Barack Obama book: Highlights from former president’s tell-all autobiography A Promised Land
The Independent goes page by page through former president’s latest memoir
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The public long knew Barack Obama was using his time after leaving the White House to write a memoir detailing his time as the 44th president of the United States. After nearly four years of waiting, Mr Obama has released his 701-page memoir entitled A Promised Land – the first instalment of his presidential memoirs.
A Promised Land opened with Mr Obama detailing his political history when he was younger, prior to entering politics. Then the meat of the memoir dove into Mr Obama’s state Senate run, with Michelle Obama by his side, before deciding national politics was a better route for him to make more change in America.
Mr Obama offered an honest admission of the marriage struggles he went through during this time, detailing how his wife refused to campaign with him for his US Senate race. Then when he first approaches her about running for president, she responded: "God, Barack … When is it going to be enough?”
But nationwide enthusiasm for Mr Obama soared, and she later got on board with him running in the 2008 presidential election against Republican Senator John McCain.
The memoir then followed Mr Obama through his first term in the White House, including his ongoing battle with Republicans in Congress to work on any bipartisan legislation – such as the Recovery Act and Affordable Care Act.
Senator Mitch McConnell faced criticism from the former president throughout the memoir for joining most Republicans in their refusal to work with his administration. Continuing with his candour, Mr Obama expressed regret for not getting rid of the filibuster rule on his first days in the White House because of his inability to pass legislation related to climate change and immigration reform.
“The truth was, I didn’t regret paving the way for twenty million people to get health insurance. Nor did I regret the Recovery Act … I didn’t regret ho we’d handled the financial crisis … And I sure as hell wasn’t sorry I’d proposed a climate change bill and pushed for immigration reform,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump also made an appearance in the memoir for his role in 2011 of stoking conspiracy theories regarding Mr Obama’s citizenship. “I knew that the passions he was tapping, the dark, alternative vision he was promoting and legitimising, were something I’d likely be contending with for the remainder of my presidency,” he wrote.
The first installment of Mr Obama’s presidential memoirs ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden, a move that was the first and last time in his presidency that he said he didn’t have to “sell what we’d done” to the American public.
Obama hints at his disapproval of social media
The 2008 presidential election was the first time social media sites, specifically Twitter, played an influence on connecting with voters.
Mr Obama and his campaign was the best at using this social media site to connect with young voters, garner grassroots donations, and spread his political message. It helped him fuel his campaign through 'millions of small donors" as opposed to relying on Wall Street investors, millionaires, and corporate lobbyist groups.
But Mr Obama said he has since seen the downside of social media.
“What I couldn’t fully appreciate yet was just how malleable this technology would prove to be … how readily it could be used not to unify people but to distract or divide them … how one day many of the same tools that had put me in the White House would be deployed in opposition to everything I stood fore,” Mr Obama writes.
Why Obama picked Joe Biden as his vice president
The choice of who would be Mr Obama’s running mate in the 2008 election came down to Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Joe Biden of Delaware.
Mr Obama’s top campaign advisers preferred Mr Kaine as he would fit seamlessly in with an Obama administration, but there was concern about having “two relatively young, inexperienced, and liberal civil rights attorneys” on the ticket.
Mr Biden, on the other hand, has his own risks as he suffered from previous gaffes while at the microphone and was considered more “old-school” within the Democratic Party.
“I found the contrast between us compelling,” Mr Obama writes. “I like the fact that Joe would be more ready to serve as president if something happened to me … his foreign policy experience would be valuable … so would his relationships in Congress. ”
“What mattered most, though was what my gut told me – that Joe was decent, honest, and loyal. I believed that he cared about ordinary people, and that when things got tough, I could trust him. I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
‘We better win this thing or the country is screwed’
The presidential race hit a snag when the country suffered a severe financial crosses, launching the US into a recession.
Mr Obama was called to the White House alongside Republican presidential candidate John McCain to discuss with Republican and Democratic leadership about the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that Congress was attempting to pass.
The goal of the legislation would be to allow the US government to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions in order to strengthen the financial sector. Both presidential candidates met with President George W Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and others to discuss how to get the legislation passed.
Arguments broke out during the meeting between the respective sides, and the Democrats taunted the Republicans by asking them what their plan was to move forward with the legislation.
“As the discussion wore on, it became increasingly apparent that none of the Republican leaders were familiar with the actual content of the latest version of the TARP legislation … they were simply trying to find a way to avoid taking a tough vote," writes Mr Obama.
“And all the while, McCain remained silent, stewing in his chair. It got so bad that finally President Bush rose to his feet. ‘I’ve obviously lost control of this meeting,' he said. ‘We’re finished.'"
The then-presidential candidate said the moment made him realise how ill-prepared it appeared Mr McCain and other members of Republican leaders were to take on the financial hardship America faced.
Following the meeting, one of Mr Obama’s campaign staff asked him how it went. He responded: “It went fine for us. But based on what I just saw, we better win this thing or the country is screwed.”
TARP passed in Congress and was signed into law by President Bush on 3 October, 2008.
‘I thought Hillary was the best person for the job’
The memoir details Mr Obama winning the 2008 presidential election and then going through his transition period as president-elect before taking office in January 2009. This involved him filling key positions of his cabinet, including Secretary of State.
“Observers put forth theories of my rationale for choosing Hillary; that I needed to unify a still-divided Democratic Party, that I was worried about her second-guessing me from her Senate seat … but really it was simpler than that. I thought Hillary was the best person for the job," he writes.
Mr Obama added that her “intelligence, preparation, and work ethic” was witnessed while on the campaign trail.
“Whatever her feelings towards me, I trusted her patriotism and commitment to duty. Most of all, I was convinced that at a time when diplomatic relations around the world were either strained or suffering from chronic neglect, having a Secretary of State with Hillary’s star power, relationships and comfort … would give us added bandwidth.”
Partisan politics takes hold in the Obama era
Once Mr Obama entered his first term, it was clear that he would need some support from politicians across the aisle if he were to pass key bills, such as the Recovery Act – a stimulus package proposed to boost the economy.
Democrats controlled the majority in both the House and Senate, but they did not hold enough seats in the Senate to pass a bill without at least one Republican jumping ship.
Mr Obama met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and House Republican leader John Boehner. The Republicans, Mr Obama writes, made it clear from the beginning that working with him would not do well for them politically.
“It’s hard for me not to fixate on the political dynamics that unfolded in those first weeks of my presidency,” Mr Obama says. “How quickly Republican resistance hardened, independent of anything we said or did, and how thoroughly the resistance coloured the way the press and ultimately the public viewed the substance of our actions.”
Mr Obama was able to get the Recovery Act to pass without support from any House Republicans. His administration convinced four Senate Republicans to pass the bill through the Senate, much to the dismay of the more liberal members of the Democratic Party.
He signed the legislation into law in February 2009.
Obama brings his smoking habit to the White House
Mr Obama long denied that he continued his smoking habit when becoming president. But his memoir now tells a different story about the 44th president of the United States.
“There was a final stress reliever that I didn’t like to talk about, one that had been a chronic source of tension throughout my marriage; I was smoking five (or six, or even seven) cigarettes per day,” writes Mr Obama.
He called it the “lone vice” that was carried over from the “rebel days” of his youth.
When joining the US Senate, Mr Obama said he stopped smoking in public. Then when joining the White House, he said he would stop smoking all together once things settled down. But he quickly realised that life was not settling down and this brought his daily cigarette intake to eight, nine, or even 10 per day.
Obama asks King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia how he keeps up with his 12 wives
While visiting Saudi Arabia on his first trip as president, Mr Obama visited with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at his complex.
The purpose of the visit was part of a tour of the Middle East, which included a stop in Cairo, Egypt, where Mr Obama delivered a speech to a mostly Muslim audience in an effort to improve their perspective of Americans.
Mr Obama detailed in his memoir how he and King Abdullah sat down for a meal and discussed pleasantries, including their respective families.
“The king asked about my family and I described how Michelle and the girls were adjusting to life in the White House,” Mr Obama writes. "He explained that he had twelve wives himself … along with forty children and dozens more grand-children and great-grandchildren.
“'I hope you don’t mind me asking, Your Majesty,' I said, ‘but how do you keep you with your twelve wives.'"
The king responded: “Very badly … One of them is always jealous of the others. It’s more complicated than Middle East politics.”
Mr Obama was also gifted with a heavy jewels “for the missus”, but he did not accept the gift as the United States has rules against accepting items from other countries.
Obama says he ‘followed the science’ on the H1N1 virus
The Obama presidency was hit with its own virus that caused concern amongst the American public: the H1N1 flu.
“It was too early to tell how deadly this new virus would be. But I wasn’t interested in taking any chances,” Mr Obama writes. Infection rates started to spike in April 2009.
He admitted the US wasn’t ready for this virus because “annual flu shots didn’t provide protection against H1N1”.
“My instructions to … the public health team were simple: Decisions would be made based on the best available science, and we were going to explain each step of our response to the public – including detailing what we did and didn’t know,” he adds.
His team focused on distributing medical supplies across the United States and helping hospitals increase their flexibility in case a surge of flu cases were to happen in any area. Ultimately, 12,000 Americans died from the virus.
“Although the United States did not escape unscathed … we were fortunate that this particular strain of H1N1 turned out to be less deadly than the experts had feared … I took great pride in how well our team had performed."
The moves made by the public health team then was credited by Mr Obama as curbing any future public health emergency, such as the Ebola outbreak.
“This, I was coming to realise, was the nature of the presidency: Sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed," Mr Obama writes.
The Obama administration left a “playbook” of how to handle a virus outbreak or pandemic for future administrations and even created its own global health unit within the National Security Council to handle public health crises. The Trump administration disbanded that unit in 2018, just two years before the coronavirus pandemic would hit the US.
‘Brother, I always feel lucky’
Mr Obama started his quest to improve the healthcare system in America the first year that he took office. Although he struggled to pass the Recovery Act with Republicans, Mr Obama initially thought in 2009 that getting healthcare to pass through both the Senate and the House would be easier.
“When I think back to those early conversations, it’s hard to deny my overconfidence,” he writes. “I was convinced that the logic of healthcare reform was so obvious that even in the face of well-organised opposition I could rally the American people’s support.”
Plot twist: that did not happen.
The Tea Party of the Republican Party quickly organised and was able to turn the tables on what Mr Obama and Democrats were proposing for healthcare form.
“By the summer, the group was focused on stopping the abomination they dubbed ‘Obamacare’, which they insisted would introduce a socialistic, oppressive new order in America," Mr Obama writes. Among the conspiracy theories pushed included the idea that death panels would be created to decide who would live or die under the “socialised medicine”.
“At the White House, we made a point of not commenting on any of this … I didn’t believe a president should ever publicly whine about criticisms from voters,” he writes.
Discourse surrounding the healthcare reform diminished Mr Obama’s approval numbers, which worried the Democratic Party. Some people attempted to convince Mr Obama to drop the legislative push, but he declined.
One political consultant asked Mr Obama if he felt “lucky” with his position.
Mr Obama responded: “What’s my name? Barack Hussein Obama. And I am here with you in the Oval Office. Brother, I always feel lucky.”
Obama crashes climate meeting with key leaders
In December 2009, Mr Obama attended the Copenhagen summit on climate change, something the US hadn’t participated in during the Bush administration.
The goal of the summit was for the key leaders of countries in Europe as well as China, Brazil, India, and South Africa to reach a robust deal that would assist in limiting global warming. Mr Obama was pressured to have this trip be successful, as he was looking for Congress to pass a climate bill of his own back in Washington DC.
In the memoir, Mr Obama detailed how he was supposed to meet with Wen Jiabao, the Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, following a meeting with European leaders, but Mr Wen dodged the meeting.
“A few minutes later, Marvin came back in to tell us that wen and the leaders of Brazil, India, and South Africa had been spotted in a conference room a few levels up,” Mr Obama writes. “'All right, then,' I said. I turned to Hillary [Clinton]. ‘When’s the last time you crashed a party?' She laughed."
The pair of them went up to the room were the meeting was held, to the surprise of the foreign leaders.
Upon entering the room, Mr Obama said: “Gentlemen! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. How about we see if we can do a deal?”
Mr Obama then grabbed an empty chaired and joined the table before anyone in the group could object, his memoir states.
“'Before I walked into this room, I assume the plan was for all of you to leave here and announce that the US was responsible for the failure to arrive at a new agreement,'” Mr Obama writes of what he said to the world leaders during the interaction. “'…Maybe you can convince everyone that we’re to blame. But that won’t stop the planet from getting warmer. And remember, I've to why own megaphone, and it’s pretty big.'"
The leaders agreed to the agreement proposed by other members of the summit. The text, drafted by 28 world leaders, extended climate negotiations for another year.
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