Ben Rhodes [Rhodes - The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

For the final time in a foreign country as president of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama eased into his seat as a Secret Service agent shut the heavy door. Lets go home, he said.

Inside the presidential limousineknown as the Beastthe world outside is silent and kept at a distance by inches of bulletproof glass and armored metal. There is an eerie familiarity to riding in a motorcade, whether you are in an empty Saudi Arabian desert or a crowded street in Hanoi. The front two seats are always occupied by Secret Service agents who never say a word; while they sit there scanning the road ahead, you learn to talk as if they are not present.

Obama glanced across at me and a light crept into his eyes. Did you see Ben forgot his socks? he said to Susan Rice, peeling back a wrapper and popping a piece of Nicorette into his mouth. He laughed in anticipation of his own words. I mean, come on, man. Your socks!

Each day that you travel abroad with the president, you place your suitcase outside your hotel room door and someone picks it up at a set time. This was part of the easy rhythm of travel that would soon disappear. I began to explain that when Id shoved my bag outside my door at three in the morning, I thought Id set aside a pair

He waved a hand at me. I get it. It was a late night. Im glad you guys had a good time while I was reading my APEC briefing book.

I looked out the window at one last stretch of crowds. The streets of Lima were littered with onlookers set against a backdrop of rising modern towers and older, more dilapidated buildings. They were watching, waving, and holding up smartphonesone more trickle of humanity among the millions of faces I had seen over the years through the window of a passing motorcade, straining for a glimpse of Barack Obama. Every now and then on these drives, Obama would glance out the window and offer a casual wave and Id see someones face freeze in a shock of recognition. Sometimes I would hold up my phone and take pictures of the crowds taking pictures of us, the only way to feel a connection with a mass of human beings whom I would never, could never, really know.

Normally, Obama would take out his iPad and scroll through the news or rejoin an endless game of Scrabble and ask us how we thought he did in the just-concluded press conference. I sat opposite him, just as I had on trips to dozens of countries over the last eight years. Butafter the laughter at my socks faded awayhe sat silently, chewing his Nicorette and staring out the window. This was the final trip, and despite the familiar rhythms, nothing about it felt normal. The whole world seemed to be passing us by.

I glanced across at the presidential seal affixed to the wood paneling next to the seat that Obama occupieda seat that would be taken by Donald J. Trump in a couple of months.

A T OUR FIRST STOP, in Athens, we had planned to give a speech celebrating the resilience of democracy in its birthplace, with the Acropolis as the backdrop. As wed sketched it out, wed foreseen a defiant challenge to Russia and its revanchist leader, Vladimir Putin. Somehow, that setting no longer felt equal to Americas moment. It was two weeks after the election of Donald Trump. We moved the speech indoors to an auditorium that could have been anyplace.

We ended up touring the Acropolis instead, on a pristine, warm morning. From its perch up on a hill, the world was lovely and calmin the clear blue sky and sweeping view of Athens, there was no hint of the financial crisis gripping Greece, the flow of refugees crossing its borders, or the uncertainty that those forces had unleashed in the world beyond. I trailed Obama as he wandered through the collection of ancient pillars and scaffolding and tributes to the gods, a monument to the origins of democracy and the ruins left behind by lost empires and expired beliefs. When I saw him afterward, he repeated a maxim that hed shared with me in the early morning hours after the election of Trump, a refrain that sought out perspective: There are more stars in the sky, he said, than grains of sand on the earth.

At our second stop, in Berlin, Angela Merkel asked to see Obama for dinner our first night there. Merkel has a kind of reverse charismastoic, self-possessed, with a slight smile that draws you in, a woman at ease in power and her own skinand she greeted him with a hand on each arm. She was his closest partner in a world that offered few friends, and she had risked her political future by welcoming a million Syrian refugees to Germany. Obama admired her pragmatism, her unflappability, and her stubborn streak. Over the previous year, he had battled his own bureaucracy to increase the number of refugees that America would welcome, telling us again and again, We cant leave Angela hanging.

The two of them sat alone at a small, simple table in the middle of a hotel conference room. They ate and talked for three hours, the longest time Obama had spent alone with a foreign leader in eight years. A few of us dined with her staff in an adjoining room. The Germans looked stricken; they spoke with unease about the new world coming, and the burdens on Merkel within it. To the leader of the free world, I toasted, ruefully. One aide told me that Steve Bannons appointment to the White House staff had been front-page news in Germany. We know Bannon, he said, leaning toward me as if passing on a secret in confidence. Outside the window you could see the Brandenburg Gate in a gold light, and the Reichstag building, the replacement for the one that was set on fire as Hitler took power.

Later, Obama told us that Merkel had talked to him about her looming decision on whether to seek another term, something that she now felt more obliged to do because of Brexit and Trump. At the end of our time in Germany, when Obama bade her farewell at the door of the Beast, a single tear appeared in her eyesomething that none of us had ever seen before. Angela, he said, shaking his head. Shes all alone.

At this third and final stop, a summit of Pacific nations in Lima, Obama was pulled aside by leader after leader and asked what to expect from Donald Trump. Ever conscious of the norms of his office, Obama dutifully urged his counterparts to give the new administration a chance. Wait and see, he told them. The leaders of eleven other countries who had painstakingly negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement met with Obama on the first day. If they were angry at having taken tough political decisions to bind their economic futures to the United States only to see the new president-elect commit to pulling out, they concealed it. Instead, they were almost apologetic in their suggestion that theyd probably just move forward with some form of the agreement without the United States.