Barack Obama

Beginning just as the Cold War finally came to an end, the 1990s were supposed to bring peace, prosperity, and optimism to the United States. Thinking about all that has happened since – the 9/11 attacks, interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global financial crisis, violent unrest and democratic institutions under threat – it is tempting to look back on the decade as a short-lived golden age. But there has been a growing recognition among scholars and commentators that the roots of America’s contemporary woes can be found in the dark undercurrents of the fin de siècle. Strong economic growth and rapid technological advances had masked growing discontent and rage about inequality, immigration, and globalisation.

Since crossing paths nearly two decades ago, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have forged one of the more potent partnerships in modern American politics – winning three of the last four presidential elections between them – and have built an enduring friendship. It is all the more remarkable for its rarity. The pressures of the White House, overlapping ambitions, and competing loyalties have soured the relationship between most presidents and their deputies (think of Richard Nixon’s notorious bitterness towards Dwight Eisenhower or the froideur between Al Gore and Bill Clinton). 

Barack Obama has written the best presidential memoir since Ulysses S. Grant in 1885, and since Grant’s was mostly an account of his pre-presidential, Civil War generalship – written at speed, to stave off penury for his family, as he was dying of throat cancer – Obama’s lays some claim to being the greatest, at least so far. This first volume (of two) only reaches the third of his eight years in the White House.

Gareth Evans diagnosed the affliction of leaving government as relevance deprivation syndrome. For those who worked in the Obama administration, leaving the White House must have presented deeper maladies: the bewildering success of a reviled political opponent and a profound sense of missed opportunities. Two recently released memoirs by former Obama staffers grapple with this reality in very different ways.

What is Barack Obama’s legacy? That deceptively simple question forms the subject of Jonathan Chait’s new book ...