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

by Ben Rhodes

Sometimes I would hold up my phone and take pictures of the crowds taking pictures of us, the only way to feel a connection with a mass of human beings whom I would never, could never, really know.

“There are more stars in the sky,” he said, “than grains of sand on the earth.”

“To the leader of the free world,” I toasted, ruefully.

first time in eight years, history felt out of our hands.

That is good for the world. But every action will have a reaction. And if an immature leader throws the world into chaos, then the world will know whom to blame.

“You’re going to have to speak out when certain values are threatened.”

“Maybe we pushed too far,” he said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”

“Progress doesn’t move in a straight line.”

He didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder whether I was ten or twenty years too early.”

mind churning.

We were right, but all that progress depended upon him, and now he was out of time.

The goal for the “big terrorism speech” was to have Obama sound like someone who could be commander in chief, someone who could be a strident critic of the Iraq War and still be able to wage war against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.