Search Results for: obama

Seven Takes on Obama for the Final State of the Union

Call me an optimist, but I have high hopes for tonight’s State of the Union—and not just because the White House will be live-annotating it on Genius. We’ve been promised that President Obama’s seventh and final State of the Union address will depart from convention—and the usual laundry list of legislative priorities—in favor of “a grander call to arms on the major challenges facing the nation.” What that may mean is anyone’s guess, but here are six stories about Obama and one speech, for those who like to scroll while they watch. You can livestream the State of the Union here, starting at 9pm ET.

1. “Obama, Explained” (James Fallows, The Atlantic, March 2012)

Written as Obama campaigned for a second term, Fallows analyzed the first chapter of his presidency, in historical context.

2. “The Obama Memos” (Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, Jan. 2012)

A look at hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, and what they reveal about the president’s decision-making process

3. “Inside Obama’s War Room” (Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, Oct. 2011)

The late Michael Hastings on Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya, and what it says about his evolution as commander in chief.

4. “For a Look Outside Presidential Bubble, Obama Reads 10 Personal Letters Each Day” (Eli Saslow, Washington Post, March 2010)

The black binder arrived at the White House residence just before 8 p.m., and President Obama took it upstairs to begin his nightly reading. The briefing book was dated Jan. 8, 2010, but it looked like the same package delivered every night, with printouts of speeches, policy recommendations and scheduling notes. Near the back was a purple folder, which Obama often flips to first. “MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT,” read a sheet clipped to the folder. “Per your request, we have attached 10 pieces of unvetted correspondence addressed to you.”

5.“Barack Obama’s Work in Progress” (Robert Draper, GQ, Nov 2009)

Robert Draper on Obama, the writer.

6.“The Obamas’ Marriage” (Jodi Kantor, New York Times, Oct. 2009)

How can any couple have a truly equal partnership when one member is president? Jodi Kantor paints a rich portrait in this New York Times Magazine cover story.

7. “A More Perfect Union” (Speech delivered by then-Senator Barack Obama on March 18, 2008).

Who else sat around a computer and watched Obama’s race speech and felt like something big was about to happen? Seems apt to revisit it before he takes the stage tonight, especially if you are feeling hopeful.

The Fears of Our Nation: President Obama Interviews Marilynne Robinson

The President: How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?

Robinson: Well, I don’t know how seriously they do take their Christianity, because if you take something seriously, you’re ready to encounter difficulty, run the risk, whatever. I mean, when people are turning in on themselves—and God knows, arming themselves and so on—against the imagined other, they’re not taking their Christianity seriously. I don’t know—I mean, this has happened over and over again in the history of Christianity, there’s no question about that, or other religions, as we know.

But Christianity is profoundly counterintuitive—“Love thy neighbor as thyself”—which I think properly understood means your neighbor is as worthy of love as you are, not that you’re actually going to be capable of this sort of superhuman feat. But you’re supposed to run against the grain. It’s supposed to be difficult. It’s supposed to be a challenge.

The President: Well, that’s one of the things I love about your characters in your novels, it’s not as if it’s easy for them to be good Christians, right?

Robinson: Right.

At The New York Review of Books, President Obama interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, a conversation he requested to have after becoming a fan of her novels. As a companion to this interview, read her recent essay, “Fear,” a rumination on American history, religious history, guns, violence, war, and her deeply held Christian beliefs.

Read the interview

 

 

Valerie Bozeman Is Pardoned by Obama as America Wrestles With Fallout From the War on Drugs

Longreads Pick

Caught up in a cycle of drug use and abuse when she was sentenced to life in prison, Valerie Bozeman was no kingpin; she was just a woman struggling with addiction, dealing to further her own habit. President Obama commuted Valerie’s sentence in May, and she was free to go after serving twenty-three years. Since then, she has been struggling to adjust to life on the outside, and to understand the no-mercy laws that put her in prison in the first place.

Published: Sep 22, 2015
Length: 22 minutes (5,660 words)

Obama’s Typographic Legacy

Image via Wikimedia Commons

The relative distinctiveness of campaign logos is a recent development: There was a time when they all looked basically the same, give or take a star, often featuring the same stylized, waving flag.

The 1990s and early 2000s were a different time, with less media noise and fewer shiny objects vying for voters’ attention, so there was less need for candidates to distinguish themselves through symbolism and color—and perhaps a hesitation to do anything that stood out too much. Instead, virtually all of them opted for similar shades of red and blue, and used similar fonts and imagery.

It was the 2008 election, and that famous letter “O,” that changed everything, says designer Sagi Haviv, a partner in the New York firm Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv who has designed logos for the Library of Congress, Armani Exchange, and Harvard University Press, among other clients.

Ali Elkin writing for Bloomberg Politics about campaign logo design. Elkin posits that President Barack Obama’s iconic “O” logo fundamentally shifted the way candidates think about design and branding. Her piece also includes a wonderful critique of the 2016 campaign logos from designer Sagi Haviv.

Read the story

The Moment When President Obama Realized He Needed Luther

-From Zadie Smith’s New Yorker profile of Comedy Central stars Key and Peele. Keegan-Michael Key reprised his role as Luther for President Obama’s weekend speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Read the story

The Plot to Kill Obamacare

Longreads Pick

Why are Republicans still fighting it? A history of the conservative strategies to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, and what’s left in their playbook:

“The right’s actuarial guerrilla war begins with the underlying reality that hardly anybody knows about the exchanges. Polls show that fewer than six in ten Americans even know the law still exists, with the remainder believing it’s been repealed or struck down, or unsure. Of those aware that the law remains in effect, few understand how it works. Yet to succeed, Obamacare requires a critical mass of uninsured Americans not only to grasp what the law does but to act on it.”

Published: Sep 15, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,700 words)

President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

Longreads Pick

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

Published: Jan 21, 2013
Length: 8 minutes (2,116 words)

Frontline and Longreads: Inside Obama’s Presidency

Longreads Pick

Coming Tuesday from Frontline: “Inside Obama’s Presidency.” We’ve collected a list of stories from Obama’s first term—share your favorite presidential stories on Twitter with the hashtag #longreads.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 14, 2013

Prison Rape: Obama’s Program to Stop It

Longreads Pick

It is “a national disgrace”: The U.S. prison system, for years, failed to stop rampant sexual abuse from occurring behind bars. Inside the new program to stop it:

“The review panel’s most recent report describes the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, a maximum-security state prison in Troy, Virginia. About 1,200 women are confined there, and when the BJS surveyed them in 2009, 11.4 percent said they’d been sexually abused by other inmates in the preceding year alone; 6.0 percent said they’d been sexually abused by staff.”

“The twelve months asked about in that survey came shortly after sexual misconduct by Fluvanna’s staff had already turned into scandal. Former inmate Melissa Andrews told the review panel about Patrick Owen Gee, who was chief of security at the prison—a man, she said, who seemed to hate women. When he started working at Fluvanna, he ‘went from wing to wing in each building and told us, “you bitches think you’ve been living in Kindercare…things are going to change.”‘ Andrews also testified that the warden to whom Gee reported, Barbara Wheeler, ‘said to officers many times, that if she took anything and everything from us including our humanity maybe we would not return to prison’ Gee was convicted of sexually abusing the inmates he was supposed to protect in 2008, and sentenced to five years in prison.”

Published: Oct 4, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,463 words)

Inside the Obama Campaign’s Hard Drive

Longreads Pick

Harper Reed went from running a T-shirt community to running digital operations for Obama’s reelection campaign. Inside the team’s top-secret efforts to refine voter targeting to a granular (or: “creepy”) level:

“By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just know you were a pro-choice teacher who once gave $40 to save the endangered Rocky Mountain swamp gnat; they also could have a data firm sort you by what type of magazines you subscribed to and where you bought your T-shirts. The fifth source, the increasingly powerful email lists, track which blasts you respond to, the links you click on, and whether you unsubscribe.

“In the past, this information has been compartmentalized within various segments of the campaign. It existed in separate databases, powered by different kinds of software that could not communicate with each other. The goal of Project Narwhal was to link all of this data together. Once Reed and his team had integrated the databases, analysts could identify trends and craft sharper messages calibrated to appeal to individual voters. For example, if the campaign knows that a particular voter in northeastern Ohio is a pro-life Catholic union member, it will leave him off email blasts relating to reproductive rights and personalize its pitch by highlighting Obama’s role in the auto bailout—or Romney’s outsourcing past.”

Author: Tim Murphy
Source: Mother Jones
Published: Oct 2, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,417 words)