Barack Obama book: Highlights from former president’s tell-all autobiography A Promised Land
The Independent goes page by page through former president’s latest memoir
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Your support makes all the difference.The public long knew Barack Obama was using his time after leaving the White House to write a memoir detailing his time as the 44th president of the United States. After nearly four years of waiting, Mr Obama has released his 701-page memoir entitled A Promised Land – the first instalment of his presidential memoirs.
A Promised Land opened with Mr Obama detailing his political history when he was younger, prior to entering politics. Then the meat of the memoir dove into Mr Obama’s state Senate run, with Michelle Obama by his side, before deciding national politics was a better route for him to make more change in America.
Mr Obama offered an honest admission of the marriage struggles he went through during this time, detailing how his wife refused to campaign with him for his US Senate race. Then when he first approaches her about running for president, she responded: "God, Barack … When is it going to be enough?”
But nationwide enthusiasm for Mr Obama soared, and she later got on board with him running in the 2008 presidential election against Republican Senator John McCain.
The memoir then followed Mr Obama through his first term in the White House, including his ongoing battle with Republicans in Congress to work on any bipartisan legislation – such as the Recovery Act and Affordable Care Act.
Senator Mitch McConnell faced criticism from the former president throughout the memoir for joining most Republicans in their refusal to work with his administration. Continuing with his candour, Mr Obama expressed regret for not getting rid of the filibuster rule on his first days in the White House because of his inability to pass legislation related to climate change and immigration reform.
“The truth was, I didn’t regret paving the way for twenty million people to get health insurance. Nor did I regret the Recovery Act … I didn’t regret ho we’d handled the financial crisis … And I sure as hell wasn’t sorry I’d proposed a climate change bill and pushed for immigration reform,” he wrote.
President Donald Trump also made an appearance in the memoir for his role in 2011 of stoking conspiracy theories regarding Mr Obama’s citizenship. “I knew that the passions he was tapping, the dark, alternative vision he was promoting and legitimising, were something I’d likely be contending with for the remainder of my presidency,” he wrote.
The first installment of Mr Obama’s presidential memoirs ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden, a move that was the first and last time in his presidency that he said he didn’t have to “sell what we’d done” to the American public.
Affordable Care Act passes
The House passed the Affordable Care Act on 21 March, 2010 in a 219-212 vote, with some Democrats voting against while the Obama administration gained some moderate Republican votes.
Mr Obama then signed the act into law on 23 March, 2010, not anticipating more battles would follow with Republicans during the second term of his presidency.
“I made an exception to my rule of weekday sobriety. Martini in hand,” he writes.
The passing of the Affordable Care Act was also when Mr Obama decided to officially quit smoking, he reveals. “I’d chosen that day because I like the symbolism, but I’d made the decision a few weeks earlier, when Malia, smelling cigarette on my breath, frowned and asked if I’d been smoking,” he writes.
Mr Obama called the White House doctor and asked for nicotine gum that very day, and he said he has not had a cigarette since.
Obama says Senator Lindsey Graham ‘double-crosses everyone’
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina made an appearance in Mr Obama’s memoir when the former president described his attempt to pass a climate bill.
First, the Obama administration looked to John McCain as a Republican ally to back the bill. But Mr McCain faced a tough Senate race in Arizona, so he quickly pulled out of supporting the bill out of fear of losing his constituency. That left Mr Graham, who would sometimes back bipartisan efforts alongside his longtime friend Mr McCain. But Mr Obama was not enthusiastic about requiring the senator.
“I knew him from my time in the Senate as someone who liked to play the role of the sophisticated, self-aware conservative, disarming Democrats and reporters with blunt assessments of his party’s blind spots … when it came time to actually cast a vote or take a position that might cost him politically, Graham seemed to find a reason to wiggle out of it,” writes Mr Obama.
He went on to say he told his chief of staff that Mr Graham “double-crosses everyone to save his own skin”.
Later, Mr Graham would “jump ship”, as Mr Obama put it, from the climate bill after facing backlash from his constituents.
“My already slim chances of passing climate legislation before the midterm election had just gone up in smoke.”
Obama expresses regret not getting rid of filibuster rule prior to 2010 midterm election
The 2010 midterm elections were a defeat for the Democrats. Republicans gained a net 63 House seats, taking control of the chamber for the first time since they lost it in 2006.
This heavy loss in the House, the likes of hadn’t been seen since 1948, was credited to dissatisfaction in Mr Obama, the opposition of the Affordable Care Act, and the weak economy.
“The truth was, I didn’t regret paving the way for twenty million people to get health insurance. Nor did I regret the Recovery Act … I didn’t regret ho we’d handled the financial crisis … And I sure as hell wasn’t sorry I’d proposed a climate change bill and pushed for immigration reform,” he writes.
“I was just mad that I hadn’t yet gotten either item through Congress – mainly because, on my very first day in office, I hadn’t had the foresight to tell Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats to revise the chamber rules and get rid of the filibuster once and for all.”
The filibuster rule required a majority of 60 votes or more in the Senate to pass legislation. Rules in 2013 and 2017 later altered this rule so only a simple majority was required to invoke cloture on nominations. But 60-vote majority is still required to pass most legislation.
Trump embraces Obama ‘birtherism’ claims
“What I hadn’t anticipated was the media’s reaction to Trump’s sudden embrace of birtherism … it was propelled by Fox News, naturally, a network whose power and profits had been built around stoking the same racial fears and resentments that Trump now sought to exploit,” writes Mr Obama.
His memoir mentions how these claims first started from Donald Trump in 2011 following years of the businessman praising aspects of the Obama administration.
Mr Obama said he “had never met” the man, adding he was confused why Mr Trump was promoting an idea that the former president was not actually a US citizen. The media faced criticism in this section for how it was covered the conspiracy theory amid a time when Mr Trump was going back and forth about potentially running for president.
“I couldn’t say that any mainstream journalists explicitly gave credence to these bizarre charges … but at no point did they simply and forthrightly call Trump out for lying or state that the conspiracy theory he was promoting was racist," he writes.
Mr Obama adds: “It was clear that Trump didn’t care about the consequences of spreading conspiracy theories that he almost certainly knew to be false, so long as it achieved his aims … I knew that the passions he was tapping, the dark, alternative vision he was promoting and legitimising, were something I’d likely be contending with for the remainder of my presidency.”
Obama orders the killing of Osama bin Laden
The memoir details the back-and-forth decision process in the White House Situation Room regarding Osama bin Laden.
One scenario, which Mr Obama turned down, involved bombing the complex where the terrorist was believed to be hiding. But that would kill about 30 civilians, something Mr Obama refused to agree to, which was how the idea of a special SEAL team to go in an do the killing was launched.
"Joe (Biden) also weighed in against the raid, arguing that given the enormous consequences of failure, I should defer any decision until the intelligence community was more certain that bin Laden was in the compound.
"As had been true in every major decision I'd made as president, I appreciated Joe's willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations," Mr Obama writes.
He ultimately decided to go forward with the raid and bin Laden was killed.
“This was the first and only time as president that I’d watched a military operation unfold in real time,” Mr Obama writes.
“Even after the jubilation quieted down, all of us in the White House could feel a palpable shift in the country’s mood in the days immediately following the Abbottabad raid. For the first and only time in my presidency, we didn’t have to sell what we’d done,” he adds.
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