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

by Ben Rhodes

I HAD NEVER HEARD the phrase “lead from behind” until it appeared in a New Yorker article about Obama’s foreign policy in April 2011. The article was typical of a Washington genre: the step-back review of a particular policy—in this case, foreign policy—in which a writer interviews a mix of administration officials and outside critics to make sense of things. Most of these pieces disappear without much notice, adding to an accumulating conventional wisdom. But on occasion, a particular turn of phrase can become a bumper sticker that is affixed to a presidency. I knew we might be faced with that scenario when I sat in my office late one afternoon reading this long New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza, and reached the end: “Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisors described the president’s actions as ‘leading from behind.’ ”