Hard to discern fact from fiction in Obama White House exposé

TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT Enlarge Image

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

Fans of TV's The West Wing will like this exposé on U.S. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama in the White House. It has everything: the intellectual president, his disgruntled first lady, the charming children, the squabbling staff, the daily crises and even helpful diagrams of the White House on the end sheets.

The thing is, we know The West Wing is fiction. What is fact and what is fiction is more difficult to parse in reporter Jodi Kantor's book.

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Striving to elevate it above the commonplace behind-the-scenes-at-the-White-House genre, Kantor presents it as a revelation of how the Obamas' marriage affects not just the presidency and the job of the first lady but, most important, the destiny of the United States itself.

Kantor, Washington correspondent for the New York Times, has interviewed more than 200 people, including White House staff, the Obamas' friends and members of Congress. Many of the sources are anonymous. She interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a Times article.

While it is always difficult to weigh the reliability of anonymous sources, the general thrust of Kantor's narrative seems accurate but not surprising.

The Obamas have a loving and respectful marriage. Adapting to life in the White House is difficult, especially for the president's wife, whose intellect and talents are inevitably under utilized. As president, Obama has fallen far short of his campaign promises and his popularity has plummeted. However, this narrative is not unique to the Obamas.

Kantor's spin on this well-known story is to purport to take us inside the Obamas' marriage and reveal how consequential their relationship is for the destiny of the American Republic.

On the face of it, this is a somewhat banal proposition. Almost every president since George Washington has been married and has been influenced one way or another by his wife.

This influence is only politically consequential if it outweighs the external influences on the president or his wife surreptitiously makes his decisions, as did Edith Wilson. (Please, no exposés about how Laureen Harper influences Canada's destiny.)

This influence is only politically consequential if it outweighs the external influences on the president or his wife surreptitiously makes his decisions as did Edith Wilson.

To inflate the personal relationship to the level of high politics, Kantor creates a melodrama based on the undeniable complementary personalities of the president and first lady.

She describes the president as ultra competitive yet averse to personal conflict and inclined to negotiate against himself, introverted, impatient with the theatre of politics, sympathetic with the underprivileged, convinced he knows everything better than his advisors and relying on carefully reasoned arguments as his main instrument of communication.

He fails to control the deficit, reduce the unemployment rate, continues Bush's anti-terrorist policies, makes deep compromises to achieve his health-care plan and disenchants his supporters.

Kantor presents Michelle as brilliant, skeptical of politics, idealistic, a passionate believer in equal opportunity, disciplined, organized, unwilling to settle for half measures, the single most intense mother on earth and the president's conscience.

The book begins to strain credibility as Kantor interprets incidents so as to morph Michelle into the terror of the West Wing. She becomes a malign force lurking in her East Wing office, terrifying the hard-nosed press secretary, Robert Gibbs, and even the notoriously belligerent chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel (not to mention, sometimes, the president himself).

To prove her point, Kantor makes more of the evidence than it will bear.

She recounts a colourful episode where Gibbs exploded in a profane rant against Michelle when he was informed that she was unhappy about his handling of a potentially embarrassing claim in a biography of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. In fact, Gibbs had done remarkably well.

However, the various sources quoted contradict each other and provide no compelling evidence that Michelle was unhappy with Gibbs. It seems her views were misrepresented to him.

Another anecdote involved a meeting called to brief Michelle on her role in the 2010 mid-term election strategy. Emanuel, described as "too terrified to speak," handed the presentation over to another aide.

The other aide just happened to be Patrick Gaspard, Obama's political director, who would normally be expected to lead a presentation on campaign strategy.

A more egregious example of interpreting facts to suit an unlikely thesis occurs in an account of the signing ceremony for nutrition legislation for which Michelle had actively campaigned.

Obama remarked, "Had I not been able to get this passed I'd be sleeping on the couch."

Most people would regard this as a corny joke. Kantor interprets it as "(needling) her mercilessly" and "momentarily lifting the curtain of her polished public image, hinting at the force of her disapproval, as if he wanted to let others know what he faced at home."

Ultimately, what is fatal to Kantor's thesis is that Obama's domestic policy was influenced not by the progressive idealism of Michelle but by the staff he appointed from the ranks of the very people who caused the economic catastrophe.

In the real world, the destiny of the American republic hangs not on a marriage but on a president confronting unprecedented corporate power and a Republican party that has come to be rabidly opposed to institutional government itself.

Winnipegger John K. Collins was a fan of The West Wing.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 28, 2012 J10