TO OBAMA, WITH LOVE, JOY, HATE AND DESPAIR by Jeanne Marie Laskas
Barack Obama says this book is his “single favourite story about my presidency”, and it’s not hard to see why.
To Obama, With Love, Joy, Hate and Despair by Jeanne Marie Laskas gives us a glimpse of a secret and incredibly sweet world within his White House, and paints a portrait of a man deeply concerned with his citizens’ problems, struggling to do the right thing.
Journalist Laskas was given unprecedented access to the White House mailroom, and she describes how 56 staff members , 36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers dealt with the 10,000 items of post that Obama received every day.
Every evening, he asked for a sample set of 10 letters. He would often write back in his distinctive curling hand, or else he would ask one of his team of nine letter writers to compose a typed response on his behalf, from his notes in the margins, which he would then approve.
Most of Laskas’s book is taken up with the letters. Some of the themes are unsurprising – complaints, at the height of the financial crisis, at losing a job; concerns over healthcare; intensely personal stories about fighting to feed a family.
“Where is the fairness?” writes June Lipsky, from New York State. “I have lived within my means all my life. Your stimulus package and your budget proposal reward a sector of society that hardly contributes towards the wealth of this nation.”
Obama writes back, explaining his budget policy and saying he shares her anger at the behaviour of the banks – “I understand your frustration; I’m frustrated too! But don’t give up – we will get this done.”
Others are more startling. An 11-year-old homeless girl writes to tell him how she dreams of having a house. A lifelong Republican tells him how his opinion on illegal immigration changed when his life was turned upside down by the arrival in his family of Quique, a man fleeing violence in El Salvador.
That Obama emerges as a sensitive, smart, conscientious president, deft with words, will come as no surprise. What is revelatory is the story of the worker bees who managed his mail.
Letters which needed urgent attention, owing to potential harm to the writer or other people, were marked “red dot” and read immediately. Yena Bae, a deputy in charge of the operation, said they had about 200 “red dot” letters a day.
One was from a mother whose son had been kidnapped, and was begging for help. The son was ultimately killed.
“I just lost it,” Bae said. “I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed”.
We hear how earlier presidents dealt with their mail: Nixon, by the end, didn’t want to read anything bad about himself; Reagan would respond to stacks of letters at the weekend; Clinton liked a sample set every few weeks; George W Bush would ask to see a few of the already answered letters.
Fiona Reeves, who ran Obama’s operation, took on the role with no handover from the Bush administration, and was determined to give Obama’s successor detailed guidance.
One of Donald Trump’s senior White House staffers, Rob Porter, spent 20 minutes with her. He said someone would be back, but no one came. Porter resigned from the White House in disgrace in February, amid accusations, denied by him, of domestic violence.
To Obama is a delicate and immensely readable story, weaving in interviews with people who wrote the letters about why they put pen to paper, tales from the mail room and discussions with Obama himself.
“Ten a day is what I figured I could do,” he said.
“It was a small gesture, I thought, to resist the bubble. It was a way for me to, every day, remember that what I was doing wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about the Washington calculus. It wasn’t about the political scoreboard. It was about the people who were out there living their lives who were either looking for some help or angry about how I was screwing something up.” – The Daily Telegraph