Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump

by Dan Pfeiffer

one of the things I brought to the table was a finely honed sense of the exact moment when Barack Obama was tired of doing the thing he was doing.

In staff meetings and prep sessions, I could always tell when Obama’s brain had started to move on to the next item of his never-ending to-do list.

The idea of Trump and his coterie of Internet trolls, self-dealing Wall Street tycoons, and unrepentant racists wandering the halls of the White House doing dumb, mean shit is hard to stomach.

My hope in writing this book is to show that it doesn’t have to be this way. That if we learn the right lessons and, most important, people—especially young people—get involved in politics, we can ensure that Donald Trump is an aberration. A speed bump on the path to the America we all hoped for in 2008.

It didn’t matter that I was right on the facts; her message was much more

compelling than my policy details. This is a lesson that I would need to relearn many times in my career.

I wasn’t great about turning my homework in on time, so my high school GPA was a little below their standards.

“Dan Pfeiffer? I remember your application.” “Oh?” I responded. “I have been serving on the acceptance committee for many years and I have never seen a report on an alumni interview like yours. It’s why you got in.”

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it was now clear that I might have just conned my way into college. I was immediately scared shitless that people would figure out that I didn’t belong as soon as I stepped on campus.

I never skipped a single class in four years—no matter how tired, sick, or hungover I was, I dragged myself to class. I couldn’t control how smart I was or how hard the classes were, but I could give myself the best chance to succeed by being the guy who went to class every day.

I have never known a player who has made more out of less.”

A group of mostly African American schoolkids on a field trip from Illinois were sitting in the lobby, waiting for a junior aide to give them a tour. They looked slack jawed at Obama. They didn’t react to him like a senator. Most kids couldn’t give a shit who their senator is, but these kids were staring at Obama like a hero. It was clear that this African American man potentially becoming president meant something very powerful to them.

Over the next forty-five minutes, Obama talked to me about why he wanted to run for president; what he wanted to do as president; and why he was not going to heed the advice of the old Washington hands who were telling him to wait. Not once in the conversation did Obama mention poll numbers, campaign strategy, or political tactics. He didn’t try to convince me why he would

win or how his campaign was the best path to a plush White House job. Obama made the case that the campaign was worth running because he had something to say that he felt was worth saying.

At the end of the conversation, Obama looked me right in the eye and asked, “How often do you get to put your shoulder agai...

He melded decentralized grassroots organizing and Internet-based enthusiasm with the most advanced technological tools and sophisticated data available.

He was incredibly comfortable in his own skin and had done the hard work of self-discovery and self-actualization as a young man grappling with his identity and the father he never really knew.

So how did we build this culture, and what lessons can be learned from it? First and most important, our culture was a reflection of the man we served.

If the person at the top of any organization does not reflect the values you want in the culture of that organization, it won’t work.17

Second, our culture was not an accident. Obama, Plouffe, and Axelrod set out to build a very specific kind of campaign culture.

Axelrod would treat everyone at the campaign with the same respect, from the volunteers who answered the phone to the senior staff. This set the example for everyone on the campaign.

intrigue. In my life in politics, I have never seen a group less loyal to the boss or one another. The fish rots from the head. Trump had never demonstrated loyalty to anyone other than himself, and, therefore, his staff feel they could be fired and publicly embarrassed at any minute so they are playing a version of the Game of Thrones.

After Ron left, Obama asked me: “Does the press really have free rein up here by your office?” I explained that traditionally the press could come up here anytime they wanted so that they could visit the office of the press secretary and the other staffers whose job it was to interact with the horde of well-meaning jackals better known as the White House Press Corps.

“Fun,” Obama responded.

Every White House is engaged in a low-intensity conflict with the reporters who show up every day to report on its happenings. Ours was no different.

Republicans loved to say that Obama wasn’t “vetted,” which was nothing more than a crypto-racist attempt to raise questions about his birthplace and religious affiliation.

But once we got to the White House, Obama and the media broke up.

When the media is focused more on the misstatements of politicians than the actual statements, it damages the discourse and denies the voters the discussion of the issues they deserve. There was one moment in

There is also the screaming of “fake news” at any piece of information that one doesn’t like, even (and often) when it is undeniably true.

The point is to signal to Trump’s most diehard supporters to dismiss any piece of news that is bad for Trump, even if it is objectively and obviously true.

And then Donald Trump, a man whose depraved desire for attention would make a Kardashian blush, latched on to the cause.

truth. They couldn’t hear what Obama was saying because Obama was saying it. And therein lay the problem.

“If not now, when?” Obama asked. There was only one answer to that question.

Unlike the birther controversy, Republicans leaders didn’t stay away. They jumped at the opportunity to score political points. The Republican leader of the House, John Boehner, issued a statement a few weeks later that said, “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.” Boehner knew that what he was saying was complete bullshit. He just didn’t care. He saw an opportunity to cynically exploit people’s fears and went for it.

Pure propaganda is the official strategy of the Republican Party,

But the actual problem I was thinking about was that Obama and Kanye had had a blowup of sorts a few years before. Several days after Kanye famously interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards, Obama was chatting with John Harwood of CNBC before an interview when Harwood asked him if he had seen what Kanye had done. “I thought that was really inappropriate,” Obama responded offhandedly. “He’s a jackass.”

Obama had a serious look on his face. I prepared myself to try to explain how the president, who had very important work to do, had ended up in this room with rappers and movie stars. And then Obama broke into a huge grin. “‘That shit cray,’” Obama said in reference to a famous Kanye line, proving once again that he is and always will be our coolest president. We all laughed and didn’t really stop until we arrived back at the White House eight or so hours later.

The senior executive in charge of news at Fox eventually got back to Tommy Vietor, Gibbs’s deputy, with something more akin to an excuse than an apology. He said that he couldn’t control Fox & Friends, one of their most watched shows, because it was “entertainment programming” and the normal editorial rules didn’t apply there.

If you want to know why so many Republicans yell “fake news” at information that challenges their point of view, look to Fox News. If you want to know why nativism and racism are resurgent in the Republican Party, look to Fox News.

a fact that everyone knew, but no one admitted: Fox is not a news organization. They are a

propaganda outlet with a specific political agenda and do not abide by the traditional norms of a news organization—even a conservative one.

When the president took questions at press conferences, we included Fox. When the president did a round-robin of network interviews, we included Fox. We dispatched White House officials to appear on Fox shows. But why? Their goal was not to inform their viewers of the truth; it was to convince their viewers that Obama and his policies were dangerous.

First, the rest of the media did begin to take the reporting of Fox News with more of a grain of salt. Many of the reporters who rose to Fox’s defense now tell me that they regretted the way it played out because it gave Fox a veneer of objectivity that they didn’t deserve. And years later when Trump declared war on all of the media except Fox, blacklisting some from campaign events and using the White House to attack networks by name, Fox did not reciprocate that loyalty. In fact, they reveled in their new role as the propaganda arm of the Trump White House.

I expected Fox to abide by the normal rules of journalism. But Fox isn’t in the journalism business.

Fox is not a conservative version of CNN or MSNBC. Fox is a Republican propaganda outlet with a specific political agenda.

But just ponder the idea that the president of the United States—the person whose words can start wars and move markets—is taking at face value random things uttered by cable pundits and then repeating them to the world as fact.

When I watch Paul Ryan and McConnell bend the knee to a man they know to be dangerously unfit for the presidency, I hear Obama’s observation in my head.

The modern Republican Party is dead. It has no coherent ideology or policy agenda. It’s a conglomerate of clowns, con men, and racists and those who enable the clowns, con men, and racists.

hope. Mitch McConnell had declared that defeating Obama was his top priority. Not helping his constituents, saving the economy, or defeating Al-Qaeda, but ensuring that Obama didn’t win reelection.

Obama didn’t bring up my typo in that meeting or in any meeting in the years since—not even as a joke. Just one of the many signs of the core decency of the man.