Barack Obama, those close to him say, is a leader driven by a remarkably consistent set of deeply held beliefs, beliefs that help keep him hopeful and calm, rather than cynical and reactive. His faith in the patience, persistence and goodness of Americans leaves him hopeful that progress will prevail.
I think at core, he believes, consistently, that he can get it done. He believes that if you pass him the ball, he can put it through the hoop and he just needs that opportunity to be able to do so. And that is, I think, a wonderful and amazing quality in a leader. That sense of confidence—taking smart and calculated risks. I mean, not hair-on-fire risks, but This is the moment, and I can get it done, and I’m willing to put my presidency on the line to do that.
The president is a wonk. He really likes talking about policy. He likes debating policy. He likes calling on the person in the room who hasn't spoken and asking what they think. He likes playing devil’s advocate. He really likes pressure testing whether we’re doing the right thing and whether we’re thinking about it the right way.
He’s a deep reader. [There’s] this voraciousness of consumption of information; he’s curious about lots of things and I think he takes all of that information and it helps shape his worldview. It helps shape the way he sees crises challenges.
I don’t know how he’s able to read as much as he does. I think he doesn’t sleep.
He has learned on the job, as all presidents do. I would tell you the strength of this president is realizing that just because you made a promise, once you get into office and you get more facts around a particular problem, if you have to change your mind for the good of the American people, then you need to do that and you need to own that decision.
He takes in lots of information very, very quickly, but it isn’t just that he takes it in, he is able to dissect it and then parse it and ask the really insightful question. He also then uses that information to make decisions. He is a very good decision-maker, which isn’t necessarily a quality I’d thought a lot about, except in that situation when you have to move from crisis to crisis, big decision to big decision, and by the time the decisions get to him, they’re usually very, very difficult ones.
[He] makes sure he gets all the views around the table and he actively seeks that out. Then [he] makes a decision. If he isn’t prepared to, he’ll say, “Go back. I want more information and let’s come back and discuss it again.” But then he makes a decision and he’s comfortable with it and we move forward. That is a really wonderful quality to have in a leader.
As any president learns, most crises don’t lend themselves to yes or no answers. By all accounts, Barack Obama quickly got used to making decisions in uncertain circumstances, from going after Osama bin Laden to drawing down troops in Afghanistan to whether or not to take military action on the ground in Syria. But first, he takes in opinions from around the table.
He has a deep appreciation of the uncertainties in life. One thing I admire, which I share a lot, [is his] aversion to excess conviction relative to knowledge. You could just see him react very badly when people come to a decision with more confidence…about the outcome…than they could reasonably have. He had a great appreciation for the sense of the gray, and not be[ing] paralyzed by it. I loved that in him.
We’d send him these long memos and I think it often frustrated other members of the senior staff who would also receive a copy of the memo and wouldn't really want to read past the first two pages. But the president couldn't get enough of it. There’s a good picture of him from 2009 walking with these huge 3-inch binders back to the residence.
He listens to the most junior person in the room if they're saying something interesting. Particularly if they disagree with him. He loves somebody to push back, maybe that’s the professor in him. And he takes his time. There have been many decisions where outside forces were trying to create a sense that he should make a decision immediately, and he never gives in to that.
If you imagine sitting in the Roosevelt Room [the White House conference room], there’s the big table and there’s probably 16 seats around that table. And in large meetings, you had the most senior members of the president’s staff and cabinet sitting around that table with the president at the big chair presiding. But there are also couches in the Roosevelt Room and some individual chairs in the back. A lot of times those are filled with people who are one or two levels below the people around the big table. And the president would often call on the people on the couch and he would often acknowledge it as “the couch.” You know, sometimes he may not even know their names, [but] say, “Back there on the couch…You all have been quiet. What do you think about what we’re doing?”
He knows the right decision at the wrong time is the wrong decision. And the right decision at the right time is a durable decision, is a decision that everybody has bought into. And by being bought into it, it’s going to get done. It’s tough to convince a lot of people around here, [there are] a lot of type As. Sometimes, slower is better. Not always faster and bigger. Sometimes, slower is better.
Critics have accused President Obama of eschewing the political process, of acting unilaterally rather than bringing the team along. His inner circle acknowledges that indeed, the president was more driven to do what he thought was right than to worry about the political consequences.
He was always, always aware of the fact that he could be a one-term president. Yet, [he] didn’t make every decision to enhance his prospects. His political critics will guffaw and say, “How can that be true?” So many times when he could’ve taken the safer route, he didn’t. Ultimately, he was rewarded for that and I think there’s a lesson to that: People respect conviction. They respect leadership and they respect people who are consistent, which is what the president was.
He has more integrity than anybody I work with. And like I said during the campaign: “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”
One of the qualities White House staffers say they admire most about their boss is his calm under pressure, whether being questioned about his birth certificate or confronting a collapsing economy. Others have criticized the president for being too cool, at times.
He is unflappable. So many people have asked me, “What’s he like? What’s he really like?” And I’ll tell them, “What you see is what you get.” He is calm, even when he’s angry and we’ve seen him angry, but he’s not a yeller. He’s not a screamer.
There aren’t these wild highs and lows, but he is calm and I think using that as a filter to take in information, to deal with crises, to process, allows him to make decisions very easily. It doesn’t mean that he’s not troubled by things. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t see angst or deep, deep concern or sadness, but at the same time, it allows him to be able to move forward.
He doesn't get too high when things are great and he doesn't get too low when things are sad. There are exceptions, of course. But for the most part, he’s pretty even-keeled. That makes it easier sometimes, when you have my job, but sometimes you just want him to jump on a chair and scream because something’s exciting.
Starting with his breakthrough speech as Keynote Speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Barack Obama has been known for being a great orator. Whether talking about race (in an unusually frank and nuanced speech in Philadelphia during his first campaign, addressing concerns about his hometown pastor, Reverend Wright); going into the heart of the Middle East at the start of his first term to deliver a message of outreach to the Muslim world (in his Cairo speech) or singing Amazing Grace at a eulogy in Charleston, after yet another mass shooting, this time at an African American church in NC, his speeches often take on the feeling of poetry—or powerful sermon. At the heart of his gift, say those close to him, is his natural empathy.
The president is one of the more self-aware people I've ever met. He knows what power his words carry—the power to inspire, the power to heal. He knows that, especially in today’s day and age, there is no such thing as a closed room or a small audience. Whatever he says is live around the world at all times and easily downloadable and searchable. So you don’t write speeches for a small audience, you write for everybody. But he knows who’s listening, indeed.
One of the challenges is people’s perception. He’s such an incredible speaker and he moves people by his speeches and his rhetoric. And so, there is this expectation by many that at all moments he’s going to share his emotions about every issue. There are many times he does do that, and it’s because he genuinely feels it.
Empathy has always been one of his greatest character traits. I think it’s one of the things that helped get him elected. He knows how important that is in speeches. And he also knows why it’s important to speak uncomfortable truths. Because even if most of society doesn't like to hear it, there’s at least one part of society that says, “No one’s ever talked to us that way before” or “No one’s ever made me feel like they care about me before.” In the second inaugural [address], we said “From Seneca Falls, from Selma to Stonewall.” To women, to African Americans and to gays. I think it was the first time anyone had ever mentioned LGBT Americans in an inaugural address. He knows what those things mean.
He has this incredible ability to understand another’s point of view, which is one of the reasons why he’s so unflappable. He knows where you’re coming from before you are even aware that he knows where you’re coming from.
There’s no issue that has impacted him more emotionally [than guns]. Every time he speaks about it, you can kind of see how emotional he’s getting. But he’s not going to be fake emotional about issues that [he] feels there needs to be a rational response to. That is not the role he sees as the Commander in Chief.
He is a people person. Sometimes that doesn't come across in public and in front of the camera. But of course, he went to Walter Reed and Bethesda [medical centers] a number of times, to visit the wounded soldiers, sailors in the Marines. And you can't help but be moved when you talk to these great young men and women, see their injuries and realize how committed they are to the mission, how patriotic they are, how much they want to get back in the fight.
Early in the second term, he traveled to Chicago, to Hyde Park High School. And he gave a speech, then sat down with a group of about 15 or so young men. And what [the students] did was they came together in a circle to sort of check in and they would talk about what was going on in their lives, their studies and their relationships. And the president took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, pulled up a chair and joined the circle in a very authentic way. [And] he started talking about his own struggles as a young man, the things he went through. And one of the young men just shot his hand up and kind of interrupted the president and said, “Are you talking about you?” And all of a sudden, the distance between a president of the United States and a 17-year old-kid on the South Side of Chicago gets reduced and that young man realized that despite their great differences in power and history, at the end of the day, they had a lot in common. He is someone who is empathetic and can join any group. He had the same interaction [with the kids] he has had with the Pope and with world leaders and with members of Congress and with his staff and his team.
During the six years that I was attorney general, almost everything seemed to be tough, but I always felt I had the support of the president, whether it was the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad [the terrorist who has been called the mastermind of the September 11 attacks] in New York as opposed to in a military tribunal. The decision not to defend DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]. The decision to announce the Smart On Crime initiative, where we’re going to reform the federal criminal justice system. These were all the kinds of things that were consequential and potentially controversial, but I always felt I had the support of the president.
He makes me better as a writer. He says that at our best, we’re collaborators. With Charleston [where Obama gave the eulogy after a mass shooting at a North Carolina church], he said, “Get me a scaffold and I'll build something on it.” Hopefully, we make each other’s drafts better. But I can kill myself on a speech for 100 hours and then, in just a few hours, he can give me back something where I'm like, Damn, man. Where does that come from? I don't know.
Inevitably, he would always have something to add, or multiple things to add. But usually the most interesting part of any Obama speech is something he added himself. We could get him 90 percent of the way there and write some great language and all the things you hope for from a good speech. But the truly intellectually interesting things in most of those speeches came from Obama himself.
Every day I worked with him and spent time with him, I felt like I got a little bit better as a person. I felt like I got smarter, I became more empathetic, more knowledgeable, I was hungrier for knowledge, and he often challenged me in a way to inspire that desire. And that’s not necessarily his responsibility. I always felt lucky and encouraged that he took it upon himself to bring me along, to inspire me to want to be better. Not every employer does that, not every boss does it, not every coworker does it.
The hardest part will be knowing that I’ll probably never have a team of people around me that are this dedicated, this committed, this hard working. I’ve seen a lot of staff who have grown up in their jobs, people who started off on the campaign as young volunteers who ended up being press secretaries or policy advisors at the highest levels and have started families and started bringing babies into the Oval Office. And you just feel enormous pride about them. And not having them around all the time, not having the pleasure of working with them—I’ll miss that.
Two terms can go by in a flash, over before a president has pushed through his agenda. But though Barack Obama acknowledges that he hasn’t accomplished everything he set out to do, he has a habit of looking at the impact of his policies beyond his tenure, of having faith that he has managed to push things in the right direction, even if incrementally.
It’s a joy to work for somebody who takes the long view, who doesn't get flustered by whatever the immediate obstacle is. I mean he really doesn't, that’s been true since he ran. Nobody expected him to get the nomination when he announced his candidacy. And he took a long view. That’s how this president conducted his presidency. He knew exactly the things he wanted to accomplish, like health care reform, like financial reform, like the reforms in the educational system.
He [has] a willingness to absorb political risk, to do the right thing, I thought he would be like that, but to be honest with you, I didn’t know he would. And you don’t know until you’re in the heat of the battle. You don’t know until you’re at that fork in the road when you have to make a hard call. And the fact that every single time, he was willing to make those hard calls…I couldn’t have sat here eight years ago and said, “I know that’s going to happen.” And to see that happen time and time again, that was powerful.
When we went in, he had made a commitment to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell [the military policy that allowed closeted LGBT to serve, but not those who were open about their sexuality]. We were trying to figure out how to get that done. There were a number of advocates who thought our strategy made no sense, that we weren’t going to get it done, that we may not have been fully committed to it. The president said then, and he reminded people later, “I told you I was going to get it done and I got it done.”
The way he thinks about things is always What impact will it have? What country am I leaving to my successor? What mess am I leaving to my successor? So that’s something he thinks about quite a bit.
I heard the president say, “I don’t have a magic wand. I cannot wave a magic wand and make this happen. We’ve got three branches of government and there is a process we have to go through and you also see the pitfalls.” Often people didn’t realize that even as we were trying to move an issue forward and [were] deeply committed to it, the multiplicity of issues that were all sitting on the table. And when it comes to LGBT issues, there was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the hate crimes bill…that was in the 90’s and, ultimately, it was this president who finally was able to sign that into law.
He took that notion on in his last convention speech as well: If you don’t get 100 percent of what you want, it doesn't mean that your politicians have sold out, or that they're corrupt. It just means that democracy is messy. And maybe we didn't cover the last 50 million Americans with health insurance but we got about two-thirds of the way there…And it’s not a message you ever want to send—hey, be happy with half a loaf—but you should be buoyed by the fact that progress is possible and that the past eight years proved it in ways big and small.
The role of the president is to hold out certain ideals that we should aspire to. And to push us to reach those ideals knowing that it may not happen in his presidency, that it may not happen in our lifetime, but that’s a north star we should aspire to. And sometimes, as the president says, you take half a loaf and that’s what democracy is, it’s about compromise, it’s about settling sometimes, it’s about not getting your way. But you make your argument, you take the vote and if you lose, you live to fight another day.
I would always remind—not just myself but my team—that if people say something about you, they’re not talking about you, they’re talking about some caricature of you that’s being portrayed.
I think the thing that got under his skin most was when someone wrote a story and it wasn’t a favorable story—not the fact that the story was unfavorable…but [that] the facts…were wrong. Nothing got him more worked up than the facts being wrong.
What you discover is the federal government is an ocean liner, it’s not a speedboat. With all the hard work, with all the good decisions I think we made up and down the government, with all the mistakes we learned from and then tried to correct for, it was still really hard reversing what we thought were some bad trends. And a future administration, even if it has a different philosophy than mine, will find the same thing: that a lot of the work we’ve done is harder to reverse than they think.
His favorite quote is, The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. And within that [Martin Luther] King quote is the understanding that there are going to be bad days, disappointments and setbacks, but if you step back and you're patient and persistent and you keep working and keep trying, you're going to bring about change and good things are going to happen. If you look at the arc of the last eight years, you can point to areas where we've made real progress, not where we fixed everything, but where we’ve made real progress.
It may be that the route to the goal is a little more circuitous than people would hope, or that they may be able to see, but [the president] doesn’t lose sight of those goals ultimately. There is just a deep, deep commitment to, not the country in the abstract, but the country that consists of these hundreds of millions of people who so desperately need and want progress. That is what I think gets him up, and how he deals with the gray hairs, which he wasn’t happy about. That’s what gets him up and out every day.
Sometimes on the left, there’s a sense that, Yeah, we got healthcare, but it wasn’t exactly the way we would have liked. But this is not a West Wing episode. It’s never that elegant. Maybe he could’ve made decisions that would’ve produced more style points, the figure skating judges would’ve put up perfect scores, but it’s messier than that.
Criticism is something that every politician has to deal with. The approach I have taken is, number one, to not watch cable shows or the nightly news. I think that’s always helpful, partly because the news cycle is so quick and attracts eyeballs based on controversies, that invariably the real story is going to be missed. But mainly because what I wanted to do and wanted my team always to do is to focus on the long term, not the short term. The danger in politics is that you are buffeted by so many opinions and so many conflicting data points that you lose track of what it is you’re trying to do, your north star. And what I’ve always said is that rather than worry about day-to-day polls, rather than worry about what people are saying about me today or tomorrow, let me think about what people are going to be saying 30 years from now…or 50 years from now.
In 2008, Barack Obama ran for president on a platform of hope and change. His closest advisors say those words weren’t merely a campaign slogan. The president is nothing if not a realist, but he urges his team to fight against cynicism, to always maintain hope. People close to him say he hasn’t changed in that essentially optimistic outlook.
People think he was naïve on issues of race. People think he was naïve on issues of bipartisanship. The president isn’t a naïve man. I mean, this is a very sophisticated person…He was a community organizer in the toughest parts of the country, the toughest parts of Chicago. He knows full well not only what is happening, but as a student of history, he understands how we got there. But it is one thing to not be naïve and it’s another to be hopeful, to look for the path forward.
The optimism and the hopefulness that the president felt during his campaign remains steadfast. And that’s because of the American people. That’s where the energy comes from and that’s where the hope comes from. What we've seen over the course of his presidency is the hard work and the grit and the determination of the American people that brought us back from the brink of disaster.
For all the idealism the president has, there’s also a lot of realism. How many times has he made a speech after a mass shooting? How many times have we tried to pass gun safety measures? He’s clear eyed about the Congress he has and the political environment he’s in. And he pushes really hard and tries really hard to make progress where he can but he knows that that can only go so far. There’s a realism that sometimes people don’t think about when they think about Barack Obama. But it’s there. But I don’t think it’s…resignation because he’ll keep giving those speeches and he’ll keep fighting for gun safety and he’ll do it long after he leaves office. But he’ll try to find other ways around it.
He made plenty of mistakes, but you can never doubt his motives. You could never doubt why he was doing this work. You could never doubt why he came to work each day. And what was amazing for me to see was that, and I don’t say this lightly, he, today, is the same guy that I knew 15, 20 years ago, running around playing basketball.
He is the same person he’s always been. He’s honest. He has resolve. He has a level of integrity that is still the same. He has the same friends that he had before he was president of the United States. He loves his family. Most nights he has dinner with Michelle and the girls. He has not changed. That’s one of the things I admire most about him. Things around him don’t change him. His center is the same. I think it probably would have changed most people but it hasn’t changed him.
I think he’s matured, as we all do. He’s more confident in his decision-making. He probably makes decisions quicker but just as informed. His basic core values haven't changed at all. In fact, the first lady said it best in her speech about him during the second [Democratic] convention: She said people often ask her what has changed in her husband. And she said, “Being president hasn't changed him, it’s just revealed who he really is.”
I fight the urge to be frustrated and cynical almost every day. Almost every time I turn on the news, there’s an overwhelming temptation to think, What’s happening? Why is everyone so angry? Why are we so bitter? Why can't we get along? How can this same country that has made so much progress on so many issues have this core of anger and frustration? But then I think about the good days, and over the last eight years, there were a lot of good days. It’s not a battle you lose or win. It is an ongoing struggle. And in that ongoing struggle, there are setbacks. And disappointments. And people who have different perspectives and fight for those perspectives just as hard as you fight for yours. And that’s democracy in a country of 300 million people; it’s big and noisy and messy. And it’s not always satisfying but it’s the best thing we’ve got going.
I feel very good about the fact that I leave this place no less optimistic, no more cynical than I was before I got here, no more jaded. I don’t feel like I had to sell my soul to do a good job in this office. And maybe that will give some inspiration to other young people who want to make changes and are wondering whether politics and government is something for them.
It can be tough to see a president’s legacy close up, to really gauge what a Commander in Chief has done or failed to do, whether or not that person has truly helped the nation in a lasting way. But even now, there are hints about what this president will be remembered for—and from his words here, there is little doubt about what Barack Obama wants to be remembered for.
There are all kinds of things where if you had a do-over, you’d probably do it better. There’s no doubt that I’ve learned a lot on the job and I’m probably a better president now than I’ve ever been. But as I’ve said before, the humility that comes about from being president is recognizing that you are just one runner in a relay race, that you take the baton and you run as fast and as hard as you can; you try to make up as much ground as you can or get as big of a lead as you can and then you pass it onto the next runner. And I can tell you that as limited as some of my talents may have been, whatever stumbles may have taken place, that I ran hard…What I won’t have any regrets about is whether or not I did my very best.
I had this vision that his last year in office would be playing golf and riding off in the sunset. And he’s running through the tape. He’s focused on getting things done and continuing to move the country in the right direction. That’s just his nature. He’s driven and passionate about doing his job.
He gives no Franklins at this point in terms of just letting it rip. Tell the truth, let’s do as much good as we can for as many people as we can, be honest, don’t sugarcoat things. Once you win reelection, it frees you up to do a lot. And as his time is fleeting, why sugarcoat anything? Take everything on as hard as you can and see what we can do with the time we’ve got left.
I’m pretty confident I’ll have left it all on the field. Not only me, but my whole team. One of the things I’m proudest of is that the people who worked in this White House remain true to the spirit of our campaign, and it wasn’t transactional. It was never “What’s in this for me?” It was a sense that together, if we work hard and stay true to our values, we can get some good stuff done. And it is an extraordinary privilege to be able to work here on behalf of the American people. We’re going to make mistakes and there are going to be times where we fall short. But I can tell you, that’s how my team has operated this entire time. I have no doubt that there will be a little bit of melancholy when you’ve put so much of yourself into something for a big chunk of your professional life. Leaving that is going be hard.
It’s too soon to answer the question of what his legacy will be. Somebody gave me a great analogy: It’s as though you're looking at yourself in a mirror with your nose pressed up against the mirror. It’s really hard to see. But in time, I think his legacy will be one of helping our country avoid the worst depression, putting in place a safety net for health care that was unprecedented. Making sure we took every possible step to keep America safe, being a strong advocate for civil rights and defining that broadly, and continuing the long journey towards perfecting our union. I think his legacy will be strong and it will be good and I think people will be reminded about how they felt when they first heard him on the world stage and that sense of hope and promise and change will be his legacy.
I think he’ll feel like he wishes he could have done more…in spite of everything that he’s accomplished. You can probably put up his list of accomplishments against any previous president and have it compare very favorably, but knowing him and his quest to achieve, his thirst for achievement, and his commitment to making the place we live better, I’m sure he wishes he could have accomplished more.
I hope what the American people take away from my presidency, whether the day I leave office or 20 years from now, is that first and foremost, it is possible for a grassroots movement to elect someone without wealth, a fancy name or political connection, to the highest office in the land. That there is power in civic engagement and mobilization and organizing and having confidence in the ability of ordinary people to move the country and, as a consequence, the world. That’s something I believed in when I was a young organizer on the south side of Chicago. It’s the running theme of my career: that all of us have agency. All of us have the ability to change the world if we’re willing to work with others and speak out and work for it. I also hope people come away understanding that government makes a difference in people’s lives.
There are major pieces of legislation that sort of define American life. When I think of President Johnson and I think of the sort of great society legislation that led to Medicare, or President Roosevelt and the New Deal and our current social security system. And we can't even really fathom them not being here anymore. Part of what President Obama has done is to put in place some of those things that over time, will be viewed in a similar light.
We live in a cynical time, when the view is that everybody in Washington is corrupt and both parties are looking out for themselves and voting doesn’t matter, my getting involved doesn’t matter because the game’s all rigged, it’s all fixed. Truth is, because of decisions we made, people have jobs that wouldn’t have had them. We have people who have been able to survive illnesses that otherwise would have died. There are kids going to college because of what we did who otherwise couldn’t have afforded it.
I'm a little biased. I think the president will be viewed as one of the most consequential presidents in history because of his willingness to take risks and to make bold choices and to put his own popularity to the side and his own political skin in the game.
I think everybody would tell you that the president made some very courageous decisions. He did not boast about those decisions to the American public. He was very thoughtful in how he looked at the consequences of the raids we did and the strikes we took. When you look at some of the terrorist leaders who are no longer around, that is a direct reflection on the decisions and the leadership of the president of the United States. There will be a counter-argument about the rise of ISIS and others. I think the history on that is yet to be written. But the president has also been very aggressive about going after ISIS. So I think in the long haul, when people look back on the president’s legacy regarding terrorism, it will actually be very laudatory.
The fact that this administration has been scandal-free is a reflection of the leader of the administration. This is a person who was very careful in the selections that he made. He set the tone for how we were to conduct ourselves. It was as transparent an administration, I believe, as you can possibly have, and I think transparency goes a long way to promoting ethical behavior. I think this is another thing he can be proud of. It’s something I don’t think people really focus on. The absence of scandal is not something that makes the newspapers.
This is an assessment, ultimately, that historians will make, but the fact that I did a good job, that even those who might criticize particular actions of mine, would have a hard time arguing that we didn’t run a capable, ethical, functioning federal government during my tenure; people of different backgrounds and that includes, by the way, my secretaries in my cabinet and my staff, which was more diverse historically than ever before. Women who ran my national security team who had never been in positions like that before. We have a lot of talent from all different walks of life in this country that can capably participate in the highest levels of government…if there were any doubts among some on that front.
Some presidents serve in quiet times. He did not, domestically or internationally, so we don’t know yet what his legacy will be. I don’t even think we know how history will judge him because we’re still judging our first president, George Washington. But I think you can decide pretty quickly if someone was a consequential president. We’ve had a few of them the last hundred years: Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, maybe the combined LBJ and Kennedy years, and Barack Obama. It doesn’t mean we didn’t have other great presidents, but they were consequential presidents.
There’s no question, he’s a consequential president. I'm not concerned about people viewing him that way at all. I hope people view him the way that we do: as steady and warm and hopeful and generous, someone who loves this country in a way that most of us didn't even know you could until we got to work with him and see the way he thinks. I think he’ll be up there as one of the best and I hope, selfishly, as a speechwriter, that a lot of his words are taught to our kids someday.
He’s also revealed his humanity in very raw ways. The American people really know him. They know him. Sometimes they’re frustrated with him. Sometimes they wish he had been doing a better job on a particular issue, but they know him. I think they know the kind of person he is. I think they know his character, his integrity, what kind of family man he is. Ultimately, the selection of the presidency and a president. it’s a very personal relationship for the American people. It really is. They invited him into their homes, onto their smartphones, onto their computers, and, like any relationship, it’s had its ups and downs. But even his critics [are] able to say, “He stood his ground. He knew what he wanted to do. Even if I disagreed with it, he was honest about it.” He led and governed with integrity over an eight-year period, [and] history suggests that’s a hard thing to do.
His legacy on education is simply extraordinary. I’ve talked about being a little skeptical, a little cynical about coming to D.C. What could you actually get done? [But] when you look at all those things, early childhood investment, high school graduation rates at all-time highs, educators’ jobs and careers saved, more than a million students of color going on to college, $40 billion dollars in Pell Grants, [federal aid to financially needy college undergraduates] a 50% increase. If you would have said to me, going back to 2007, 2008, you could do one of those, I would have said, “Sign me up, I’m in!” The fact that we were able to do all of those, it just wildly exceeds my greatest hopes.
I’m very proud of the tens of thousands of young people who, over the course of the last 10 years, have gotten involved in the life of this country as organizers and activists and staffing the federal government and who have inspired me by their amazing work and creativity and tenacity and idealism. They will continue to exert leadership and influence in their communities and around the country as they get older. And it’s made both Michelle and I realize that probably the most important thing we can do after my presidency is over is to continue to focus on building the next generation of leadership…Getting young people involved, giving them the tools, the data, the digital platforms to influence not just their own life, but the life of their community. That’s the most important legacy because one of the things you realize in this work is, you can’t get everything done yourself. This is an ongoing project, democracy. This is a garden that has to be tended to or it dies.
