The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

I was one of those well-meaning white people looking forward to seeing Barack Obama eulogize Nelson Mandela so that I could feel better about the world, only I was the person tasked with writing the eulogy. After putting it off for a few days, I came in early one Saturday morning and wrote a first draft in one sitting. By the time we got on the plane for South Africa, I still had no idea what Obama thought of it. He called me up to his office in the front of Air Force One, which was carrying a delegation that included George W. and Laura Bush, and told me that he liked what I’d written, that it was a “safety net” because he could deliver it if nothing else came to him on the flight over. “Are you happy with it?” he asked me. “I am,” I said. “I’m sure you can make it much better.” A few hours later, Obama came back and gave me several handwritten pages on a yellow legal pad. It was an entirely new draft. “See what you can do with this,” he said. He had made it into a study of Mandela the leader.