Nov GQ article on Obama the author: "Barack Obama's Work in Progress"

[Pirate Smile]

Barack Obama's Work in Progress

Over the past few years, we’ve gotten to know our president as a lot of different things: campaigner, lawyer, father, basketballer. But what if Obama’s first and truest calling—his desire to write—explains more about him than anything else? Robert Draper recounts the untold story of the first man since Teddy Roosevelt to serve as author in chief

By Robert Draper Photograph by Callie Shell/Aurora November 2009



....
The author in barack obama never really left the room.

In the years since his ’04 Democratic-convention keynote speech opened Obama’s biography to mass consumption, we’ve picked through nearly every theme—the biraciality, the absent father, the community organizing, the deft navigation of the political minefield that is Chicago—as a way of explaining What Makes Obama Obama. Yet the president’s writing life has gotten surprisingly little notice. His talent with words is widely acknowledged, but that skill is often regarded as more instrumental than essential, a kind of handy tool for a politician, like George W. Bush’s facility for remembering names or Bill Clinton’s talent for spewing out worldly minutiae. But what if the knack is more like a calling? At least from early adulthood if not before, Barack Obama was clearly driven to write; to trace that continuing compulsion, from the days when he penned fiction and then memoir to his present speechcraft, is to recognize that writing is anything but a small part of Obama’s life. It’s basic to who he is.

“I think he sees the world through a writer’s eye,” says senior White House adviser and former Chicago journalist David Axelrod. “I’ve always appreciated about him his ability to participate in a scene and also reflect on it. I mean, I remember when we were meeting clandestinely with the guys who were vetting the vice presidential candidates. There was this courtly southern gentleman who was doing the vetting. The president said to me, ‘This whole scene’s right out of a Grisham novel.’

“I also have to say, one of the great thrills is to watch him work on a speech. It’s not just the content—he’s very focused on that—but more than anyone I’ve ever worked with, he’s focused on the rhythm of the words. Like, he’ll invert words. He’ll say, ‘I need a one-beat word here.’ There’s no question who the best writer in the speech-writing group is.”

....
Sometime in 2002, the young state senator pays a daytime visit to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The artistic director, Barbara Gaines, is happy to show the politician around. Watching the carpenters erect the set, he asks Gaines which play is about to be performed. “Julius Caesar,” she tells him.

At first, Obama doesn’t say anything. Then, in a very soft voice, he begins to recite some twenty lines from the play. As he does so, he places his hand on his heart, as if stricken by the words’ transcendent beauty.

The director is agog. She has never heard an elected official quote Shakespeare in such a way. Later, she tells a co-worker, “I just had the most amazing experience. I met the first politician to have the soul of a poet.” (The first, she means, since Abe Lincoln, who quoted lines from Macbeth less than a week before his assassination: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke…)

When he is done, she murmurs, “Where did you learn that?”

He smiles. “From great professors,” he says. (Obama read all of Shakespeare’s tragedies during a short span of time in college and reread several while in Springfield.)

....
For most politicians, well-delivered speeches are the fruit of rehearsal. That’s not necessarily the case with Obama, who has given some of his best speeches without benefit of a run-through. One of these was the joint session of Congress speech delivered this past February—his first speech before the body. Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, not yet accustomed to Obama’s methods, was apoplectic just before the speech, hollering, “No one gives that speech without a run-through!” (Observes Axelrod: “Rahm does yoga, but not Zen.”) Though his teleprompter is proof that Obama does not believe in truly winging it, he requires less rehearsal than most presidents because he’s deeply involved in shaping the words from their inception.

“I don’t think he sits down and stares at a blank page waiting for the muse to come and kiss him, you know,” says Axelrod. “But I also think he needs the deadline. It’s a motivator—it trains the mind.” This is Axelrod’s charitable way of saying that Obama does his writing at the eleventh hour, when his aides are on the verge of meltdown.

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/200911/barack-obama-writing-books-writer-robert-draper

[Colobo]

1. As a person with a graduate degree in Hispanic Literature

I'm very glad to read that we have a man with love for letters as our President.

[Cha]

2. Good, a decent

revealing article on the president that doesn't try and smear him.

That's a really neat shot of PO and Michelle. He's a lefty.

[Pirate Smile]

3. It has a lot of new tidbits which is nice and, frankly, rather rare.

[Cha]

6. Thanks, I'll make sure and read it..

just not tonight.:)

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts

I am no orator, as Brutus is,
But as you know me all a plain blunt man
That loved his friend - and that, they know
That gave me public leave to speak of him
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood
I only speak right on
Tell you that which all of you do know
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds
These poor, poor dumb mouths
And bid them speak for me
But were I Brutus, and Brutus Antony
There were an Antony would ruffle of your spirits
And put a tongue in every wound of Caesar
That should move to stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!

(That's from memory, and my guess for Obama's recital. I had good professors too ;-))

[Pirate Smile]

7. Very nice.

:)

[Obamacare]

10. Wow!

The more I learn about PO the more I fall in love with him.:loveya:

[Pirate Smile]

5. more

A major presidential address by Obama begins in the Oval Office, where he talks through the content with his writing team. Or rather, it begins sometime before then, since Obama—who even as a community organizer used to spend hours alone in a state of pure reflection—tends to martial his thoughts into infuriatingly coherent form while no one is around.

One Saturday morning this past May, for example, Obama summoned Ben Rhodes and national-security spokesperson Denis McDonough to discuss a speech he would be delivering in Cairo to the Muslim world. For an hour, Obama paced the Oval Office as he talked: “There are these tensions between the West and Islam. They’re rooted in colonialism.…I want a set piece where we talk about the contributions of Islam.” Islam and the West weren’t separate categories, he went on—and he knew this, because “I’ve lived in both worlds.” He listed a few commonalities—the desire for work and education, the love of family and God—and then said, “These things we share.” At one point he observed, “Suppressing ideas never makes them go away”—and recognizing that the line was a keeper, Obama made sure that Rhodes had it down verbatim. The same with, “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality.” (McDonough and Rhodes tried to conceal their envy. They’d spent days meeting with experts inside and outside of government on how to handle the issue that their boss had now crystallized in a single sentence.)

[HamdenRice]

13. "martial his thoughts into infuriatingly coherent form while no one is around. "

Great description!

[Clio the Leo]

8. His penchant for procrastination makes me feel better about my tendency to do the same....

.... maybe some of us are just so good, we dont need as much time. :)

(and also, I'm just lazy)

[Pirate Smile]

9. Deadlines can be useful.

:)

[Pirate Smile]

11. kick

[Pirate Smile]

12. kick

[alsame]

14. K&R, Great article. nt

[Pirate Smile]

15. Kick

[Pirate Smile]

16. hmmmm why does it keep doing dupes.

[HopeOverFear]

17. I love the story of how he wrote A More Perfect Union

Feeling that he had failed to sufficiently address and explain the context of his relationship with the Reverend, Obama began writing the speech that became "A More Perfect Union." Obama's usual speechwriting practice during the 2008 campaign was to discuss major themes with speechwriter Jon Favreau, let Favreau write a draft, and then edit the result.<14> However, on Saturday, March 15, Obama dictated a lengthy draft of this speech to Favreau, who edited the speech the next day. Obama stayed up until 3:00 a.m. Sunday night working on the speech, and continued to work on it Monday and in the early hours of Tuesday. He sent his final draft of the speech to Favreau and campaign strategist David Axelrod at 2:00 am Tuesday morning.<15> After reading Obama's final draft, Favreau sent him an email saying "This is why you should be president."<16>

Obama later said that as he wrote the speech, he tried to ensure that his mother, Ann Dunham, would have trusted its sentiments.<17>

[Pirate Smile]

18. Ax was the one who said this is why he should be President, I believe. It is interesting how it

freaked Favreau out so much he just went out that night.

This was especially true last March 13, when the incendiary sermons of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, blew up all over the cable networks. On that Thursday, Obama had spent the entire day and evening in the Senate. That Friday, after enduring a series of tough interviews, Obama informed Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe, “I want to do a speech on race.” And he added, “I want to make this speech no later than next Tuesday. I don’t think it can wait.” Axelrod and Plouffe tried to talk him into delaying it: He had a full day of campaigning on Saturday, a film shoot on Sunday, and then another hectic day campaigning in Pennsylvania on Monday. Obama was insistent. On the Saturday-morning campaign conference call, Favreau was told to get to work on a draft immediately. Favreau replied, “I’m not writing this until I talk to him.”

That evening, Saint Patrick’s Day, less than seventy-two hours before the speech would be delivered to a live audience, Favreau was sitting alone in an unfurnished group house in Chicago when the boss called. “I’m going to give you some stream of consciousness,” Obama told him. Then he spoke for about forty-five minutes, laying out his speech’s argumentative construction. Favreau thanked him, hung up, considered the enormity of the task and the looming deadline, and then decided he was “too freaked out by the whole thing” to write and went out with friends instead. On Sunday morning at seven, the speechwriter took his laptop to a coffee shop and worked there for thirteen hours. Obama received Favreau’s draft at eight that evening and wrote until three in the morning.

He hadn’t finished by Monday at 8 a.m., when he set the draft aside to spend the day barnstorming across Pennsylvania. At nine thirty that night, a little more than twelve hours before the speech was to be delivered, Obama returned to his hotel room to do more writing. At two in the morning, the various BlackBerrys of Axelrod, Favreau, Plouffe, and Jarrett sounded with a message from the candidate: Here it is. Favs, feel free to tweak the words. Everyone else, the content here is what I want to say. Axelrod stood in the dark reading the text: “The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made.… But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

He e-mailed Obama: This is why you should be president.

[Hutzpa]

19. K&R

an excellent piece, makes a huge change from the usual banter he gets.

:thumbsup:


:kick:

[treestar]

20. The President wrote fiction?

I'd like to read that!