The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House

Before you wax nostalgic about an American presidency before Donald Trump when Barak Obama was admired the world over, when we weren’t waiting for the next ranting tweet from the White House, when Cabinet members weren’t falling like flies and Capitol Hill was a place where the representatives dutifully did their work as representatives of the people, read Ben Rhodes’ thrilling account as Barak Obama’s foreign policy speechwriter and Deputy National Security Officer.

Trump’s spectre was there all the time with his birtherism, his slander against Mexican immigrants, and barely concealed white nationalism.

Mitch McConnell was there frustrating almost all attempts to turn a Democrat agenda into law.

And Vladimir Putin was executing show more his disinformation campaigns in Latvia, Italy, Ukraine, and eventually America.

Obama took it on the chin from almost all quarters and his deputies suffered through endless Congressional investigations into palace intrigue, made up conspiracies, and press scrutiny.

Rhodes brought himself into politics through the door of the 9/11 commission. He was a young man with little direction after college. He didn’t appear to be a man driven to “serve” before 9/11 but it sure turned him into a believer afterward.

The problem was he made that transition in his idealistic years. As a White House aide he travelled a million miles in Air Force One, he broke off family holidays and family obligations to attend world changing events and meetings.

When he left after eight years of this grind, tired and dispirited from the verbal abuse he and his friends took, the world hadn’t changed all that much. Yes, there was an Arab Spring, but the few liberated Arab territories were moving toward a new totalitarianism.

Donald Trump was about to tear up American participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership, tear up the Iran nuclear deal, opt out of the Paris environmental accord, make friends with the invader of Crimea, and line his own pocket with endorsements for his hotels and country clubs.

Rhodes tells us that he orchestrated the Camelot moment of Anthony Bourdain and Barak Obama chewing noodles together in a Hanoi eatery. He tells us about his role in the thaw over Cuban policy, and funding to remove unexploded ordnance in Laos.

But in general this isn’t a story that makes you want to jump up and work in high places. It’s a cautionary tale that politics is a blood sport. show less

I picked up this book as an escape – as a way to go back in the past before some of our nation elected our 45th president. Daily events, daily human rights abuses and nearly hourly crushing of the norms and rules of democracy can become crushing to one’s soul – and this seemed a way to both retreat from these horrible realities and to learn at the same time.
And learn I did – about the hard working, intelligent, caring and decent people that once made up our government. I learned more about our amazing 44th President and how seriously he took not only his job – but how carefully he considered his unique place in history. When author Ben Rhodes (Deputy National Security Adviser to Obama) is reflecting on that – his words gave show more me insight in a way I did not expect.

“I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved – the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn’t want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn’t going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn’t going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as “takers,” incapable of making it on their own. The last person who ever thought that Barack Obama’s election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some “end of race” in America was Barack Obama.”

There is so much information and in-depth detail to the book that I did not do a great job of keeping track of all the quotes and interesting sections. But as Rhodes writes about his reaction to Election Night 2016 – I felt like he’d taken them straight from my own heart and head.

“I slept for three or four hours. When I woke, I had a sensation that I’d know only a few times in my life – the feeling that you don’t want the knowledge you’d gone to sleep with to be true. When someone has died. When something like 9/11 has happened. It was a sense of profound anxiety, a shortness of breath, a constriction in the chest; it was all those things at once – an event that would challenge my assumptions about America and alter the course of the world as well as my own life.”
This was a fantastic book and I recommend it highly. My recommendation probably won’t carry the same weight as the inclusion of this book on Obama’s summer suggested reading list – but I’ll give it just the same. show less

'The World as it Is', by Obama's speechwriter Ben Rhodes, is political non-fiction at its best: well-written, fast-paced, timely, and with enough nuggets of inside information to make it feel like you're getting the real deal. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rhodes seems like a truly good guy who finds himself in a progressively responsible position working for a young black Chicagoan who has moved into the most powerful position in the world. He starts out as one of many youngsters on Obama's team and ends up as not only the president's wordsmith but as the guy who was most responsible for negotiating the thaw in our relationship with Cuba. In the process he finds his marriage buffeted by his irregular and demanding schedule and his name show more dragged through the mud by partisan operators on the right (for example, he crafted some talking points and emails that were misquoted and taken out of context by the Benghazi folks led by Trey Gowdy). It's striking to see in the small photo collection in the book the obvious visible impact of his stressful work on his appearance over an 8 year period.

I voted for Obama twice, thought he did a decent job and felt he represented our country very well on the world stage. After the last two years of the Trump show, and after reading how his predecessor functioned in the role, I can only tell you that this tome will make you appreciate President Obama even more. It tells us 'how the sausage is made' but more importantly provides insight into how a president who is a truly professional and decent public servant functioned in all sorts of situations. At least a couple dozen times I found myself wondering how the current occupant of the White House would operate in similar circumstances, how he'd deal with the people under him, and so forth. Rhodes is an 'Obama guy' without a doubt, but I thought he was fair in his portrayal of the former president's personality, warts and all.

The most enjoyable part of this book, for me, was the account of how a young guy makes his way up the ladder in a political pressure cooker and succeeds. Rhodes is a bit of a tragic figure due to his being vilified by GOP operatives for a couple things, but his ascension to a role that the president not only trusted but expanded is admirable. Again, this well-written account was both enjoyable and instructive and ought to be of interest to anyone who's into current affairs in the US. show less

Read it towards the end of the hateful Trump presidency out of a longing for decency and humour – How did Obama do? What made him worthwhile in contrast to this horror clown Trump? Ben Rhodes was an Obama campaign volunteer who became Obama’s foreign affairs speech writer (well actually he was the deputy national security adviser). The longer they stayed in the White House, the closer they got. In his last flight on the Airforce 1 after Trump’s inauguration, to their holiday destination in California, Ben Rhodes was one of the people accompanying the Obamas.

Ben does not have a great sense of humour – or perhaps he hides it well. The best joke he mentions actually concerns himself: George W Bush cracking a joke about the great show more scholarships that have been named after Ben. What he does well is to describe the terse modes of Obama (in contrast to the affable, charming, joke-cracking wise guy image that sticks). What he also does well is to describe the key events of the two term Obama presidency: the Arab spring promise and back track (with the American securocrats displaying a knee-jerk reaction and supporting the Egyptian army generals after initial hesitations), the Libyan campaign, Osama bin Laden’s killing, the Benghazi tea party hoax and aftermath, Burma opening up, and (in more detail) the resumption of ties with Cuba. What he does not do well is to describe the rise of tea party obstructionist politics (his eye is not on the domestic scene). And he spends too much time on himself (I'd say a typical American trait: I was there! Look at me!).

Pleasantly written though the information density could be a lot higher – less fluff, less ego, more facts and background story please. show less

I don't really understand the point of this book. Everybody today knows the history, and we don't need a play-by-play. Ten years from now, it might be better; then it might find an audience that doesn't already know the story, and, more importantly, those ten years would give Rhodes more time to reflect.

As it is, there is nowhere near enough perspective. There are lots of excuses (along the lines of "I argued for X and was the only one") and very little bridge-burning.

There is an obsession with speeches over action, which reminds me of the West Wing television series. No wonder he feels stuck in reactive mode, when his all-nighters are spent fine tuning the phrasing for a speech noone will listen to, instead of on planning policy. (He show more tries to justify this odd priority by saying that Obama hadn't been in Washington long, so he needed the speeches to communicate his priorities to his departments. I am not convinced.)

Perhaps the shallowness is itself revealing, but I would rather read a deeper, more questioned story. (After starting this book I read Obama's "Dreams from my Father" before returning to Rhodes; that was much better written and argued.) show less

Ben Rhodes brings you into the White House. You can see Obama here in a way you've never seen before -- he can get petty, easily irritated, and, yes, sometimes he gave off the impression of "leading from behind" -- absent from the nitty-gritty of some major decisions that shaped his presidency. Or maybe that's a bit too harsh, considering how much was going on, just foreign policy wise. And he provided the philosophical framework for it all.

These are the foreign policy theories I took it away:
-the Obama White House had a hard time negotiating between refuting the Iraq War and serving as the world's policeman. Cases in point: Syria, Afghanistan, Libya. Even Ben Rhodes seems like he still is murky on how the US should approach potential show more interventions in the Middle East, and that ambivalence frustrated the left, gave the right an easy target, and, in the end, left a chasm for Russian and terrorist influence to fill, though I'm not sure how they could've straddled that line in any other way.
-by the end of Obama's presidency, Russia had emerged as our main adversary, or perhaps the main adversary of the liberal democratic world order that we have been trying to advance across the world. show less

Ben Rhodes is a wonderful storyteller. In this insightful tale, he brings the reader on a trip through ten years with Barack Obama, from his campaign for president to his eight years in office. As a person who was a member of Obama's inner circle for those ten years, he is able to provide the reader with the thoughts and reasons behind everything that was done both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. I have always been impressed with Obama, but after reading this my admiration for the man and president has grown. Rhodes reminds us of all that we had and all that we have lost with the election of Trump. I hope he keeps writing and following his bliss. He is an incredible writer.