EFTA00684460

the second inaugural, with an added emphasis on the theme of inequality. 
But Obama knows that major legislation—with the possible exception of 
immigration—is unlikely. And so there is in him a certain degree of 
reduced ambition, a sense that even well before the commentariat starts 
calling him a lame duck he will spend much of his time setting an agenda 
that can be resolved only after he has retired to the life of a writer and post-
President. 
"One of the things that I've learned to appreciate more as President is you 
are essentially a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids, and that river is 
history," he later told me. "You don't start with a clean slate, and the things 
you start may not come to full fruition on your timetable. But you can 
move things forward. And sometimes the things that start small may turn 
out to be fairly significant. I suspect that Ronald Reagan, if you'd asked 
him, would not have considered the earned-income-tax-credit provision in 
tax reform to be at the top of his list of accomplishments. On the other 
hand, what the E.I.T.C. has done, starting with him, being added to by 
Clinton, being used by me during the Recovery Act, has probably kept 
more people out of poverty than a whole lot of other government programs 
that are currently in place." 
Johnson's Great Society will be fifty years old in 2014, but no Republican 
wants a repeat of that scale of government ambition. Obama acknowledges 
this, saying, "The appetite for tax-and-transfer strategies, even among 
Democrats, much less among independents or Republicans, is probably 
somewhat limited, because people are seeing their incomes haven't gone 
up, their wages haven't gone up. It's natural for them to think any new 
taxes may be going to somebody else, I'm not confident in terms of how 
it's going to be spent, I'd much rather hang on to what I've got." He will 
try to do things like set up partnerships with selected cities and citizens' 
groups, sign some executive orders, but a "Marshall Plan for the inner city 
is not going to get through Congress anytime soon." 
Indeed, Obama is quick to show a measure of sympathy with the Reagan-
era conservative analysis of government. "This is where sometimes 
progressives get frustrated with me," he said, "because I actually think 
there was a legitimate critique of the welfare state getting bloated, and 
relying too much on command and control, top-down government 
programs to address it back in the seventies. It's also why it's ironic when 
EFTA00684500

I'm accused of being this raging socialist who wants to amass more and 
more power for their own government. . . . But I do think that some of the 
anti-government rhetoric, anti-tax rhetoric, anti-spending rhetoric that 
began before Reagan but fully flowered with the Reagan Presidency 
accelerated trends that were already existing, or at least robbed us of some 
tools to deal with the downsides of globalization and technology, and that 
with just some modest modification we could grow this economy faster 
and benefit more people and provide more opportunity. 
"After we did all that, there would still be poverty and there would still be 
some inequality and there would still be a lot of work to do for the forty-
fifth through fiftieth Presidents," he went on, "but I'd like to give voice to 
an impression I think a lot of Americans have, which is it's harder to make 
it now if you are just the average citizen who's willing to work hard and 
has good values, and wasn't born with huge advantages or having enjoyed 
extraordinary luck—that the ground is less secure under your feet." 
In the White House, advisers are resigned by now to the idea that some 
liberal voters, dismayed by a range of issues—drones, the N.S.A., the half 
measures of health care and financial reform—have turned away from 
Obama and to newer figures like Elizabeth Warren or Bill de Blasio. "Well, 
look, we live in a very fast-moving culture," Obama said. "And, by 
definition, the President of the United States is overexposed, and it is 
natural, after six, seven years of me being on the national stage, that people 
start wanting to see . . ." 
"Other flavors?" 
"Yes," he said. " `Is there somebody else out there who can give me that 
spark of inspiration or excitement?' I don't spend too much time worrying 
about that. I think the things that are exciting people are the same things 
that excite me and excited me back then. I might have given fresh voice to 
them, but the values are essentially the same." 
X—WHAT TIME ALLOWS 
Obama came home from Los Angeles in a dark, freezing downpour. The 
weather was too rotten even for Marine One. He hustled down the steps of 
Air Force One and ducked into his car. 
A few weeks later, I was able to see him for a last conversation in the Oval 
Office. The Obamas had just had a long vacation in Hawaii—sun, golf, 
family, and not much else. The President was sitting behind his desk—the 
EFTA00684501

Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to Rutherford B. Hayes—and he 
was reading from a folder marked "Secret." He closed it, walked across the 
room, and settled into an armchair near the fireplace. "I got some rest," he 
said. "But time to get to work." 
Obama has every right to claim a long list of victories since he took office: 
ending two wars; an economic rescue, no matter how imperfect; strong 
Supreme Court nominations; a lack of major scandal; essential support for 
an epochal advance in the civil rights of gays and lesbians; more 
progressive executive orders on climate change, gun control, and the end of 
torture; and, yes, health-care reform. But, no matter what one's politics, 
and however one weighs the arguments of his critics, both partisan and 
principled, one has to wonder about any President's capacity to make these 
decisions amid a thousand uncertainties, so many of which are matters of 
life and death, survival and extinction. 
"I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every 
person," Obama said. "I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am 
comfortable with complexity, and I think I'm pretty good at keeping my 
moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And 
every morning and every night I'm taking measure of my actions against 
the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are 
going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America 
makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can 
do and the bad that we can prevent, and that there's going to be tragedy out 
there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, 
but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core 
values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty 
consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things 
will be better rather than worse." 
The cheering crowds and hecklers from the West Coast trip seemed far 
away now. In the preternaturally quiet office, you could hear, between 
every long pause that Obama took, the ticking of a grandfather clock just to 
his left. 
"I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries 
and hatreds and sins of the past," he said. "But we also inherit the beauty 
and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we're on this planet a 
pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this 
EFTA00684502

little stretch that we have." The long view again. "But I think our decisions 
matter," he went on. "And I think America was very lucky that Abraham 
Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn't been, the course 
of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the 
greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and 
fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal 
equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn't diminish Lincoln's 
achievements, but it acknowledges that at the end of the day we're part of a 
long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right." 
A little while later, as we were leaving the Oval Office and walking under 
the colonnade, Obama said, "I just wanted to add one thing to that business 
about the great-man theory of history. The President of the United States 
cannot remake our society, and that's probably a good thing." He paused 
yet again, always self-editing. "Not `probably,' " he said. "It's definitely a 
good thing." 
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker since July, 1998, is the author of 
several books, including "King of the World," "Resurrection," and 
"Lenin's Tomb," for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize for 
nonfiction and a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism. 
Remnick's most recent book, "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack 
Obama," was published by Knopf Doubleday in April 2010. 
EFTA00684503