Driving out to Obama’s rental to staff phone calls, give him updates, or draft statements. He tried to cluster his work in the morning so that he could play golf or relax in the afternoon, and when I showed up, he always seemed a little annoyed—as if I were the stand-in for a world that was ruining his vacation. Nights, I drove to a cheap Chinese takeout place and returned to my room. There I’d sit on the couch, eating lo mein out of a plastic container and watching cable news split-screen the unraveling of two of the loftier aspirations of the 2008 campaign—an end to the permanent war, and a
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