The highlight of the political memoir is the gossipy bit, the small detail that surprises or upends what we imagine we know. That rousing rallying cry of the Obama campaign, “Yes We Can”? It was Axelrod’s idea, which Obama thought corny, until Michelle said it wasn’t corny at all. Think of the iconic image of Jesse Jackson crying on the night Obama won the presidency. Here, we learn that Jackson’s support for Obama’s presidential campaign was “more grudging” than the enthusiastic support of his son Jesse Jackson Jr. And how odd, that the first family pays out of pocket for food and toilet paper.
And then there are his biographical sketches, masterful in their brevity and insight and humor. Of the stone-faced Emily, a staffer on the Iowa campaign: “My charm and wit invariably crashed on the rocks of her steady, unblinking gaze, and I settled on trying to do exactly what she told me.” Vladimir Putin reminds him of the tough, street-smart ward bosses who used to run the Chicago machine. Also on Putin: “Physically, he was unremarkable.”
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh both come across as having a kind of impassive integrity. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has the manner of “someone who’s burned away frivolity and distractions from his life.” Rahul Gandhi has “a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.” Joe Biden is a decent, honest, loyal man who Obama senses “might get prickly if he thought he wasn’t given his due — a quality that might flare up when dealing with a much younger boss.” Chuck Grassley would “hem and haw about this or that problem he had with the bill without telling us what exactly it would take to get him to yes.” Sarah Palin had “no idea what the hell she was talking about” on the subject of governance.
What Mitch McConnell “lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness and shamelessness — all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power.” Nicolas Sarkozy, bold and opportunistic, has “his chest thrust out like a bantam cock’s.”
Lindsey Graham is the guy in the spy thriller or heist movie “who double-crosses everyone to save his own skin.” Harry Reid is brusque and decent and honest. “You can win,” he tells a startled Obama long before Obama thought he could. And with characteristic Camelot charisma, Ted Kennedy tells him, “You don’t choose the time. The time chooses you.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/books/review/barack-obama-a-promised-land.html
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