Alter - The Promise

Praise for

THE
PROMISE

Gives us a new perspective on the 44th president by providing a detailed look at his decision-making... and a keen sense of what its like to work in his White House.... Alter uses his considerable access to the president and his aides to give us an informed look at No. 44s management style.

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Jonathan Alter has delivered an exceptionally well-written account of President Obamas first year in office. Brimming with fresh and judicious ideas, his book fuses political analysis, subtle insights into the presidents mind and policy debates into a fast-paced, crisis-filled story. The Promise, based on more than 200 interviews with Obama and his close friends and aides, provides an uncommonly candid look inside a somewhat walled-off White House.... Alters deeply reported and analytically arresting book takes Obamas story in subtler and more contradictory directions than it has gone before.

Matthew Dallek, The Washington Post Book World

Jonathan Alter is the new Theodore H. White.... The first 12 months of an American presidency as nonfiction melodrama. The Promise is not a campaign rehash, but a well-informed chronicle, sometimes sober, often raucous. Other books will be written about Barak Obamas time in the White House; this snapshot of 2009 will be a durable, well-thumbed guide.

Martin F. Nolan, San Francisco Chronicle

A deeply reported, soberly appraised account of the presidents tumultuous first months in office.... The book is rich in the kinds of insider detail that make for an entertaining, as well as informative, reading experience.... When it comes to what weve all come to call the first draft of history, The Promise is more polished, and far more thoughtful, than most. For those attempting to get a fix on a fascinating but strangely elusive chief executive, its essential reading.

Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

The Promise offers an excellent opportunity to appraise Obamas initial efforts. Drawing on interviews with over 200 people, including the president and his top aides, Alter examines everything from the economic bailouts to the military surge in Afghanistan.

Jacob Heilbrunn, The New York Times Book Review

Well-reported, judicious.... Nuanced and persuasively sourced.... A credible guide to whats gone right, but also to whats gone wrong and what, we must hope, can be fixed.

Frank Rich, The New York Review of Books

An engaging, blow-by-blow account of the infancy of the Obama presidency.... Manna for political junkies.... Thoroughly researched... humanizes a figure considered periodically out-of-touch even by some of his admirers.

Carlo Wolff, The Boston Globe

Jonathan Alter is a diligent political reporter with more sources than the Mississippi.... A calm, solid narrative of the people and events of the first Obama year.... The book offers a cascade of detail to please any follower of politics. (This review also compares Alter to the great Walter Lippmann.)

Zay N. Smith, Chicago Sun-Times

An impressively reported, myth-debunking and timely combination of journalism and history.

Harry Hurt III, The New York Times (Off the Shelf Sunday column)

Jonathan Alter has done a great service to readers who have not yet figured out who this guy (one of the presidents favorite words) Barack Obama is.

Kathleen Daley, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)

So chock full of anecdotes that bring you into Cabinet meetings and two-person conversations, [it] will change how you look at almost everything the president says or does.

Gene Warner, The Buffalo News

Alter gives readers an outstanding overview of Obamas epically challenging first year.... Exhaustively researched, nonpartisan and insightful.

Chuck Leddy, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

A sympathetic but deeply insightful look at what happened behind the scenes during the debates over the stimulus package, health care, and the Iraq and Afghan wars.

David Daley, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky)

The Promise combines the immediacy of daily journalism... with perspective, analysis and history.

Susan L. Rife, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The fact that Alter is so readable, and that the book at times reads like a novel, is just icing on the cake.

Kristin Coyner, Roll Call

In The Promise, Jonathan Alter provides the most detailed reporting yet in a book on Obama as chief executive.

Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Alters book is an incredible document, full of information that in less distinguished hands might be called gossip.

Gaby Wood, The Daily Telegraph (London)

A fast-paced, penetrating look at the new administration and the president as he struggles to reconcile the promises espoused during the campaign and the realities of governing.

Booklist

Political junkies will find this rewarding, particularly in Alters account of the inner workings of the White House and Capitol Hill.

Kirkus Reviews

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Contents

Photo Credits

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais:

David Katz/Obama for America:

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza:

Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy:

For Emily, with all my love

Authors Note

The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl wrote, History is an argument without end. The argument over Barack Obamas presidency is only beginning, and its too early to draw definitive conclusions about him. My aim is to offer a narrative of his first year in office as a basis for future arguments. This is journalistic history, a melding of old-fashioned reporting with a few commonsense assessments of what might be of lasting historical interest. For this reason Ive written it in the past tense without first-person references or the polemics of punditry.

Washington in 2009 was a confusing blur of activity. You might catch something here or there about health care or Afghanistan or the Obamas new dog, but no one could possibly keep up with the Niagara of news coming out of the new administration. Even reporters assigned to cover the White House found themselves overwhelmed. Amid endless Web deadlines, few had time for more than an occasional glimpse behind the curtain.

My goal was ambitious: to cover the important and compelling dimensions of the Obama story across a broad front, not snip off a piece; to push my sources for information that had not been published before; and to write in real time about a moving targethistory on the fly.

I offer a few judgments of where I think the president succeeded and where he fell short of his promise. But mostly Im trying to give readers more information to make their own judgmentsto discover for themselves where their assessments are based on the historical record and where they are not.

This book cannot tell you if Obama and the Democrats will suffer big setbacks at the polls. The answers depend on the state of the economy and the state of the world at election time. Obamas leadership will look good if he succeeds in bringing down unemployment and flawed if he fails to do so, with foreign policy a political loser only if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on or he mishandles a crisis. The political repercussions of the enactment of health care reform could take years to play out.