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 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. ( )

I just finished this memoir and I think it has been one of the better Obama staff memoirs so far (I still give the leg up to Alyssa Mastromonaco’s).
Rhodes began as Obama’s speechwriter and was with him through his career. Why I think this one was one of the better books is Rhodes turns inwardly a bit and looks at places where they should have spoken up as nationalism began to rise. While there was a bit of polish on Obama, Rhodes wasn’t afraid to say, yeah, we messed up on this and it had deep consequences.
Definitely worth the read. ( )

I’m DNFing this book, not because it isn’t well written or interesting, I’m just not interested enough to keep going at this time. Political memoirs aren’t in my wheel house, normally — this was an impulsive library request. I imagine folks who enjoy political memoirs will want to check out this one.

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 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. ( )

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 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.
( )