Part 1: The Bet

• During law school, felt conflict between “working for change within the system and pushing against it; wanting to lead but wanting to empower people to make change for themselves... The world as it is, and the world as it should be”(21).
• Michelle noticed early: “Have you ever noticed that if there’s a hard way and an easy way, you choose the hard way every time?” (22)
• The audacity of hope (51)

Part 2: Yes We Can

• “I was plain wordy, abs that was a problem. When asked a question, I tended to offer circuitous a day ponderous answers, my mind instinctively breaking up every issue into a pile of components abs sub components. If every argument has two sides, I usually came up with four”(83).

Part 3: Renegade

• Bush did everything he could to help transition to Obama go smoothly— how to manuals, staffers meeting with incomers, his daughters giving Malia and Sasha tours
• Keynes’s basic theory: in response to recession, individuals spend less to save money, which makes sense but keeps economic conditions stuck → government needs to spend to get things rolling (ex. The New Deal, stimulus packages). Generally agreed upon.
• Filibuster: call for vote in the Senate can be delayed if “debate” continues unless 2/3 senators present vote to end the filibuster (cloture, adopted 1917) → effectively requires 60 senators to pass a bill (a supermajority)
• Foreign policy = a question of emphasis: How much concern do we have for people beyond our borders vs how much should we worry about our own citizens? How much is our fate tied to the fate of people abroad? How much should we bind ourselves to multilateral institutions like the UN?

Part 4: The Good Fight

• Demoralisation of the Democratic Party → “Whats the point of voting if nothing ever changes?” syndrome (came into play with healthcare drama) — misses the point that “stories told were often as important as the substance achieved.”
• Couldn’t get healthcare bill passed by supermajority of Senate, so tried to get passed unchanged directly in House, so Obama could sign and the bill would go to Senate for budget reconciliation, which only required simple majority... but asking a lot of the House to do this, bc bill had lots of controversial points (Cadillac tax, no public option, etc.)

Part 5: The World As It Is

• As military intervention in Iraq was winding down (2009), push to scale up efforts in Afghanistan
  • Went against campaign promises, would be extremely expensive, unclear to what end ...
  • Fear that the Taliban was more deeply woven into Afghan society, impossible to eradicate → surge would look more like long-term occupation
  • Lots of tension between White House and Pentagon..
  • Ended up setting more modest objectives (specific reforms, etc.), but still required more troops and time. Difficult to discern whether numbers were driven ideologically or by need for the objectives...
  • Authorised 30k troops, hoping allies would also send 10k, AND agreed to timetable to pull out
• “Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity — one set of truths didn’t negate the other. For war was contradiction, as was the history of America” (444).
• “Whatever you do won’t be enough... Try anyway” (446).
• Argument against idea that unelected officials regulating American lives is un-democratic: as society gets more complex, corporations more powerful, citizens requiring more from govt, specialisation & expertise matter more to manage water, air, transportation, etc., so we don’t have to worry about it on a daily basis.
• Obama’s efforts in Copenhagen in 2009 (?) in getting China & India to agree to do their part to slow climate change → foundations for Paris 7 years layer

Part 6: In the Barrel

• As in, a barrel falling over Niagara Falls
• Deep Horizons oil spill
• Foreign policy drama, how to deal with Gitmo
• Climate change, clean energy controversy
• Financial reform
• Midterm elections
• Immigration reform

Part 7: On the High Wire

• Libya: to get involved or not? No-fly zone proposed by Europeans was useless, bc Gaddafi using mainly ground forces → feel better without doing anything..., already in two other wars, hard to know whether the US had a place in a purely humanitarian mission