who could corral a pandemic, who believe in science and have a plan to protect this planet for our kids; who care about working Americans and have a plan to help folks start getting ahead; who believe in racial equality and are willing to do the work to bring us closer an America where no matter what we look like, where we come from, who we love, or how much money we’ve got, we can make it if we try. That’s not science fiction. It’s possible! We just have to keep at it.
Barack Obama
I appreciate that, Abby. It’s a lot easier than the writing process – it’s certainly faster. It is a long book, which made for a long recording schedule. But many of my speeches over the years have clocked in at an hour long, so I can handle a lot of talking. As long as I’ve got my tea, I can keep going. I will say, though, there were times during the writing process when I rejected cuts from my editor and speechwriter, and almost regretted it while reading out loud for such a long time. That was probably the hardest part of the recording process – not being able to edit myself. I’ll always take another go at editing a speech, sometimes right before taking the stage. I made a lot of revisions to my own manuscript; I went over it multiple times. Nothing’s ever perfect. But with an audiobook, you can’t do that. You have to stick to what you’ve written. So sometimes, I’d catch something I wish I’d written slightly differently, and I’d just have to swallow that and keep recording. That was the only frustration about the process.
Barack Obama
It’s hard to say for sure. And a lot of that has to do with changes in how we get our information. I mean, it’s not like we didn’t deal with misinformation in 2008. Facebook and Twitter were around, but they were in their relative infancy. Even then, there was a good chunk of the country that came to believe I wasn’t born in America, or that I was schooled in a radical madrassa, or whatever. And some of that is as old as our country. People have been claiming all sorts of weird things about politicians for centuries. You’ve got to have a thick skin to run for office.
But there’s no doubt that the country is deeply divided right now, and when you look back even to 2008, it didn’t feel this divided. We’ve been sorted further into our own political, ideological, and cultural camps. I’ve been talking about this for a long time. I remember delivering a long commencement address about it back in 2010 at the University of Michigan. If you watch Fox News, and now some of the outlets even farther to the right, versus if you read The New York Times, you increasingly don’t just perceive a different reality, but inhabit one. There was a time when we overlapped in where we got our information. A time when a lot of it came from reading local newspapers. The gap wasn’t so stark as it is now. And because of those echo chambers and because of social media, you’ve got a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump, for example, who are convinced that climate change isn’t real, who are convinced that the pandemic wasn’t mishandled, who are convinced that he actually won the election. And those right-wing outlets feed those convictions. Let’s be honest about this, there’s only one side that has rejected a respect for facts, logic, science, and the rule of law. And until we repair that breach and return to some common baseline of facts from which to discuss the direction of the country, it’s going to be a real challenge to not only bring the country together, but actually address the problems that are real, whether you believe in them or not.
But there’s no doubt that the country is deeply divided right now, and when you look back even to 2008, it didn’t feel this divided. We’ve been sorted further into our own political, ideological, and cultural camps. I’ve been talking about this for a long time. I remember delivering a long commencement address about it back in 2010 at the University of Michigan. If you watch Fox News, and now some of the outlets even farther to the right, versus if you read The New York Times, you increasingly don’t just perceive a different reality, but inhabit one. There was a time when we overlapped in where we got our information. A time when a lot of it came from reading local newspapers. The gap wasn’t so stark as it is now. And because of those echo chambers and because of social media, you’ve got a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump, for example, who are convinced that climate change isn’t real, who are convinced that the pandemic wasn’t mishandled, who are convinced that he actually won the election. And those right-wing outlets feed those convictions. Let’s be honest about this, there’s only one side that has rejected a respect for facts, logic, science, and the rule of law. And until we repair that breach and return to some common baseline of facts from which to discuss the direction of the country, it’s going to be a real challenge to not only bring the country together, but actually address the problems that are real, whether you believe in them or not.
Barack Obama
I wish I had the time as President to maintain a regular journal, but it just wasn’t possible. I did jot down certain moments as they transpired, because I knew that remembering the specific ways they unfolded would be important to me later. Just to take one example, I paint a scene in the book of the first big climate summit I attended. I crashed a secret meeting of the Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian delegations, because I knew they were avoiding me and the deal we were trying to broker that would require every country to have some skin in the game. We were the ones who breached protocol, but if we didn’t, we’d never get to a deal that ultimately led to the Paris Agreement. It was one of those moments when I knew history was happening.
But in general, I’m pretty good about remembering scenes, and people’s characters and personalities. I’ve got a good memory, which annoys my staff at times. Still, I’ll freely admit that the internet makes researching the events around a certain memory a whole lot easier than it would have been had I written this book twenty years ago. And I still have a staff who were vital to helping me flesh out certain scenes; who gathered perspectives from others who were in the room. Those two factors protected my writing rhythm from having to comb through stacks of books and reams of paper. And that was a blessing.
But in general, I’m pretty good about remembering scenes, and people’s characters and personalities. I’ve got a good memory, which annoys my staff at times. Still, I’ll freely admit that the internet makes researching the events around a certain memory a whole lot easier than it would have been had I written this book twenty years ago. And I still have a staff who were vital to helping me flesh out certain scenes; who gathered perspectives from others who were in the room. Those two factors protected my writing rhythm from having to comb through stacks of books and reams of paper. And that was a blessing.
Barack Obama
Lupita, just for you, I put together a playlist of songs that reflect memories of my time on the campaign trail and in the White House.
When it comes to writing, though, I typically like to have a clear head, free of distraction. I might listen to some jazz if I feel like I’m in a good flow, but that’s about it. I am reminded, though, of a couple conversations I had in the White House with Cody, my chief speechwriter. He wasn’t big into jazz, but I told him once to read James Baldwin when he’s stuck on a speech and listen to John Coltrane when he’s not. And on one particularly weighty draft he turned in, I told him to go home that night, pour a drink, and listen to some Miles Davis. I told him the thing about Miles Davis is the silences. The notes he doesn’t play. So with that in mind, go take another swing at your draft, find me some silences, and then I’ll get to work.
Cody returned the favor once. When we were working on my 2016 State of the Union Address, he suggested we approach it like Jay-Z’s “My 1st Song.” To feel the same hunger I felt as a younger man, even entering my eighth year as President of the United States. To “treat my first like my last, and my last like my first/And my thirst is the same as when I came…Like I never rode in a limo/Like I just dropped flows to a demo…”
I pulled the song up on my iPad and we listened to the whole thing in the Oval Office. It was solid advice. It’s a solid song. It keeps me steady. It reminds you that you always have to stay hungry. So naturally, I put it on my A Promised Land playlist, too.
When it comes to writing, though, I typically like to have a clear head, free of distraction. I might listen to some jazz if I feel like I’m in a good flow, but that’s about it. I am reminded, though, of a couple conversations I had in the White House with Cody, my chief speechwriter. He wasn’t big into jazz, but I told him once to read James Baldwin when he’s stuck on a speech and listen to John Coltrane when he’s not. And on one particularly weighty draft he turned in, I told him to go home that night, pour a drink, and listen to some Miles Davis. I told him the thing about Miles Davis is the silences. The notes he doesn’t play. So with that in mind, go take another swing at your draft, find me some silences, and then I’ll get to work.
Cody returned the favor once. When we were working on my 2016 State of the Union Address, he suggested we approach it like Jay-Z’s “My 1st Song.” To feel the same hunger I felt as a younger man, even entering my eighth year as President of the United States. To “treat my first like my last, and my last like my first/And my thirst is the same as when I came…Like I never rode in a limo/Like I just dropped flows to a demo…”
I pulled the song up on my iPad and we listened to the whole thing in the Oval Office. It was solid advice. It’s a solid song. It keeps me steady. It reminds you that you always have to stay hungry. So naturally, I put it on my A Promised Land playlist, too.
Barack Obama
Your first question is easy: Ben did poach that title from me. As for your second, I do still believe that. It’s not that I considered waiting longer to run, but rather that this young generation coming up is more engaged, more open to diversity and inclusiveness, and more passionate about solving problems like climate change and gun violence and remaking an unequal economy that gives everybody an equal shot than some older generations. I did say in 2008 that I was running because I didn’t want to see America kick the can down the road another four years, or eight years, on those issues, so having them fully in the fight would have made my presidency easier, that’s for sure. Some of my staff, however, argue that I was right on time – that even if it was uncomfortable, my presidency accelerated a long overdue grappling with issues that we’ve left buried too long, that even if it was disruptive, it accelerated some of the changes we need. It’s not lost on me that some of them are the oldest millennials now, a transition to that younger generation coming up.
Barack Obama
Luann, I’ll be putting out my “drop” of favorite books in the next couple days, but one that won’t be a surprise is Marilynne Robinson’s “Jack,” the latest in her Gilead series. One of the great things about being President is that you can strike up a friendship with people you find smart, and compelling, and interesting. Like most Americans, I first met Marilynne on the pages of “Gilead.” I picked it up while campaigning in Iowa. It was full of the folks I was meeting in real life, people who were decent, good-hearted, and full of their own complexities and struggles. And Marilynne and I eventually became pen pals. Like I said, it’s one of the perks of the job. How else do you get to become pen pals with one of your favorite authors? But I’ve always loved her books because she has a knack not just for creating textured characters and communities, but for wrapping us all together into something larger.
Barack Obama
By my second term, I actually had my staff clear out some “POTUS Time” for me in the afternoon a couple times each week, precisely so that I could think. I didn’t have time to keep a regular journal, as some presidents have done. But I would jot down certain moments and events as they transpired, just because I kind of knew that the very specific ways in which those events unfolded would be important to me later. There’s a good story, for example, from my first year in the White House, where I crashed a secret Chinese meeting at a climate summit, upending all their protocol, because I knew it was a good moment – but it also directly led, many years later, to the Paris Agreement.
So, there are instances like that where I wrote something down. I didn’t need to catalog people’s characters and personalities, that kind of stuff I just carry in my head and don’t have a problem accessing. But I’ll be honest, the internet made writing this book much easier than it would have been a couple decades ago. I could just pull up my own schedule from a certain day and contemporaneous news articles from that day to remind me of some context. So not having to comb through reams of paper while writing was a blessing – it let me maintain some sort of rhythm.
As for the way I write, that hasn’t changed much over the years. I still prefer to write late. I do my best work between ten p.m. and two a.m. I’m focused then in a way that I’m not during the day – during the daytime, I’m too easily distracted. I still write on yellow legal pads; I’m still very particular about my pens. They’re uni-ball Vision Elites, by the way. Always black.
I’ll sketch out a first draft of each scene or chapter on paper. That’s always the biggest challenge. The drafting. I actually really enjoy the editing process. I always liked marking up the drafts that my speechwriters would prepare in the White House. I’d do the same to my own written pages. Then I’d make some real revisions when I take those pages and type them into Word. I’d say I don’t take too long to think about actual words and sentences and structures, and just start writing. I’ve always thought you just have to get started. Editing and revising is where you can really make things happen.
Finally, as much as I love books and reading in new voices, I actually didn’t do a lot of reading while I was writing. Part of that is because I have to avoid excuses to procrastinate. But part of that is because, when I’m reading books, particularly ones I’m enjoying, I can get swept up in their voice. I can hear them in my head. And I wanted to avoid that while trying to write my own. But now that I’m finished – with the first volume, at least – I’m catching up on some good fiction that I’ve been missing.
So, there are instances like that where I wrote something down. I didn’t need to catalog people’s characters and personalities, that kind of stuff I just carry in my head and don’t have a problem accessing. But I’ll be honest, the internet made writing this book much easier than it would have been a couple decades ago. I could just pull up my own schedule from a certain day and contemporaneous news articles from that day to remind me of some context. So not having to comb through reams of paper while writing was a blessing – it let me maintain some sort of rhythm.
As for the way I write, that hasn’t changed much over the years. I still prefer to write late. I do my best work between ten p.m. and two a.m. I’m focused then in a way that I’m not during the day – during the daytime, I’m too easily distracted. I still write on yellow legal pads; I’m still very particular about my pens. They’re uni-ball Vision Elites, by the way. Always black.
I’ll sketch out a first draft of each scene or chapter on paper. That’s always the biggest challenge. The drafting. I actually really enjoy the editing process. I always liked marking up the drafts that my speechwriters would prepare in the White House. I’d do the same to my own written pages. Then I’d make some real revisions when I take those pages and type them into Word. I’d say I don’t take too long to think about actual words and sentences and structures, and just start writing. I’ve always thought you just have to get started. Editing and revising is where you can really make things happen.
Finally, as much as I love books and reading in new voices, I actually didn’t do a lot of reading while I was writing. Part of that is because I have to avoid excuses to procrastinate. But part of that is because, when I’m reading books, particularly ones I’m enjoying, I can get swept up in their voice. I can hear them in my head. And I wanted to avoid that while trying to write my own. But now that I’m finished – with the first volume, at least – I’m catching up on some good fiction that I’ve been missing.
Barack Obama
Well, I tried to do it concurrently, and it wasn’t as hard as you suggest, because even as I was handling the job, I’m still a human being! I looked for any opportunity to break up a narrative of my time in office with all the funny, poignant, or absurd moments that make up the presidency. What it’s like to visit a small town with all the larger-than-life trappings of the presidency, but also the ways Michelle kept me grounded. What it’s like the night before taking the oath of office, when a military aide shows you that suddenly, you have power to blow up the world, but also what it’s like when you’re weighing a heavy decision and two young girls and a dog bound into your office. There’s a pretty good story in there about how they came up with a secret alias for me so that we could go to the zoo together.
You don’t put your humanity aside when entering the White House. When making decisions, there’s an extent to which you have to be detached and analytical, sure. But I was still plenty pissed while trying to figure out how to plug a hole thousands of feet down in the Gulf of Mexico. Easy decisions don’t reach the President’s desk. If they were easy, someone else would have figured them out already. The decisions that hit the President’s desk are fifty-fifty. So you have to think about the greater good, even if it might not align one hundred percent with your own impulses. But when considering economic decisions, I’d read a lot of letters people wrote me to remind myself how they were feeling, and how my choices might affect their lives. Weighing decisions to send troops into harm’s way, at least for me, required spending time with wounded warriors at Walter Reed, and remembering that even though our troops sign up for this, they’re also somebody’s child, or spouse, or parent. The point is, cold, hard analysis has its place, but we’re also operating in the real world here.
You don’t put your humanity aside when entering the White House. When making decisions, there’s an extent to which you have to be detached and analytical, sure. But I was still plenty pissed while trying to figure out how to plug a hole thousands of feet down in the Gulf of Mexico. Easy decisions don’t reach the President’s desk. If they were easy, someone else would have figured them out already. The decisions that hit the President’s desk are fifty-fifty. So you have to think about the greater good, even if it might not align one hundred percent with your own impulses. But when considering economic decisions, I’d read a lot of letters people wrote me to remind myself how they were feeling, and how my choices might affect their lives. Weighing decisions to send troops into harm’s way, at least for me, required spending time with wounded warriors at Walter Reed, and remembering that even though our troops sign up for this, they’re also somebody’s child, or spouse, or parent. The point is, cold, hard analysis has its place, but we’re also operating in the real world here.
Barack Obama
Well, I know this is a unique time to be graduating high school and heading to college. It’s already a moment when you begin to take charge of your own life and decide what’s important to you – the kind of career you want to pursue, who you want to build a family with, the values you want to live by. That’s unsettling at any time, and given the state of the world, it can be scarier than usual right now. Your generation has had to grow up faster than most.
And yet, with so much up for grabs right now, your generation also has more power than most to upend the way things have always been done and reshape the world in your own image.
My daughters are only a couple years older than you are. And what I’ve found in your generation is that you actually believe the better lessons your parents and teachers taught you, even when we don’t always live up to those lessons ourselves. You’re more open to people’s differences. You’re less rigid in your thinking about people needing to be a certain way, or having to move through the world a certain way, or how we should measure success. To pick a more concrete example, I think the protests we saw this summer embodied that more expansive moral imagination. White suburban kids, for example, could look at what happened to George Floyd and say, that’s wrong, that’s not the country I want us to be, and I want to do something about it.
Whether it’s social justice or rethinking the economy or really figuring out climate change, I find young people to be both idealistic and impatient. The question is, especially when your generation processes and shares information in far different ways than others, how do we harness those impulses and translate it into actual policy and institutional change without allowing the sometimes slow and frustrating mechanisms of democracy grind down those impulses?
I had to figure all that out myself when I was your age. Your very question places you a few years ahead of where I was. I start my book as a young person, just a mixed-race kid without wealth or power in America, specifically to show you that the presidency wasn’t some kind of birthright for me, or that I was good at everything. I just hitched my wagon to something bigger. If I can make a difference, so can you.
Part of the theme of this book is this contest of ideas between two visions: a vision that says that, for all our differences, we share a common humanity, and it is possible for us, in a multiracial, multiethnic country and world, to see each other, understand each other, respect each other, and work towards progress together. In the scope of human history, this vision is new. This idea that everybody has rights, and everybody’s voice is equal, and together, we can do great things with our democracy – it’s still an experiment. It’s still fragile. But there’s also an older, contrasting vision that says we’re just a collection of tribes, inevitably at war, and it’s all a zero-sum game with winners and losers in hierarchies of power and subjugation. And these contrasting visions are clashing with each other right now, not just in America, but around the world.
Your generation is going to have to decide which way the world goes. I want you to know that it’s within your power to create a better world, and that governments aren’t distant systems that are imposed upon you, they’re systems that you have the agency to control and shape if you’re willing to dive in and keep at it.
More than anything, I wrote this book as an invitation for you not only to imagine a better world – but to build it yourselves.
And yet, with so much up for grabs right now, your generation also has more power than most to upend the way things have always been done and reshape the world in your own image.
My daughters are only a couple years older than you are. And what I’ve found in your generation is that you actually believe the better lessons your parents and teachers taught you, even when we don’t always live up to those lessons ourselves. You’re more open to people’s differences. You’re less rigid in your thinking about people needing to be a certain way, or having to move through the world a certain way, or how we should measure success. To pick a more concrete example, I think the protests we saw this summer embodied that more expansive moral imagination. White suburban kids, for example, could look at what happened to George Floyd and say, that’s wrong, that’s not the country I want us to be, and I want to do something about it.
Whether it’s social justice or rethinking the economy or really figuring out climate change, I find young people to be both idealistic and impatient. The question is, especially when your generation processes and shares information in far different ways than others, how do we harness those impulses and translate it into actual policy and institutional change without allowing the sometimes slow and frustrating mechanisms of democracy grind down those impulses?
I had to figure all that out myself when I was your age. Your very question places you a few years ahead of where I was. I start my book as a young person, just a mixed-race kid without wealth or power in America, specifically to show you that the presidency wasn’t some kind of birthright for me, or that I was good at everything. I just hitched my wagon to something bigger. If I can make a difference, so can you.
Part of the theme of this book is this contest of ideas between two visions: a vision that says that, for all our differences, we share a common humanity, and it is possible for us, in a multiracial, multiethnic country and world, to see each other, understand each other, respect each other, and work towards progress together. In the scope of human history, this vision is new. This idea that everybody has rights, and everybody’s voice is equal, and together, we can do great things with our democracy – it’s still an experiment. It’s still fragile. But there’s also an older, contrasting vision that says we’re just a collection of tribes, inevitably at war, and it’s all a zero-sum game with winners and losers in hierarchies of power and subjugation. And these contrasting visions are clashing with each other right now, not just in America, but around the world.
Your generation is going to have to decide which way the world goes. I want you to know that it’s within your power to create a better world, and that governments aren’t distant systems that are imposed upon you, they’re systems that you have the agency to control and shape if you’re willing to dive in and keep at it.
More than anything, I wrote this book as an invitation for you not only to imagine a better world – but to build it yourselves.
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