THAT NOVEMBER, AS WE WERE preparing to go to Asia, an enormous electoral wave gave the Republican Party control of the House of Representatives—a stinging repudiation of a two-year period in which Obama saved the global economy, passed a $1 trillion stimulus, reformed financial regulations, and passed healthcare legislation. We expected to lose, but not as badly as we did; our people had stayed home, and Palin’s had turned out. In the days after the election, I had come into the Oval Office and caught the tail end of conversations in which Obama was calling a member of Congress who’d lost the
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