Barack Obama in Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow
On Budget & Economy:
Recession because Wall St. and Washington failed us
Obama hoped to connect with the unemployed despite holding the country's most prestigious job; to disparage Washington politics despite being a product of them; to have a self-described "direct conversation with the folks of New Hampshire.""We've gone
through the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and folks here have had their lives uprooted by lost jobs and foreclosed homes, shuttered businesses, vanished savings," he said. "Many good, hardworking people who met their responsibilities are
now struggling, in part because folks on Wall Street and people in Washington didn't meet their responsibilities. Now, these are the things that I hear about every day in the letters
I get--from families going bankrupt; from small businesses crushed by their health-care costs. I am not going to walk away from these efforts. I am not going to walk away from these people."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p. 19-20
Oct 11, 2011
On Environment:
BP spill was biggest environmental disaster ever faced
An explosion on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, eleven men dead, another sad event unfolding. But then oil from the destroyed well began gushing into the ocean, and executives from British Petroleum said they lacked the technology to plug a hole
one mile beneath the surface. Tar balls washed up in Louisiana's marshes, Alabama closed its beaches, and Florida declared a state of emergency. A senior adviser to President Obama called it "the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever faced.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.170-179
Oct 11, 2011
On Environment:
Sent 17,500 troops and 1,400 ships to deal with BP spill
Obama had exhausted his presidential power to respond to the BP oil spill. Obama had met with the families of the 11 men who died in the initial explosion on the oil rig & created a federal commission to investigate the accident. He had activated 17,500
members of the National Guard, sent 1,400 boats, deployed 3 million feet of boom to protect the shore, established 17 command centers & orchestrated the recovery of 11 million gallons of oily seawater. He had requested a shipment of seafood from the gulf
to serve for dinner at his 49th birthday party. He had put on gloves to pick tar balls off the beach. But the spill continued to expand, and the criticism of Obama grew along with it.Would this disaster discredit him like Hurricane Katrina had done to
Pres. Bush? Obama said, "This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed thinking about--the spill. When we are fouling up the earth like this, it has concrete implications not just for this generation but for future generations."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.180-181
Oct 11, 2011
On Health Care:
ObamaCare passage means history; failure means powerless
Obama believed the outcome of health-care reform would profoundly affect the entirety of his presidency, and most lawmakers in Washington agreed. Pass the bill and he could become a historic president, generating the momentum to push more of his
ambitious ideas through Congress. Fail and he would appear weak, even powerless.Obama had made health care reform his top priority during his first year in office. The debate had begun to destroy Obama's campaign aspirations of bipartisanship.
Republican lawmakers stood on the steps of the Capitol and waved signs that read KILL THE BILL! Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of "fearmongering" and termed them "the party of no."
Obama himself blamed Republicans for trying to twist his self-described "centrist" plan into "some kind of Bolshevik plot." As February turned into March, Obama vowed to do everything he could to pass the bill.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p. 90-91
Oct 11, 2011
On Health Care:
2009: Accused of "Obamunism" and "Chains We Can Believe In"
Obama left Washington a few days after the passage of health-care reform. He hoped to explain the new legislation directly to constituents, highlighting how it would affect students, small-business owners, and people with preexisting conditions. Instead,
political discourse had turned into an angry shouting match.On one sidewalk, liberals wore Obama t-shirts while chanting "Yes we did!". On the other sidewalk, middle-aged conservatives and retirees from rural Iowa waved homemade signs.
"This bill is
Communism!" one protester shouted. "Obamunism!" yelled another.
Millions of Americans believed their government had ignored their wishes by forging ahead with health-care reform despite a mounting wave of opposition. Polls showed that Obama's
signature bill remained stunningly unpopular. 2/3 of Americans thought it would cost too much; 44% expected the quality of their health care to decline, while only 8% expected it to improve.
A homemade sign read "Chains We Can Believe In."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.106-107
Oct 11, 2011
On Health Care:
OpEd: True cost of ObamaCare was end of bipartisanship
About half of the letters in February and March of 2010 focused on health-care reform. Much of the mail was negative and some was nasty. One typical email was from a writer in Plano, Texas, who implored Obama to "stop and listen to all the
American people!"By the time the true cost of his health-care reform bill had already become clear, it had triggered the official, ugly end to his campaign vision of accord and bipartisanship. The same president who insisted during his speech on
election night that the country "resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long," now found himself at the center of a political climate that he described with the same
word. "It's poisonous," he said.
All his talk of bipartisanship had yielded few results, with not one Republican voting for his budget or his stimulus package, and only one Republican voting for his health-care bill.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.131-133
Oct 11, 2011
On Health Care:
They called ObamaCare "Armageddon", but no asteroids fell
Far from the conciliatory campaigner of 2008, Obama was feisty in the days after he signed the health-care bill, even cocky. He bypassed the Senate by appointing fifteen new staffers while Republican congressmen were away on recess.
He traveled to deliver celebratory health-care speeches and once gloated onstage: "Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill 'Armageddon.
End of the freedom as we know it.' So, after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth. It turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall.
People still have their doctors." But what people no longer had was the illusion of government accord.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.134
Oct 11, 2011
On Immigration:
Arizona's S.B.1070 creates misguided patchwork system
Obama said that Arizona's SB1070 undermined "basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans," and he considered it too important to ignore. He decided to meet with Brewer in person at the White House.The president disagreed with the governor
so completely on illegal immigration that he even disputed her facts. The immigration crisis had not become worse, he believed; it had actually improved. The number of illegal immigrants had dropped from 12 million to 11 million in the last three years.
Obama had tripled the number of intelligence analysts on the border and committed 1,200 National Guard troops to the cause. Deportations had increased under his watch.
Brewer met with Obama in the Oval Office. Obama said that state immigration laws
such as SB1070 would create a "patchwork system" and undercut overarching federal regulations.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in district court, asking a judge to declare SB1070 "invalid" and insisting that it "be struck down."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.151-153
Oct 11, 2011
On Immigration:
Sent unmanned aircraft drones to monitor Mexican border
[The Arizona anti-immigration law] SB1070 was scheduled to become law in 16 hours when a district judge finally announced her last-minute ruling on the lawsuit brought by Obama and the Justice Department: Much of the bill was unconstitutional.
Inside the White House, Obama and his aides conceded that they expected a long battle, predicting that the fate of SB1070 might eventually rest with the Supreme Court. What at first had seemed like a hard-earned immigration victory for
Obama began to look more like a defeat as summer turned to fall. The president tried to appease both conservatives and liberals with immigration policies that instead satisfied nobody. He sent unmanned aircraft drones to
monitor the border and deported record numbers of illegal immigrants. Such attempts to secure the border further enraged Hispanic voters who already felt like Obama had failed them.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.162-163
Oct 11, 2011
On Immigration:
Comprehensive reform can't be done by president alone
To the Spanish-language newspaper "La Opinion", Obama defended his work on immigration: "In some ways there is an unrealistic notion of what I can get done by myself." On Oct. 25, Obama agreed to an in-studio radio interview with Eddie Sotelo, the host
of a popular program on an L.A. Spanish station.The interview deteriorated; Obama remained mostly on the defensive. "If the majority of Democrats support this issue, if I as president support this issue.then the question I have is why are we spending
time talking about us instead of spending time focusing on getting Republicans to do what's right?" he asked. As the interview continued, he seemed more than ever like a president beleaguered by all that he could not control:
- "Change isn't easy,"
he said. "It doesn't happen overnight."
- "I am president. I am not king. I can't do these things just by myself."
- "I just want to repeat: I'm president. I'm not king."
- "The notion that we haven't worked hard is just not true."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.164-165
Oct 11, 2011
On Principles & Values:
Maternal grandfather fought in WWII
Obama was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket adorned with the presidential seal on one breast and an American eagle on the other. It was the same jacket that the staff at
Air Force One had given each president for the last forty-plus years, and Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush had all worn it while addressing wartime troops.
It looked particularly like a prop on Obama, who had spoken at antiwar rallies only a few years earlier, and whose closest personal connection to the military was his maternal grandfather,
Stanley Dunham, who had fought in World War II. As Obama stood before the troops in Bagram, he tugged at the jacket's sleeves and smoothed its zipper.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p. 70
Oct 11, 2011
On Principles & Values:
Effective citizenship means listening to opposing views
A letter from a group of 6-year-olds inspired a speech in 2010. "If you turn on the news today, we've got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names. The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the
door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning--since after all, why should we listen to a "fascist" or "socialist" or "right-wing nut"? It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but
bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out."So what can we do about this? If you're someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while.
If you're a fan of Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p.134-135
Oct 11, 2011
On War & Peace:
2009: Command is a solemn responsibility; war has no glory
Obama had angered Republicans and military leaders by sometimes appearing to treat the war less like an ongoing reality than an exercise in critical thought. In the fall of 2009, governing with typical deliberateness, Obama had spent more than three
months contemplating whether or not to send more service members into Afghanistan. He had assembled 25 religious leaders to converse with him about the morality of war. He had read "Lessons in Disaster," a book about the Vietnam War. He had flown in the
middle of the night to Dover Air Force Base to greet the flag-draped coffins of eighteen Americans killed in action.When he finally made his decision in Dec. 2009, announcing he would swell the war with thirty thousand more troops in hopes of winning
and then withdrawing quickly, he had spoken primarily of the "solemn responsibility" of being commander in chief. "He was very clear we were not going to beat our chests and we were not going to treat war as a glorious endeavor to be celebrated."
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p. 68-69
Oct 11, 2011
On War & Peace:
Afghan war: moral imperative against determined enemy
He spoke about combat with a new conviction. He described the war in the exact terms he once asked his speechwriters to avoid: It was a moral imperative--a glorious endeavor to be celebrated. "If I thought for a minute that America's vital interests were
not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order you all home right now. "There's going to be setbacks. We face a determined enemy. But we also know this: America does not quit once it starts something. You don't quit."Al Qaeda and the
violent extremists who you're fighting against want to destroy. But all of you want to build, and that is something essential about America. They're got no respect for human life. You see dignity in every human being. They want to drive races and regions
and religions apart. You want to bring people together and see the world move forward together. They offer fear. You offer hope."
By the time Obama finished his 20-minute speech, the troops' polite applause had turned to stomps and whistles.
Source: Ten Letters, by Eli Saslow, p. 70-71
Oct 11, 2011
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