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I started writing this book shortly after my presidency ended – that is, shortly after, Michelle and I boarded Air Force One for the last time, and headed west for a long-delayed break. On the plane, the mood fluctuated. We were physically and emotionally drained, not only by the difficulties of the last eight years, but also by the unexpected results of an election in which, as my successor, a political leader had been elected who was the polar opposite of everything we had fought for (…).
First of all, I hoped to offer an honest representation of my presidency – not just a historical recollection of the major events that occurred during my double tenure and the notable personalities I encountered, but also an account of some of the difficulties on the plane. political, economic and cultural that have helped determine the challenges that my administration has had to face and the decisions that my team and I have made (…). I am painfully aware that a more talented writer would have found a more concise way to tell the same story (after all, my White House office was right next to what Lincoln once used as his office and is now a bedroom bed where, behind a glass case, an autographed copy of the Gettysburg Address is still preserved: 272 words in all). Yet each time I went to work, whether it was to describe the early stages of my election campaign, my government’s handling of the financial crisis, the negotiations with the Russians over nuclear weapons, or the forces that led to the Arab spring, my mind resisted a simple and direct narrative. (…). I could not always explain my motivations by referring to avalanches of data or remembering a briefing held in the Oval Office, because perhaps they had been formed thanks to a conversation with a stranger during the election campaign, a visit to a military hospital or a lesson that my mother received when I was a child. Only seemingly minor details kept emerging from my memories. (my attempts to find a secluded place to smoke a cigarette at night; laughter with my staff during a card game aboard Air Force One) which, however, returned, better than public events, my experience in the eight years I spent in the White House.
Beyond the work involved in fixing thoughts on the page, what I had not fully anticipated was the turn events would take in the three and a half years since the last flight on Air Force One. As I write these words, the country is struggling. against a global pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans killed, companies forced into bankruptcy and millions of people out of work. Across the country, people from all walks of life took to the streets to protest after the police killing of unarmed black men and women. And perhaps even more worrying, our democracy appears to be on the brink of a crisis rooted in the fundamental conflict between two opposing views of what America is and what it should be.; a crisis that has left the body politic torn, angry and distrustful, and that has allowed a continuous violation of institutional norms, due process and respect for those fundamental notions that Republicans and Democrats once took for granted.
This is not a completely new conflict. In fact, it has somehow always defined the American experience. It is inherent in those founding documents in which it is proclaimed that all men are equal and, at the same time, that a slave counts three fifths of a free man. It finds expression already in the first opinions expressed by our courts, such as when the Supreme Court judge explains in unequivocal terms to Native Americans that the rights of their tribes to transmit property are not enforceable since the conqueror’s court does not have the power to recognize the just claims of the conquered. It is a conflict that was fought in the fields of Gettysburg and Appomattox, but also in the halls of Congress, on a bridge in Selma, between the vineyards of California and on the streets of New York; a conflict in which soldiers but also, and more often, trade unionists, suffragettes, porters, student leaders, waves of immigrants and LGBTQ activists, armed with nothing but pickets, leaflets and a pair of shoes to march. At the heart of this never-ending battle is a simple question: Is it important to us that America’s reality matches the ideals on which it was founded? Do we really believe that our principles of self-government and individual freedom, equal opportunity and equality before the law should apply to all? Or are we committed, in practice, if not by law, to reserve these prerogatives to a privileged few?
I realize that according to some, the time has come to abandon the myth: an analysis of America’s past and even a cursory glance at the headlines shows how this nation’s ideals have always been secondary to conquest and submission, to a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend it isn’t is to be complicit in a game rigged from the start. And I confess that there have been moments, in the course of writing this book, reflecting on my presidency and everything that has happened since then, when I had to wondering if I wasn’t too measured in telling the truth as I saw it, too cautious in word and deed, believing that by appealing to what Lincoln called the best angels of our nature, he had a better chance of bringing us all to the America we promised.
I have no answer. What I can say with certainty is that I am not yet willing to give up the possibility of that America, and not for the exclusive good of future generations of Americans, but for the good of all humanity. In fact, I am of the idea that the pandemic we are experiencing is both a consequence and a momentary interruption of the incessant march towards an interconnected world, a world in which peoples and cultures cannot avoid colliding. In such a world, a world of global supply networks, instantaneous capital transfers, social networks, transnational terrorist organizations, climate change, mass migration and increasing complexity, we will learn to coexist, cooperate and recognize the dignity of others or we will succumb. . And that is why the world looks to the United States, the only great power in history made up of people of all races, religions, and cultures from all corners of the planet, to see if our experiment in democracy can work.. To understand if we can do what no other nation has done. To understand if we can really live up to our creed and what it means.
Everything remains to be seen. By the time this first volume is published, the elections in the United States have just taken place, and while I believe the stakes could not be higher, I also know that in no way will a single election be able to answer. If I continue to trust, it is because I have learned to trust my fellow citizens, especially those of the new generation: the conviction that all people have the same value and the commitment to transform into reality the principles that parents and teachers perhaps transmitted them without believing it at all. This book is especially aimed at those young people: it is an invitation to reinvent the world once again and to realize, through work, determination and a good dose of imagination, an America finally in tune with the best of us.
© 2020, Garzanti Srl, Milan
November 14, 2020 (change November 15, 2020 | 00:06)
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