{"id":1666,"date":"2016-01-15T13:45:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T13:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2016-01-15T13:45:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T13:45:52","slug":"the-beginning-of-a-goodbye-to-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/2016\/01\/15\/the-beginning-of-a-goodbye-to-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"The beginning of a goodbye to Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost nine years ago, shortly after Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President, near the steps of the Illinois statehouse, I joined the staff of the then-Senator\u2019s unlikely campaign, as a lowest-level fund-raiser in New York. My hiring was one of those life-altering flukes: I\u2019d been tutoring a kid whose parents were more connected than I knew. But life sometimes collects an unearned momentum\u2014somebody wins an election, somebody else remembers your name\u2014and before long I found myself working at the White House.
\nThis was a low-rung affair, mind you: the Atlantic once published my name on a list of the White House\u2019s lowest-paid employees, much to the amusement of my closest friends. Still, this is how I came to receive an e-mail, last week, inviting me to watch the President\u2019s final State of the Union address with other \u201cObama Alumni\u201d at a bar in Brooklyn. Since leaving D.C. and returning home, to New York, I have mostly avoided these kinds of events, but this one was billed as more of an event than usual, complete with a nightlife-style poster, and it seemed like the beginning of a year-long goodbye.<\/span>The aptly named bar, Uncle Barry\u2019s, was a brick-walled, two-room place on Fifth Avenue, lit partly by white candles in glass jars spaced evenly across the long, wooden bar. On a little chalkboard beneath the usual selection was a description of the night\u2019s novelty drink, just for us:
\nSTATE OF THE UNION SPECIAL
\nTHE EXECUTIVE ORDER
\nCampari, Gin, Mango, Apple Cider
\nThe \u201cO\u201d in \u201cOrder\u201d was drawn to resemble the famous Obama logo. I ordered something else. I was early. A kid in a baseball cap and a shirt that said \u201cInauguration\u201d in windswept cursive came up to the bar to order a bag of chips; he saw me taking notes and asked if I was a reporter. \u201cI worked on the \u201908 campaign,\u201d I replied. \u201cHere in New York. Finance.\u201d \u201cOh, awesome,\u201d he said, reaching out to shake my hand. \u201cI was on \u201912. Pennsylvania. Field.\u201d This is how it goes: year, geography, and function, a set of credentials.
\nAfter he left the bar to find his friends again, a tall guy I recognised walked in, a former intern in the office where I worked. He introduced me to his girlfriend and to two guys he worked with in \u201912, after his stint at the White House. He and his girlfriend are both in medical school now. \u201cActually, I saw from working in that office,\u201d he said\u2014we worked in the Presidential Personnel Office, basically a head-hunter for the executive branch\u2014\u201chow many M.D.s worked all over the administration, and I thought that was pretty cool. I probably want to get another degree\u2014M.P.A. or something\u2014after this.\u201d
\nBehind me, I heard someone say, \u201cI\u2019m so excited; but I think I might cry.\u201d A projector screen slid down against the wall perpendicular to the bar, and soon Obama appeared at the beginning of the walkway into the chamber, and the bar erupted into a loud, prolonged whoop.
\nAn underdiscussed measure of political talent, I think, is how strongly a principal holds the imagination of her own foot soldiers, past and present. I don\u2019t mean those close enough to form a real personal bond\u2014nobody at Uncle Barry\u2019s last night was a Plouffe or a Jarrett or an Axelrod. Some of us had staffed the President at a few dozen events, maybe, shown him which hand to shake first, where to stand in the room before launching into the talking points. We have pictures of him being nice to our moms. The White House Christmas card comes every year. That\u2019s the extent of it, for the most part. Still, the atmosphere was one of close friendship\u2014this person is ours, the room seemed to feel, an emotion made evident by the things people said about the President as he sauntered toward the podium.
\n\u201cStripes!\u201d
\n\u201cYes, I like that tie.\u201d
\n\u201cGood choice.\u201d
\nAnd about the First Lady, in vivid yellow: \u201cOh, Michelle looks so good tonight.\u201d
\n\u201cAlways.\u201d
\nPeople shushed each other as Obama began to talk.
\nDuring the speech, it was mostly quiet, except for the occasional grunt or hum of approval. Except\u2014and here, again, is the friendship thing, the closeness\u2014there were several prolonged laughs. Sometimes at the President\u2019s intentional jokes; sometimes as a result of the awkward cutaways that always accompany the televised version of this speech, no matter who gives it. Paul Ryan, looking sodden\u2014already\u2014with seeming regret for taking on the Speakership. Steny Hoyer, looking ready for a nap. Bernie Sanders, producing a yellow, bookmarkish object from somewhere within his suit, and inspecting it distrustfully. Marco Rubio, openly loathing the Senate. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, wearing his hair that way.
\nThe only cutaway that inspired an earnest response from this crowd was to Joe Biden, when Obama announced that the Vice-President will lead the White House\u2019s effort to find a cure for cancer. Biden\u2019s face\u2014a frictionless delivery system for sentiment\u2014inspired a round of applause.
\nA bearded guy walked in off the street during the foreign-policy section. He took a look at the screen, heard a reference to ISIS, and snorted, \u201cDidn\u2019t this guy drone everybody?\u201d
\nSomebody said, \u201cWe\u2019re watching.\u201d The guy said, \u201cI\u2019m watching, too. This is a bar.\u201d He asked the bartender, loudly, for two Miller High Lifes, and as he passed one to a friend, who arrived just after him, he said, \u201cOh, by the way, you can\u2019t say drone in here.\u201d
\nTwo or three people said unpublishable things.
\nEventually, the President said, \u201cWe the people,\u201d and let the clause hang in the air. Thus began what I think of as the \u201clift\u201d section of his speech\u2014the section that has remained basically unchanged since the 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech that launched his national career: about the perils of over-segmentation and the power of American togetherness. No blue states, no red states, etc. After so many speeches, the ear recognizes the beginning of the \u201clift,\u201d and so, now, in the pause after those three words, several people, simultaneously, said: \u201cHere we go.\u201d
\nAfter a brief visit with Kim Davis, swaddled in flag colors, the camera fixed itself on Edith Childs, the progenitor of Obama\u2019s famous \u201cFired up, ready to go\u201d campaign chant, and I took this as a sign that ABC\u2019s producers know a \u201clift\u201d when they hear one, too.
\nWhen the speech was over, everything was noise. Nobody waited to hear what Nikki Haley had to say. Every conversational snippet I heard was about Donald Trump\u2014a fair enough microcosm of the political cycle so far. I stayed to talk with the former intern and his friends for a bit, until I saw a former roommate of one of my best friends from the White House. She works for the Clinton campaign now, and, just before I threw on my coat and left the bar, I asked her how she was feeling about it.
\nShe started to answer, then trailed off. When you\u2019re close to voting, she explained, the polls always tighten up. That\u2019s what you have to remember, she said. I wished I hadn\u2019t asked. A campaign is a personal thing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost nine years ago, shortly after Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President, near the steps of the Illinois statehouse, I joined the staff of the then-Senator’s unlikely campaign, as a lowest-level fund-raiser in New York. My hiring was one of those life-altering flukes: I’d been tutoring a kid whose parents were more connected than I knew. But life sometimes collects an unearned momentum—somebody wins an election, somebody else remembers your name—and before long I found myself working at the White House. This was a low-rung affair, mind you: the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}