The inside of the White House doesn’t have the luminous quality that you
might expect from television or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old
house that one imagines might be a bit draughty on cold winter nights.
On a chilly January afternoon in 2005, the day before my swearing-in as a
senator, I was invited there with other new members of Congress. At 1600
hours on the dot, President Bush was announced and walked to the podium,
looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walk that suggests
he’s on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum. For 10 or so
minutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to
come together, before inviting us for refreshments and a picture with him
and the first lady.
I happened to be starving, so while most of the other legislators started
lining up for their photographs, I headed for the buffet. As I munched on
hors d’oeuvres, I recalled an earlier encounter with the president, a small
White House breakfast with me and the other incoming senators.
I had found him to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same
straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections; you could
easily imagine him owning the local car dealership, coaching Little League
baseball and grilling in his backyard – the kind of guy who would make for
good company so long as the conversation revolved around sport and the kids.
There had been a moment during the breakfast meeting, though, after the
backslapping and the small talk and when all of us were seated, with
Vice-President Cheney eating his eggs benedict impassively and Karl Rove at
the far end of the table discreetly checking his BlackBerry, that I had
witnessed a different side of the man.
The president had begun to discuss his second-term agenda, mostly a
reiteration of his campaign talking points – the importance of staying the
course in Iraq and renewing the Patriot Act, the need to reform social
security and overhaul the tax system, his determination to get an up-or-down
vote on his judicial appointees – when suddenly it felt as if somebody in a
back room had flipped a switch.
The president’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone
of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy
affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my
mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded
of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and I appreciated the
wisdom of America’s founding fathers in designing a system to keep power in
check.
“Senator?” I looked up, shaken out of this memory, and saw one of the older
black men who made up most of the White House waiting staff standing next to
me.
“Want me to take that plate for you?” I nodded, trying to swallow a mouthful
of chicken something-or-other, and noticed that the queue to greet the
president had evaporated. A young marine at the door politely indicated that
the photograph session was over and that the president needed to get to his
next appointment. But before I could turn around to go, the president
himself appeared.
“Obama!” he said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you
remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family.
And that wife of yours – that’s one impressive lady.”
“We both got better than we deserve, Mr President,” I said, shaking the first
lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face.
The president turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand
sanitiser in the president’s hand.
“Want some?” the president asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.”
Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.
“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of
advice.”
“Not at all, Mr President.” He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said.
“Very bright. But I’ve been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it
can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting,
people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my
side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to
slip. Know what I mean? So watch yourself.”
“Thanks for the advice, Mr President.” “All right. I gotta get going. You
know, me and you got something in common.”
“What’s that?” “We both had to debate Alan Keyes [Obama’s black
arch-conservative Republican opponent in the Senate election]. That guy’s a
piece of work, isn’t he?” I laughed, and as we walked to the door I told him
a few stories from the campaign.
It wasn’t until he had left the room that I realised I had briefly put my arm
over his shoulder as we talked – an unconscious habit of mine, but one that
I suspected might have made many of my friends, not to mention the secret
service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.
As I’ve been a steady and occasionally fierce critic of Bush administration
policies, Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I
don’t consider George Bush a bad man and that I assume he and members of his
administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.
After the trappings of office are stripped away, I find the president and
those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of
the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as
the rest of us.
No matter how wrongheaded I might consider their policies to be – and no
matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results
of such policies – I still find it possible, in talking to these men and
women, to understand their motives, and to recognise in them values I share.
This is not an easy posture to maintain in Washington. The stakes involved in
policy debates are often so high that I can see how, after a certain amount
of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who
disagree with you have fundamentally different values – indeed, that they
are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.
Outside of Washington, though, America feels less deeply divided. Spend time
actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are
more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists more
spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor
are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular
culture allows. Most Republican strongholds are 40% Democrat, and vice
versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track
people’s personal attributes.
All of which raises the question: what are the core values that we, as
Americans, hold in common? One core value, individual freedom, is so deeply
ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted.
I remember the first time I took Michelle to Kenya, shortly before we were
married. As an African-American, she was bursting with excitement about the
idea of visiting the continent of her ancestors, and we had a wonderful
time, visiting my grandmother upcountry, wandering through the streets of
Nairobi, camping in the Serengeti, fishing off the island of Lamu.
But during our travels Michelle also heard – as I had heard during my first
trip to Africa – the terrible sense on the part of most Kenyans that their
fates were not their own. My cousins told her how difficult it was to find a
job or start their own businesses without paying bribes. Activists told us
about being jailed for expressing their opposition to government policies.
Even within my own family, Michelle saw how suffocating the demands of
family ties and tribal loyalties could be, with distant cousins constantly
asking for favours, uncles and aunts showing up unannounced.
On the flight back to Chicago, Michelle admitted she was looking forward to
getting home. “I never realised just how American I was,” she said. She
hadn’t realised just how free she was – or how much she cherished the
freedom that inspires our allegiance to America.
Extracted from The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, published by Canongate
at £8.99
