【时代周刊 201219】2012年度人物：巴拉克•奥巴马总统
【中文标题】2012年度人物：巴拉克•奥巴马总统
【原文标题】2012 Person of the Year: Barack Obama, the President
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Michael Scherer
【原文链接】http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/person-of-the-year-barack-obama/4/
27年前，巴拉克•奥巴马开着一辆价值2000美元的本田思域，从纽约到芝加哥去找一份薪水微薄的工作。现在的他，身材更匀称一些，但是头发变得花白了。他站在千禧公园酒店顶层的总统套房里，电视里宣布他成功连任美国总统。节目中提到俄亥俄州的选举结果比预计时间更早揭晓，于是他的助手们立即到大厅里加入他的家人和朋友们。他们看到人们在相互击掌、拥抱，终于尘埃落定。
每次大选结果揭晓前的那几天，即使最有经验的政治家心理也不大正常。有时候，所有人都无事可做，只能等待。奥巴马竞选团队表现出唯一正常的行为方式——那就是不正常。他们把领带和头发做成护身符的形状，强迫自己严格遵循以前的行为方式，以避免危害事情的进展。在最后一次辩论之前，他们在佛罗里达州伯克莱顿派高级参谋去找一家廉价小饭馆，因为他们在纽约长岛的第二次辩论之前，也吃过类似的食物。他们交给高级策略参谋David Axelrod一张领带的照片，他不得不去寻找和照片中一模一样的领带——那是他在2008年戴过的领带。几位职员在空军一号上停止剃须，就像季后赛中的大牌击球手一样。即使总统也在听天由命，他在选举日当天去一个篮球场打篮球，那是他在2008年获胜前运动过的一块场地。
现在，一切都结束了。自从竞选电脑所显示的当选机会从势均力敌到压倒性胜利，奥巴马想了很多，和第一次全国选举那种灵光一现的效应完全不同的当选过程，究竟意味着什么。奥巴马效应不再是转瞬即逝的，不再是一度被嘲弄为“希望啊、改变啊什么的”（译者注：上届大选的共和党副总统候选人莎拉•佩林对奥巴马的嘲弄）。而是切实可见的——那些停止和发动的战争；那些被挽救、被重组、被规范的产业，以及那些穿着情侣装的同性恋。改变出现在排几个小时队等待投票的新面孔上，出现在新的竞选方式上。美国经过深思熟虑，在今年决定，历史让奥巴马成为总统并不是侥幸。
幕僚们进入房间之后，他离开套房大厅里的家人，走到外边和三位最高级顾问谈话——Axelrod、政治策略家David Plouffe和竞选经理Jim Messina。他把胜利的意义告诉了他们，连任是相当困难的。他说：“这次胜利比08年更让人满意，这不仅仅关乎我作为总统将要做什么，而且关乎我已经做了什么。”最终，胜负相差悬殊，现实说明了一切，释放了一些情绪，也让他卸下了长久以来背负的包袱。11月的3天时间里，这个一向异常镇定的人赢得了选举，当众两次落泪。然后，在探寻康涅狄格州悲剧的意义时，他再一次落泪，这些几乎都发生在白宫新闻简报室。
12月中旬，当奥巴马走进总统办公室，坐在翻新过的办公椅上时——棕色皮子替代了布什的兰黄条纹——确认选举结果那一刻依然萦绕在他的脑海中，这表示他坐在这里的第二个四年将和第一个四年大不一样。在这个房间的外面，依然有无数的挑战在等着他：陷入僵局的财政悬崖谈判、联邦储备预测高失业率还将持续多年、雅典、开罗和大马士革动荡的局势。但是总统似乎对此不萦于怀，自从他进入白宫以来就好像随身携带着解决所有问题的方法。他靠在椅背上，手边一杯茶，翘起腿，告诉我他刚才都在想些什么：“或许所有人都以为2008的选举结果反常，我觉得2012年的选举已经证明，这不反常。我们经历了一个艰难的过程。美国人民应当对变革的步伐、经济的困境和不完美的总统感到失望，但是不管怎样，我们还是希望这个人来做总统。”他笑了笑，“这是件好事。”
竞选团队成员：David Simas负责奥巴马的民调团队，包括焦点小组。Stephanie Cutter负责日常维护奥巴马、削弱罗姆尼的工作。David Axelrod一手主持奥巴马的竞选策略，在芝加哥全面监管团队战略。Jim Messina是竞选经理，从零开始设计、组建、运营竞选活动。Jim Margolis是电视广告业务负责人，连续几个月毫不留情地轰炸摇摆州。Jeremy Bird，民众组织者，建立了一个比2008年更聪明、更庞大的奥巴马大军。
两年前，共和党人会说，奥巴马唯一克服困难做对的一件事是，在初选中击败了希拉里•克林顿。从竞选角度来说，这倒是没错。2012年，共和党希望他以一个不能胜任总统职位、仅仅具有一些激励效应的候选人出现。但是现在，我们看到了期望与现实、宣传与结果之间的差别。他的优势似乎没有那么多了，与2008年相比，他得到的选票少了400万张，少了两个支持州。但是，总共1.29亿张选票中，他领先对手500万张，这个成绩震惊了两党内的专业人士。而且如果不是纽约和新泽西的大部分居民由于受飓风桑迪影响而无家可归，这个数字还会更高。一路走来，他打赢了很多硬仗：弗吉尼亚州胜出4个百分点；科罗拉多州胜出5个百分点；纯白人州衣阿华和新罕布什尔胜出6个百分点。他理顺了俄亥俄州的混乱政治活动，让共和党陷入佛罗里达州古巴裔美国人困境，还赢得了保罗•莱恩的家乡威斯康星州的简斯威尔。（后两个数据点尤其让总统感兴趣。）他将在1月20日宣誓就职，他是75年来第一个连续两次赢得多数票的民主党人。美国历史上，只有5位总统能做到这一点。
这其中有很多原因，但主要在于这个国家人口结构的变化，奥巴马特有的能力把握住了这个机会。当他的名字出现在选票上时，一个更年轻、更多样化的美国站在投票箱前。2008年，黑人投票比率历史上第一次和白人一样，即使在那些奥巴马几乎没有任何胜算的州。少数民族和年轻人都站出来投票，因为美国变得更加多样化了。这一切，把奥巴马推上了总统的座位。他赢得了71％拉丁裔美国人的选票、93％黑人的选票、73％亚洲裔的选票和60％三十岁以下选民的选票。
最让奥巴马沉醉的是最后一个数字。当谈到选举的时候，他喜欢讲述这个国家即将发生的年龄转变，比如同性婚姻的话题。在这件事情上，他推动的力度开始并不大，直到去年春天才切实做了一些事情。他把原因归结为年轻人的乐观精神，在与那些竞选志愿者会面之后，他经常在车里和飞机上和幕僚们谈起这件事。“道德的旅程是漫长的，但它倾向于正义。”这句话被绣在椭圆形办公室的新地毯上——这句古老的废奴主义宣言，被马丁•路德•金在阿拉斯加州塞尔马跋涉时赋予了新的意义。奥巴马信奉这句话，他相信在这个伟大的转型时代，他不仅仅是一个参与者的角色。他说：“我的确认为，在我任职总统的八年时间里，不但笃行和宣扬这个价值理念，而且要实现、稳定这样的转型。我认为这对国家是件好事。”
两年前，很少有专家会预测到奥巴马会忙于准备第二个就职演讲。选举前的民意调查显示年轻人和拉丁裔美国人对此缺少热情，而白种福音信奉者和老人热情却比较高。但是，民意调查的问题并没有显露出奥巴马的秘密武器：那些不大关注政治的人。总统最坚定的支持者中，有很大一部分对两党都不感兴趣，但是认为奥巴马在某种程度上超越了党派之分，没有沾染那些政客所必备的精于算计和政治交易等习气。用有线电视节目中的话来说，这些选民对政治没有兴趣。但是在2012年，他们选择了奥巴马。在上个月奥巴马选举的注册选民中，70％是女性、少数民族和30岁以下的美国人。
对于他在选民结构变化中所发现的问题，总统感到一种推动其发展的责任。奥巴马说，在将近6600投票给他的选民中，“他们并不是完全在选择我，而是在选择他们自己，他们在选择自己的未来。”这是胜利者的一种慷慨的姿态，但即使奥巴马是对的，那么问题就在于他们究竟想变成什么样子？巴拉克•奥巴马能帮助他们实现这个愿望吗？
极客小队。左起：Harper Reed，首席技术官，奥巴马获胜后发布推特消息“我的老板太棒了”； Dan Wagner，首席分析官，管理一组数据处理人员，人数是2008年的5倍；Dylan Richard，设计了竞选背后大部分程序；Andrew Claster利用分析数据预测选民行为方式。
奥巴马获取的胜利，正如他多次提到的，最终是一个选择，并不是一次选举。他证明自己比米特•罗姆尼是一个更好的选择，从很多方面衡量，后者并不完美。从这个意义上讲，奥巴马的进展也并不顺利。2008年，51％的选民在选后民调中说他们希望政府做得更好，而2012年的数字只有43％。奥巴马医保法案的民意调查结果也不乐观。
但是，奥巴马并不认为他会在意识形态领域给后世留下什么遗产，比如像罗纳德•里根的“问题在于政府”，或者比尔•克林顿的“大政府时代已经结束”。他说他只是想让一个更智慧的政府做出一些成绩，让他可以在2017年离开白宫时说：“我们带领这个国家再一次呈现出所有人都满意的经济形势；我们建立了全面繁荣的基础；我们在国际上竖立了美国21世纪持续领导全球的架构。”近期的形势和媒体头条认为，他离这些目标还很远。但是如果他真的成功，那么这已经不是他第一次达成人们的期望了。
自从奥巴马在2004年进入公众视野，领导力的问题就一直在遭受攻击。很多一度被认为代表美国梦想的旧机构，都遭遇了公众信任危机。银行、大企业、新闻媒体和国会的支持率都达到或者接近历史的最低点。奥巴马也听到了一些不同寻常的刻薄话，但是他似乎有办法继续赢得人们的信任。
要了解他为什么会保住这份工作，我们最好首先看看他都做了什么。David Simas这位马萨诸塞州汤顿一位前契约登记员，后来成为了白宫高级助手。他在2011年初成立了一个美国历史上或许最大的监听站。在几个月的时间里，Simas和他的团队秘密召集摇摆州出租房中的选民，每次8人，分男女研究。奥巴马团队用豚鼠般的精神与这些人推心置腹，玩语言类游戏。（在摇摆州，民主党经常让人联想到“巴拉克•奥巴马”；而共和党只会让人联想到“守旧”和“落后”。）焦点小组获得的信息显示在芝加哥竞选总部的电脑屏幕上，Simas的第一项发现就无比重要。在回到总部之后，他说：“最好的发现是，人们相信他。”
在一个不具权威性的时代中，奥巴马设法维护着他的权威。每一组实验者都会告诉研究人员，他们相信总统是诚实的，过着一个令人景仰的个人生活，并且努力做对的事情。Simas说：“18个月来，我一直听到：我相信他的价值观。我认为他当政时期的局势是50年来最糟糕的，情况并没有好转，我的确有些失望。但是，总有一种感觉，‘我希望再给他一次机会’。”
在另一些房间中，另一些单面镜子之后，共和党人也发现的同样的问题。罗姆尼的副竞选经理Katie Packer Gage在选举后说：“这个人几乎没有什么值得追随的特点，但他们就是喜欢他。”2008年投票给奥巴马的选民中，大部分依然为自己的选择而自豪，并没有觉得总统有党性和意识形态的堕落。当共和党人发泄他们的怒气，指责奥巴马是极端分子时，反而对摇摆州造成了影响。Steven Law在美国十字路口组织中负责监管1亿美元的预算，用来制作反奥巴马的广告宣传，他说：“奥巴马在选举中使用的传统贬损对方的竞选方式，对共和党并不适用。”
即使在第一轮广告攻势之前，奥巴马就已经取得了一定的优势。罗姆尼试图强调奥巴马疲软的经济成绩，但奥巴马拥有的是自信。芝加哥最重要的民调问题是，哪一个候选人在寻找像你一样的选民？Simas说：“我们花了一年时间，仔细观察这些没拿定主意的选民。这些对政治没有深入了解、不懂得技术和策略的人，对奥巴马和罗姆尼的评价几乎完全基于信任感。”
这个因素或许是奥巴马对罗姆尼毫不留情，有时候甚至是不公平的攻击的直接原因——对汽车升降机的攻击（译者注：指罗姆尼位于加利福尼亚的别墅内安装的先进汽车电梯）；似是而非地提到证券交易委员会中虚假材料所涉及的犯罪行为；错误地指责他即使对于强奸案也支持禁止流产的见解；以及无休止地谈论曾经在他妻子名下的瑞士银行账户。这都涉及到一个建立在信任基础上的核心问题：一个人，尽管有其不成功之处，也拥有一大批坚定的拥趸；另一个人，与之相反，懂得如何从不会谋面的人群中捞钱。
极客小队。左起：Michael Slaby，2008年竞选的老将，组建并管理技术和数据团队；Chris Wegrzyn，负责大量数据运作背后的基础技术平台和软件；Teddy Goff，数据部主任，负责社会媒体、网络和移动通信；Joe Rospars，在2004年和2008年分别为Howard Dean和奥巴马设计网络网络筹款平台；Marie Ewald，主要关注电子邮件竞选筹款，共筹得6.9亿美元。
当然，这样看来罗姆尼似乎变成了奥巴马最大的盟友。但是回到竞选总部，Simas在墙上贴了一张海报，其中揭示了更深层次的问题。图上有3条线，一条人均GDP的趋势图、一条人均生产力趋势图，和一条从1992年以来就持平的家庭收入趋势图。他打开与这个示意图有关的演示材料，说：“这句话来自焦点小组——‘我工作越来越努力，日子却越过越糟糕。’这就是我们的北极星，我们所说的一切、所做的一切都源于这句话。”这句来自一位不知名焦点小组实验参与者的话，从出租房传到芝加哥的电脑显示器上，最终出现在总统的讲话中。奥巴马在对民众演讲时说：“只要还有工作越来越努力，收入越来越低的家庭，我们的工作就没有结束。”
口号是一回事，在当代总统政治领域，没有一套班底，一切都是妄谈。然而正是这套班底让奥巴马落泪——第一次在衣阿华州德梅因，第二次在选举结束后的竞选总部。第二次落泪恰当地诠释了一次重新定义政治界限的竞选，YouTube上的视频在竞选后几个星期里，得到了900万点击量，超过任何一个竞选视频。
你可以看到他轻松、自信地走向麦克风，嘴里嚼着口香糖。他开始讲述在芝加哥南部第一次担任社区组织者的工作，那时他只有25岁，工作找不到方向，也谈不上成功。他对面前几位年轻的幕僚说：“你们并没有让我意识到自己的能力，事实是，你们比多年前的我要优秀许多倍。你们更聪明、组织性更强、更有效率……即使在昨晚大选结果公布之前，我感到我以前所做的竞选工作又回到了原点，因为你们所做的事情证明我的一切工作都是重要的。我真的引以为荣，你们让我感到自豪。”他哽咽住了，留下了眼泪。
奥巴马不需要花太多时间再次组建他的班底。同样一群积极热情的幕僚继续使用同样的手段，既有传统的社区组织方式，又有高科技的社交媒体：与支持者一对一沟通；不断地打电话；安排专门人员组织志愿者；在不同的地点安排选民登记。奥巴马也同样的积极热情。在9月份到衣阿华州的访问中，州董事Brad Anderson告诉他，在一个拉丁美洲裔的杂货店将安排一个提前投票站。同行的Plouffe说：“总统喜欢这个主意，衣阿华州的拉丁美洲社区并不大，但是我们要尽量获取每一张选票。”总统有时候还会扮演车间工长，似乎又回到了管理选民注册的团队中。选举投票前几天，他在俄亥俄州的分段运输车间遇到一位员工，想与总统合影。奥巴马略带斥责地说：“你是一个一线组织者，你应该去找志愿者合影。”众所周知的原则是，幕僚的首要工作是组织别人。
奥巴马的竞选团队在第二次运作过程中，开始模糊，甚至抹除数百万美国人的政治与日常生活间的界限。总统在私下与非洲和西班牙裔社区的调频音乐节目主持人通电话。副手们在业余足球联赛的拉丁裔美国运动员中、在酒吧和夜店中、在大片首映式排队买票的人群中调查、了解新选民的意愿。白宫助手Tommy Vietor在9月中旬从北卡罗来纳州发邮件给Plouffe说：“在查珀尔希尔的一场婚礼中，5个小时里，有好几个人举着奥巴马的竞选牌试图帮我登记选民。”当天晚上，Vietor在一家酒吧里的黑板上看到一幅特殊的菜单。“奥巴马”代表一杯杰克•丹尼威士忌和一杯蓝带啤酒，价格7美元。“罗姆尼”代表一杯尊尼获加金牌威士忌和一杯1995年阿尔塔穆拉赤霞珠红酒，价格870美元。其隐含的意义颇为耐人寻味。
极客小队在召集跨国广告公司、咨询机构和高科技企业之后，也总结出同样的方法。目标和往常一样：筹集尽量多的钱、敲开尽量多的门、打尽量多的电话、登记尽量多的选民、调查尽量多的意愿。但是，这些方法在2012年发生了一些革新变化。一个由几十名数据处理人员组成的小组，开发出一种运算方式，可以用来预测某些人是否愿意回应这些问题。他们收集了大量的数据，以此预测出哪家电视台在哪个城市的哪个时段播放广告，最容易被选民接受。经过2008年选举的事后总结，Facebook替代了传统的电话。竞选团队通过网络平台，在选举前劝说60万名奥巴马的支持者向摇摆州的朋友和亲戚转达相关消息。俄亥俄州中部的一位妇女与刚刚达到选举年龄的女儿住在一起，在选举日当天，有4个邻居来敲门提醒她要记得去投票。
白宫幕僚。左起：Jay Carney，新闻发言人，处理白宫的媒体工作；David Plouffe，政治策略专家，管理白宫选举的前沿阵地；Alyssa Mastromonaco，首席幕僚长，负责确保总统关注重要问题；Pete Rouse，资深顾问，处理异常问题；Valerie Jarrett，奥巴马最亲密的顾问，总统的扩音器；Dan Pfeiffer，通讯部主任，决定如何发布消息。
极客小队还找到一些能让选民自觉掏腰包的方法。他们把会见候选人彩票改造得颇具艺术品位，发明了只需要输入几个数字就可以完成的短信捐款方式，还曾经尝试发送各种语言的电子邮件，但尽量克制不要造成骚扰。在他总共10亿美元的竞选资金中，奥巴马在2012年通过网络筹得6.9亿美元，而2008年这个数字是5亿美元。其中有超过2亿美元来自每笔不到200美元的捐款额，比历史性疯狂的2008年还上升了10％。在一个本应由超级政治行动委员会资金支持的选举中，奥巴马的策略证明，大量小额资金比少量大额资金更具威力。两党中再也没有其他人会认为这样的竞选财务策略会凑效。
那么在奥巴马离开总统职位之后，这些方法中有多少还会被民主党延续下去呢？奥巴马的顾问斩钉截铁地说，这些方法对其他任何人都不适用，奥巴马的很多合纵策略只关乎奥巴马本人。一位资深竞选顾问说：“这样的组织结构无法转移到其他人名下，下一位候选人，无论来自哪个党派，都必须建立自己的合纵策略。”但是奥巴马的方法还是会继续延续下去。竞选律师Bob Bauer在计划成立一个新的组织，似乎是一个超越民主党全国代表大会层面上的非营利组织，下个星期就会公布细节。其核心理念是为奥巴马的支持者寻找一条出路，大约8万名支持者表示，他们在选举后希望担任公职。2009年，类似的努力遭遇了一些挫折，因为奥巴马在第一任期中约束他的支持者不要激怒国会。但是，奥巴马在第一任期中也了解到，没有这些激情澎湃的外部支持者，他也不会取得这样的成绩。
任何一个总统的第五年任期，都是一个相对甜蜜的时间点，是位于再次当选和跛脚鸭状态（译者注：指没有发展前途，不需要为下一届任期负责的政客）间的黄金时段。总统有充分的时间思考历史，而不仅仅是关注民意调查结果。因此，总统必须决定，趁他还有能力的时候，他还应该做些什么。奥巴马在选举后的第一次新闻发布会上说：“对于那些在第二任期力不从心的总统表现，我再熟悉不过了。从另一个方面来说，我再次当选的目的并不是为了享受再次当选的兴奋感。”
在选举结果产生之后，他开始在大型的书写用纸上随意涂抹，以此探索这些问题。奥巴马一直通过书写来获得最佳想法，正是出于这个原因，他在第一任期中一直保持写日记的习惯。他希望在未来几年能更好地延续这个行为。他说：“在我的生活中，书写是澄清我思想的最重要方法，我可以知道我相信什么、看到什么、最关注什么、我最深层次的理解是什么。把一团乱糟糟的思想转化为连贯的语句，能让你提出很多尖锐的问题。”
但是，他在选举后开始使用的大型书写用纸并不仅仅是为他自己，或者他的回忆录所用。而是要探索出他在下一个四年中，除了收件箱和未来9个月的立法事项之外，还要完成哪些事情。当前的目标非常明确：努力推动移民改革；通过提高组合税率降低中期财政赤字；改革免税代码；暂时停止党派间的争权夺利。他把幕僚召集在一起，仔细研究了“4万英尺长”的清单中的可能性。
他们很快发现，纸上的有些内容在竞选时鲜有提及。例如，应对环境变化逐渐成为一个主要的威胁，尽管竞选团队曾经投入大笔资金在俄亥俄州东北部赞扬奥巴马对煤矿企业的承诺。他提到增加儿童早期教育的机会；探索降低大学学费负担的方法。在投票箱前等待几个小时的长队，让他想到要改革政治选举，其中可能涉及到竞选资金改革和强迫州改进投票制度的立法。他还说要关注犯罪司法制度，在接受《时代周刊》采访时说：“在犯罪人群中有很大一部分是非暴力犯罪，我认为我们需要思考一下，我们做对了哪些事情，让暴力犯罪行为持续下降。但同时，还有数百万个家庭遭到破坏和骚扰，因为我们没能理顺自己的程序。”
监狱改革不会成为他这届政府的主要关注点，但是他的表态显示出，他决定扩大传统的第二任期总统职责范围。当华盛顿和科罗拉多州在11月立法允许成人使用大麻时，奥巴马认为联邦政府不应当浪费执法资源去搜查遵守州法律的人群。他说：“毒品执法、大毒枭、儿童毒品犯罪和暴力犯罪才是我们关注的重点。”
在康涅狄格州纽顿镇小学枪击事件发生之后，奥巴马向这个国家和它的总统发问，它们在第一任期中是否已经做了足够多的事情来预防大规模的的枪击事件。“我几天来一直在思考，如果我们发自内心地回答这个问题，答案是否定的，我们做得不够。”他承诺：“我会动用我全部的力量与公民们合作，从执法机构，到精神健康专家，到父母和教育者，努力阻止更多悲剧的发生。”在以前发生的枪击事件之后，他也做过类似的表态，但是这件事对他的影响太深了。他从来没有这么赤裸裸地向道德和政治正义感发问，也从来没有对自己没能采取行动做这样明确的自责。
白宫助手们分析过立法能力、政府表态和公共教育之间的区别，他们在思考，这不仅仅是奥巴马政府的能力问题，而是留给下一个椭圆形办公室主人的任务。奥巴马说：“你会认识到，你个人无法实现你许下的诺言，你现在的播种只可能在多年后结下果实。”时间会告诉我们他如何履行这个诺言。
总统对此表示没有问题。11月中旬，白宫助手安排放映了一场史蒂夫•斯皮尔伯格的新片《林肯》，同时邀请了大部分演职人员出席，包括扮演16世纪总统的Daniel Day-Lewis和扮演林肯妻子的Sally Field。在看到通过禁止奴隶制的第十三条修正案背后所发生的精于算计、腐败和妥协行为之后，奥巴马称其为“难以置信的震撼”。Axelrod也观看了影片，他和总统一起度过了既有失望也有成功的前几年，影片让他回想起医疗制度改革中哪些激烈、混乱的局面。他和总统分享了这些看法。
奥巴马在谈到他最喜欢的总统时说：“林肯告诉我们，为了追求最高的理想和道德根源，你必须要亲力亲为。这里面会有交易，也会有妥协，我们所做的任何事情就不是完美的。”
奥巴马说，他很久以前就决定不会把自己与林肯相提并论。但是，在他第二任期开始的时候，他似乎更好地理解到这份工作可以做什么，不可以做什么，这与林肯内心的纠结一致。奥巴马说：“你知道，美国总统的权力往往会被夸大。但是，你做了什么，你有能力做什么，可以设定一个方向。”他再一次赢得了指明方向的权力，以前的经验也让他了解如何运作这个国家。在经历了这国家历史上最有挑战的4年之后，在他最终离开白宫时，能否成为一个勇敢面对危机、建立新的联合政府的伟大总统，就取决于他接下来的行动了。
附：皮特•苏扎（译者注：白宫摄影师）镜头里的总统
“我猜想这两个人谁也不愿意与对方一起进餐，但是他们都知道，美国人们都希望看到他们这样做。”
2012年10月31日，巴拉克•奥巴马总统与新泽西州北郊码头的一位船主交谈。总统在调查飓风桑迪造成的损失。
2012年10月26日，巴拉克•奥巴马总统在欢迎一名白宫工作人员的儿子时，假装被蜘蛛侠的蛛网逮住。
2012年6月15日，伊力诺依州芝加哥伯纳姆公园，总统和第一夫人在密歇根湖畔望向远方的城市。
2012年5月19日G8峰会期间，马里兰州戴维营，奥巴马总统与欧洲领导人在月桂舱平台谈话。
“一个会议通常最有趣的时刻是与会者刚刚坐下的时候。这张照片里，2011年11月1日，总统和副总统在总统办公室与国会民主党领导人会面时，表现出截然不同的姿势。”
“
这张照片已经引起了广泛的关注，2011年5月1日，总统、副总统与国家安全团队一起关注逮捕奥萨马•本•拉登的现场视频。我可以分享一些背景信息：白宫战情室包括若干间会议室。大部分情况下，总统会在最大的办公室召开会议，参与人都有固定的座位。但是为了监控这项行动，人们都集中到一个小会议室中。总统坐在联合特别行动副总指挥马歇尔•韦伯准将旁边，他是行动的统一联络人。由于没有更多的椅子，其它人只好站在房间后面。我被挤在一个角落里，不能移动。任务过程中，我大约拍摄了100张照片，几乎都是从这个狭窄的角落取景。另外，国务卿克林顿面前一份机密文件被做了模糊处理。”
2011年2月11日，奥巴马总统在椭圆形办公室的坚毅桌后面阅读文件。
2011年1月19日，总统、第一夫人和中国胡主席在国宴前走下白宫的楼梯。
“2010年11月14日，在参观完日本镰仓大佛之后，总统和寺庙主人坐在一起，吃绿茶冰淇淋。他幼年时曾经参观过大佛，他说还记得就坐在同样的位置吃冰淇淋。”
“2010年8月9日，我们走过得克萨斯大学的更衣室，白宫出访主任Marvin Nicholson停下来称体重。总统在后面踩在称上，Marvin还在移动砝码。除了Marvin，所有人都笑了。”
2010年5月16日，华盛顿麦克奈尔堡，奥巴马总统试图封堵前人事助手Reggie Love的上篮。
2010年3月21日，白宫罗斯福房间，总统、副总统和资深幕僚在观看国会为健康医疗改革4872法案投票时鼓掌。
“奥巴马总统召集两位前总统帮助处理海地局势。2010年1月16日，在玫瑰园中对公众致辞时，克林顿总统说布什总统，‘我已经知道怎么让他做自己不愿意做的事。’回到椭圆形办公室之后，布什总统开玩笑地问克林顿总统，他指的都是什么事。”
“自1978年以来，我听过至少25场布鲁斯•斯普林斯汀演唱会，还看过几乎所有罗伯特•德尼罗的影片。2009年12月6日，总统在白宫对他们获得肯尼迪中心荣誉奖表示祝贺。我在现场感到很兴奋。”
2009年7月7日，奥巴马总统和家人在莫斯科一家酒店的顶层用晚餐。
2009年1月29日，在白宫罗斯福房间的一个经济会议中，奥巴马总统在思考。
原文：
Twenty-seven years after driving from New York City to Chicago in a $2,000 Honda Civic for a job that probably wouldn’t amount to much, Barack Obama, in better shape but with grayer hair, stood in the presidential suite on the top floor of the Fairmont Millennium Park hotel as flat screens announced his re-election as President of the United States. The networks called Ohio earlier than predicted, so his aides had to hightail it down the hall to join his family and friends. They encountered a room of high fives and fist pumps, hugs and relief.
The final days of any campaign can alter the psyches of even the most experienced political pros. At some point, there is nothing to do but wait. Members of Obama’s team responded in the only rational way available to them — by acting irrationally. They turned neckties into magic charms and facial hair into a talisman and compulsively repeated past behaviors so as not to jinx what seemed to be working. In Boca Raton, Fla., before the last debate, they dispatched advance staff to find a greasy-spoon diner because they had eaten at a similar joint before the second debate, on New York’s Long Island. They sent senior strategist David Axelrod a photograph of the tie he had to find to wear on election night: the same one he wore in 2008. Several staffers on Air Force One stopped shaving, like big-league hitters in the playoffs. Even the President succumbed, playing basketball on Election Day at the same court he played on before winning in 2008.
But now it was done, and reason had returned. Ever since the campaign computers started raising the odds of victory from near even to something like surefire, Obama had been thinking a lot about what it meant to win without the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of that first national campaign. The Obama effect was not ephemeral anymore, no longer reducible to what had once been mocked as “that hopey-changey stuff.” It could be measured — in wars stopped and started; industries saved, restructured or reregulated; tax cuts extended; debt levels inflated; terrorists killed; the health-insurance system reimagined; and gay service members who could walk in uniform with their partners. It could be seen in the new faces who waited hours to vote and in the new ways campaigns are run. America debated and decided this year: history would not record Obama’s presidency as a fluke.
So after his staff arrived, he left his family in the main room of the suite and stepped out to talk with his three top advisers, Axelrod, political strategist David Plouffe and Jim Messina, his campaign manager. He wanted to tell them what this victory meant, because it was very different the second time. “This one’s more satisfying than ’08,” he said. “It wasn’t just about what I was going to do as President. It’s what I’ve done.” In the end, the outcome would not even be very close, and this realization was sinking in, unleashing something, dropping a shield he had been carrying for a long time. Over three days in November, the man known for his preternatural cool won re-election and cried twice in public. And then, trying to find meaning in a tragedy in Connecticut, he did it again, all but breaking down in the White House Briefing Room.
In mid-December, as Obama settles into one of the Oval Office’s reupholstered chairs — brown leather instead of Bush’s blue and gold candy stripes — the validation of Election Day still hovers around him, suggesting that his second four years in office may turn out to be quite different from his first. Beyond the Oval Office, overwhelming challenges remain: deadlocked fiscal-cliff talks; a Federal Reserve that predicts years of high unemployment; and more unrest in places like Athens, Cairo and Damascus. But the President seems unbound and gives inklings of an ambition he has kept in check ever since he arrived at the White House to find a nation in crisis. He leans back, tea at his side, legs crossed, to explain what he thinks just happened. “It was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly,” he says. “And I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly. We’ve gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this President we elected is imperfect. And yet despite all that, this is who we want to be.” He smiles. “That’s a good thing.”
The Campaign Team: David Simas ran Obama’s opinion-research team, including focus groups; Stephanie Cutter managed the daily effort to defend Obama and dismantle Romney; David Axelrod, co-author of the Obama campaign story, oversaw the entire strategy from Chicago; Jim Messina, the campaign manager, designed, built and ran the whole campaign from scratch; Jim Margolis, the TV adman, relentlessly bombarded swing-state airwaves for months; Jeremy Bird, the grassroots organizer, created a smarter, larger Obama army than in 2008
Two years ago, Republicans liked to say that the only hard thing Obama ever did right was beating Hillary Clinton in the primary, and in electoral terms, there was some truth to that. In 2012 the GOP hoped to cast him as an inspiring guy who was not up to the job. But now we know the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in the office. He stands somewhat shorter, having won 4 million fewer votes and two fewer states than in 2008. But his 5 million-vote margin of victory out of 129 million ballots cast shocked experts in both parties, and it probably would have been higher had so much of New York and New Jersey not stayed home after Hurricane Sandy. He won many of the toughest battlegrounds walking away: Virginia by 4 points, Colorado by 5 and the lily white states of Iowa and New Hampshire by 6. He untied Ohio’s knotty heartland politics, picked the Republican lock on Florida Cubans and won Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. (Those last two data points especially caught the President’s interest.) He will take the oath on Jan. 20 as the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get a majority of the popular vote twice. Only five other Presidents have done that in all of U.S. history.
There are many reasons for this, but the biggest by far are the nation’s changing demographics and Obama’s unique ability to capitalize on them. When his name is on the ballot, the next America — a younger, more diverse America — turns out at the polls. In 2008, blacks voted at the same rate as whites for the first time in history, and Latinos broke turnout records. The early numbers suggest that both groups did it again in 2012, even in nonbattleground states, where the Obama forces were far less organized. When minorities vote, that means young people do too, because the next America is far more diverse than the last. And when all that happens, Obama wins. He got 71% of Latinos, 93% of blacks, 73% of Asians and 60% of those under 30.
That last number is the one Obama revels in most. When he talks about the campaign, he likes to think about the generational shift the country is going through on topics like gay marriage — an issue on which he lagged, only to reverse himself last spring. He connects it to the optimism he felt as a young man, the same thing he always talks about with staff in the limo or on the plane after visits with campaign volunteers. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” reads one of the quotes stitched into his new Oval Office rug — an old abolitionist cry that Martin Luther King Jr. repurposed while marching on Selma, Ala. Obama believes in that, and he believes he is more than just a bit player in the transition. “I do think that my eight years as President, reflecting those values and giving voice to those values, help to validate or solidify that transformation,” he says, “and I think that’s a good thing for the country.”
Few experts predicted two years ago that Obama would be busy writing his second Inaugural Address. Pre-election polling showed depressed enthusiasm among young people and Latinos, for example, amid soaring interest among white evangelicals and the elderly. But the poll questions did not account for Obama’s secret weapon: the people who don’t much care for politics. A sizable chunk of the President’s most ardent backers don’t admire either party yet think Obama is somehow above it all, immune to all the horse trading and favor mongering that politics entails. These voters aren’t political in the cable-TV sense of the word. But in 2012, they stuck by Obama. In the last month of the Obama campaign’s voter registration, 70% of those signed up were women, minorities or people under 30.
The President feels a responsibility to advance the values he sees reflected in the changing electorate. Of the nearly 66 million people who pulled the lever for him, Obama says, “The choice that they made was less about me and more about them, more about who they saw themselves to be.” It’s a lovely sentiment for a winner, but even if Obama’s right, the question now is, Who exactly do they want to be? And can Barack Obama take them there?
The Geek Squad: from left: Harper Reed, the chief technology officer, tweeted “My boss is awesome” after Obama won; Dan Wagner, the chief analytics officer, oversaw a team of number crunchers five times the size of the 2008 group; Dylan Richard engineered much of the software behind the campaign; Andrew Claster used analytics to develop new ways of targeting and predicting voter behavior
The election that Obama won, as he has said repeatedly, was in the end a choice, not a referendum. He proved to be a better option than Mitt Romney, who was an imperfect candidate by most measures. On the issues, Obama did not fare quite as well. While 51% of voters in exit polls in 2008 said they wanted the government to do more, only 43% said so in 2012, and Obamacare still polls badly.
But Obama doesn’t see his legacy in terms of an ideological imprint, like Ronald Reagan’s claim that “government is the problem” or Bill Clinton’s admonition that the “era of Big Government is over.” He says he just wants smarter government and a set of results that he can claim as he leaves office in early 2017: “That we had steered this ship of state so that we once again had an economy that worked for everybody, that we had laid the foundation for broad-based prosperity and that internationally we had created the framework for continued American leadership in the world throughout the 21st century.” Recent history and current headlines suggest he will fall short of achieving all those goals. But if he succeeds, it wouldn’t be the first time this leader beat expectations.
Since the moment Obama arrived on the national scene in 2004, the very idea of leadership has been under assault. Many of the old institutions that once anchored the American Dream have been bled of public confidence. Banks, Big Business, the news media and Congress all polled at or near record lows during his first term. Obama himself was the target of uncommon vitriol, but he has somehow managed to keep the public’s faith.
To understand how he kept his job, the best place to start is where he did. In early 2011, David Simas, a former registrar of deeds in Taunton, Mass., who had become a senior White House aide, switched on what might be called one of the largest listening posts in U.S. history. For months on end, two or three nights a week, Simas and his team secretly gathered voters in rented rooms across the swing states, eight at a time, the men separated from the women. The Obamans poked at their guinea pigs’ animal spirits, asked for confessions and played word-association games. (Among swing voters, Democrat often elicited Barack Obama, and Republican would yield words like old and backward.) Live feeds of the focus groups were shown on computer screens at campaign headquarters in Chicago. The first discovery Simas made held the keys to the kingdom. “Here is the best thing,” he said of Obama when he went back to home base. “People trust him.”
In an age of lost authority, Obama had managed to maintain his. In group after group, the voters told the researchers they believed the President was honest, lived an admirable personal life and was trying to do the right thing. “Here’s what I heard for 18 months,” Simas says. “‘I trust his values. I think he walked into the worst situation of any President in 50 years. And you know what? I am disappointed that things haven’t turned around.’ But there was always that feeling of ‘I am willing to give this guy a second shot.’”
In different rooms, behind different one-way mirrors, Republicans made the same discovery. “There was almost nothing that would stick to this guy, because they just liked him personally,” Katie Packer Gage, Romney’s deputy campaign manager, said after the election. Most of those who had voted for Obama in 2008 were still proud of that vote and did not see the President as partisan or ideological. When Republicans channeled their party’s many furies, attacking Obama as an extremist, it backfired among swing-state voters. “The kind of traditional negative campaign that the Obama campaign did was not available to our side,” explained Steven Law, who oversaw more than $100 million in anti-Obama advertising for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.
So even before the first ad ran, Obama had an edge and a way of framing the race. While Romney tried to focus on Obama’s weak economic record, Obama made his race about confidence. The most important poll question in Chicago was, Which candidate is looking out for voters like you? “What we saw these undecided voters doing for literally a year,” Simas says, “looking at two very different people outside fundamental message, tactics and strategy, is, they were making a very trust-based assessment between Obama and Romney.”
This became the through line of the brutal and at times unfair Obama attacks on Romney — the cracks about car elevators, the specious mention of his potentially felonious Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the false claim that he supported an abortion ban without a rape exception, the endless harping on a Swiss bank account once held in his wife’s name. It all spoke to a central message built around trust: One man, despite his failures, had voters like you in mind. The other man, by contrast, knew how to make a lot of money for people you will never meet.
The Geek Squad: from left: Michael Slaby, a veteran of the 2008 effort, hired the tech and data teams and kept them on track; Chris Wegrzyn built the infrastructure and software behind the massive data operation; Teddy Goff, the digital director, ran social-media, online and mobile outreach; Joe Rospars, the architect of online fundraising for Howard Dean in 2004 and Obama in 2008, oversaw digital efforts; Marie Ewald focused on e-mail fundraising, helping raise $690 million online
Of course, Romney turned out to be Obama’s biggest ally in that narrative. But back at campaign headquarters, Simas slapped a poster on his office wall that told an even bigger story. It had three lines: two showing the rise of per capita GDP and productivity in the U.S. since 1992 and one flat line showing household income. He opened all his presentations with the same chart. “Above it was just a phrase from a focus group — ‘I’m working harder and falling behind,’” Simas says. “That was the North Star. Everything we did and everything we said was derivative of that sentiment.” The words of the faceless focus-group participant passed from the rented room to the computer screens in Chicago and eventually right into the President’s stump speech. “As long as there are families who are working harder and harder but falling further behind,” Obama told crowds, “our work is not yet done.”
Message is one thing. but in modern presidential politics, it can’t go very far without a machine, and the machine is what really made Obama cry — first at his final rally, in Des Moines, Iowa, and then at his headquarters the day after the election. Appropriately enough for a campaign that redefined the limits of viral politics, the second set of tears became a YouTube sensation, seen some 9 million times in the weeks after the election, more than any other campaign video of the cycle.
You can see him walk to a microphone, looking easy and confident, chewing his gum. He starts telling the story of his first years as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, when he was 25 and trying to find his way, with little success. “It’s not that you guys actually remind me of myself,” he says to the young staff before him. “It’s the fact that you are so much better than I was in so many ways. You’re smarter, and you’re better organized, and you’re more effective … Even before last night’s results, I felt that the work that I had done in running for office had come full circle,” he continues, “because what you guys have done means the work that I am doing is important. I’m really proud of that. I’m really proud of all of you.” Then he breaks down. Tears well and drop.
Obama didn’t have to do much to build this machine the second time around. The same obsessive staff, who had never really left his circle, returned with the same set of techniques, a mixture of old-school community organizing and high-tech social networking: one-on-one conversations with supporters, repeat telephone calls, staffers focused only on organizing volunteers, registration drives where no presidential campaign had tried registration before. But Obama was also obsessed. On a tour through Iowa in September, his state director, Brad Anderson, told him that the campaign had arranged for an early-vote location at a Latino grocery store. “The President loved that,” says Plouffe, who traveled with him. “The Latino community in Iowa is relatively small, but we were trying to harvest every vote possible.” The President even got to play shop foreman at times, as if he were back in the projects overseeing voter-registration teams. A couple of days before the election, he confronted a salaried staffer at a staging office in Ohio who asked the President for a photo. “You’re a field organizer,” Obama replied reproachfully, citing the well-known rule that staff’s first job is to organize others. “You gotta be looking out for your volunteers.”
In its second incarnation, the Obama campaign began to blur and then obliterate the line between politics and daily life for millions of Americans. The President held off-the-record calls with FM disc jockeys in black and Hispanic communities. Aides signed up Latinos at amateur soccer leagues, circulated clipboards in bars and nightclubs and canvassed blockbuster-movie-premiere lines for new voters. “In Chapel Hill for a wedding,” White House aide Tommy Vietor e-mailed Plouffe in mid-September from North Carolina. “Multiple people with Obama clipboards have tried to register me to vote in the 5 hours I’ve been here.” Later that night, Vietor read the specials scribbled on a chalkboard at a bar. The Obama was a shot of Jack Daniel’s and a Pabst Blue Ribbon for $7. The Romney was a shot of Johnnie Walker Gold and a bottle of 1995 Altamura cabernet for $870. The message was breaking through.
And so were the new methods devised by a geek squad convened from multinational ad agencies, corporate consultancies and high-tech start-ups. The goals were the same as ever: more money in the bank, more door knocks, more phone calls, more voter registrations and more voters at the polls. But the methods for achieving those ends in 2012 bordered on the revolutionary. A squad of dozens of data crunchers created algorithms for predicting the likelihood that someone would respond to specific types of requests to accomplish each of those goals. Vast quantities of information were collected and then employed to predict just which television shows various target voters in certain cities were watching at just what time of day — the better to decide where to place TV ads. Facebook, which was an afterthought in 2008, became the new electronic telephone call, employed to persuade more than 600,000 Obama supporters to reach out to 5 million swing-state friends online with targeted messages in the days before the election. One woman in central Ohio who was living with her young voting-age daughter reported that her house got four different visits on the morning of Election Day, each from a different neighbor making sure both women had remembered to vote.
The White House Staff: from left: Jay Carney, the spokesman, handled the White House press; David Plouffe, the political strategist, steered the campaign’s White House outpost; Alyssa Mastromonaco, the deputy chief of staff, kept the President focused; Pete Rouse, the senior adviser, was the go-to troubleshooter; Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest adviser, was his sounding board; Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director, decided how to deliver the message
The geek squad also found new ways to make voters turn out their pockets. They refined meet-the-candidate lotteries into an art form, invented a system for texting dollars from a mobile phone that required entering only a single number and experimented with the language of e-mail pitches until they stung. Of his $1 billion campaign-cash haul, Obama was able to raise $690 million online in 2012, up from about $500 million in 2008. More than $200 million of that came in donations of $200 or less, a 10% increase over the history-making frenzy of 2008. In a campaign that big super-PAC money was supposed to dominate, Obama’s operation proved that many small efforts were more powerful than a few big ones. No one in either party thinks campaign finance will ever be the same.
How much of this survives for future Democrats when Obama exits the stage? Obama’s advisers are quick to say it won’t be around for others to tap. Too much of the Obama coalition, they say, is about Obama himself. It might reject anyone who tries to take up his mantle in a few years. “This organization is not transferable,” says a senior campaign adviser. “The next nominee on either side is going to have to build their own coalition.” But the Obama effort is going to try to live on. Bob Bauer, the campaign’s attorney, has been working on a plan for a new organization — likely to be incorporated as a nonprofit beyond the reach of the Democratic National Committee — that will be announced in the coming weeks. The idea is to create an outlet for Obama’s supporters, more than 80,000 of whom said after the election that they were willing to run for public office. A similar effort stumbled in 2009, when Obama reined in his grassroots supporters to avoid ruffling feathers in Congress. But the one thing Obama has learned in his first term is that he won’t be able to accomplish much in the second without an active outside game.
The fifth year of any presidency is always a sweet spot, a golden hour between re-election and lame-duck status, when a President has a chance to think more about history than about the tracking polls. And so the President must now decide how high to reach and what to accomplish while he still can. “I’m more than familiar with all the literature about presidential overreach in second terms,” Obama said at his first press conference after the election. “On the other hand, I didn’t get re-elected just to bask in re-election.”
He began to navigate the issues in the days after the election by scribbling his hopes on a yellow legal pad. Obama has always thought best by writing, and for that reason he struggled to keep a diary during his first term, a task at which he hopes to redouble his efforts over the coming years. “In my life, writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are,” he says. “The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.”
But the yellow pad he began to fill after the election was not for himself or his next memoir. Instead, he wanted to work out what he should try to get done in the next four years, beyond his inbox and legislative to-do list for the next nine months. The immediate goals are clear: a major push on immigration reform and a way to lower the medium-term deficit through a combination of raising tax rates, reforming the tax code and finding some temporary truce between the parties on entitlements. He gathered his staffers for a “40,000-foot” view of what was possible.
They soon discovered that the yellow pad included some things spoken of only rarely during the campaign: dealing with the problem of climate change, for instance, emerged as a major thread, despite all the money the campaign had spent in southeastern Ohio praising Obama’s commitment to coal. He spoke of increasing opportunities for early-childhood education and finding new ways to lessen the burden of college costs. The long lines that forced millions to wait for hours to vote led him to talk about a broad sweep of potential electoral reforms, which would likely include a popular push on campaign-finance reform and new legislation to force states to improve ballot access. He also said he wanted to look at the criminal-justice system. “There’s a big chunk of that prison population, a great huge chunk of our criminal-justice system, that is involved in nonviolent crimes,” he tells TIME. “I think we have to figure out what are we doing right to make sure that that downward trend in violence continues, but also, there are millions of lives out there that are being destroyed or distorted because we haven’t fully thought through our process.”
Prison reform won’t become a top priority of his Administration, but his interest in it signals his determination to expand the boundaries of what a second-term presidency might be. When two states, Washington and Colorado, legalized marijuana for adults in November, Obama decided that federal law-enforcement resources should not be deployed to bust individuals who are complying with state law. “When it comes to drug enforcement, big-time drug dealers, folks who are preying on our kids, those who are engaging in violence — that has to be our focus,” he said.
In the wake of the killings at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, Obama asked if the country and its President had done enough in his first term to deal with mass shootings. “I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no, we’re not doing enough,” he said before promising to “use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement to mental-health professionals to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.” He had made similar vows before, after other shootings. But this one affected him more. Never had he cast the issue so starkly as a question of moral and political courage. Never before had he so clearly reproached himself for failing to take action.
White House aides draw a distinction between what is possible legislatively and what they can do rhetorically and through public education. It’s not just what Obama gets passed, they muse; it’s the legacy he leaves for the next occupant of the Oval Office. “You recognize you’re not going to arrive with — you’ll never arrive at that promised land, and whatever seeds you plant now may bear fruit many years later,” Obama says. Only time will tell just how he fulfills that vision.
Which is O.K. with the President. In mid-November, White House aides arranged a postelection screening of the new Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln, inviting the director and much of the cast, including actors Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th President, and Sally Field, who plays his wife. Obama called the experience of watching the horse trading, corruption and compromise that allowed the passage of the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, “incredibly powerful.” For Axelrod, who attended the screening and who fought alongside the President through the disappointments and triumphs of the first few years, the story echoed the bruising and at times chaotic battle for health care reform, something he mentioned to his boss.
“Part of what Lincoln teaches us is that to pursue the highest ideals and a deeply moral cause requires you also engage and get your hands dirty. And there are trade-offs, and there are compromises,” Obama says of his favorite President. “Anything we do is going to be somewhat imperfect.”
Obama says he long ago decided that he should not compare himself to Lincoln. But he nonetheless begins his second term with a better sense of what is possible in his job as well as what is not, something Lincoln struggled with as well. “You do understand that as President of the United States, the amount of power you have is overstated in some ways,” Obama says. “But what you do have the capacity to do is to set a direction.” He has earned the right to set that direction and has learned from experience how to move the country. After four of the most challenging years in the nation’s history, his chance to leave office as a great President who was able to face crises and build a new majority coalition remains within reach.
Pete Souza’s Portrait of a Presidency
“There is closure in this photograph. I suspect that neither man really wanted to have lunch with the other, but they both knew the importance for the American people in seeing them do so.”
President Barack Obama talks with Donna Vanzant, owner of the North Point Marina in Brigantine, New Jersey, Oct. 31, 2012. The President was surveying damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.
President Barack Obama pretends to be caught in Spider-Man's web as he greets the son of a White House staffer in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 26, 2012.
The President and First Lady look out at the city skyline and Lake Michigan after arriving at the Burnham Park landing zone in Chicago, Ill., June 15, 2012.
President Obama meets with European leaders on the Laurel Cabin patio during the G8 Summit at Camp David, Md., May 19, 2012.
"Usually the best moments at meetings are before and after the participants actually sit down. In this case, though, there was an interesting juxtaposition of gestures as the President and Vice President met with the House Democratic Leadership in the Oval Office, Nov. 1, 2011."
"Much has been made of this photograph that shows the President and Vice President and the national security team monitoring in real time the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. Some more background on the photograph: The White House Situation Room is actually comprised of several different conference rooms. The majority of the time, the President convenes meetings in the large conference room with assigned seats. But to monitor this mission, the group moved into the much smaller conference room. The President chose to sit next to Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General of Joint Special Operations Command, who was point man for the communications taking place. With so few chairs, others just stood at the back of the room. I was jammed into a corner of the room with no room to move. During the mission itself, I made approximately 100 photographs, almost all from this cramped spot in the corner. Please note: a classified document seen in front of Sec. Clinton has been obscured."
President Obama reads documents while sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Feb. 11, 2011.
The President, the First Lady and President Hu Jintao of China descend the Grand Staircase of the White House before a formal State Dinner, Jan. 19, 2011.
"Visiting the Great Buddha of Kamakura, in Japan, the President had a green tea ice cream bar with his hosts, Nov. 14, 2010. He had visited this Buddha as a young child and said he remembered sitting in the exact same place having an ice cream bar."
"We were walking through a locker room at the University of Texas on August 9, 2010, when White House Trip Director Marvin Nicholson stopped to weigh himself on a scale. Unbeknownst to him, the President was stepping on the back of the scale, as Marvin continued to slide the scale lever. Everyone but Marvin was in on the joke."
President Obama tries to block a layup shot by his former personal aide, Reggie Love, at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., May 16, 2010.
The President, Vice President and senior staff applaud after watching on television the House vote on H.R. 4872 for health care reform, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 21, 2010.
“President Obama had called on the two former Presidents to help with the situation in Haiti. During their public remarks in the Rose Garden, Jan. 16, 2010, President Clinton had said about President Bush, ‘I’ve already figured out how I can get him to do some things that he didn’t sign on for.’ Later, back in the Oval, President Bush is jokingly asking President Clinton what were those things he had in mind.”
“Having seen more than 25 Bruce Springsteen concerts since 1978 and having seen just about every movie Robert DeNiro has ever made, it was a great thrill to be in their presence as the President greeted them before the Kennedy Center Honors at the White House, Dec. 6, 2009.”
President Obama has dinner with his family on the roof of a hotel restaurant in Moscow, July 7, 2009.
President Obama reflects during an economics meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 29, 2009
学习了，谢谢 纽约现在怎么样了呢？？？ 我感觉最后那张图亮了。。。也是望天的，想起了。。。:P:P
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