With TaMara’s permission, this week’s Recipe Exchange will be on Friday, because right now we’re all too excited to think about eating.
Vanity Fair has a teaser slideshow up for Michael Lewis’ big article in the October issue:
… “Assume that in 30 minutes you will stop being president. I will take your place. Prepare me. Teach me how to be president,” Lewis, who interviewed President Obama multiple times over six months—on Air Force One, in the Oval Office, and on the basketball court—asks. Obama explains that every president is deeply aware of his duty to the American people. “Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism,” he says. “I don’t know George Bush well. I know Bill Clinton better. But I think they both approached the job in that spirit.”…
“Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” Obama tells Lewis. “Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” …
His odd relationship to the news: “One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That’s not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you. I learned that on the campaign. You have to filter stuff, but you can’t filter it so much you live in this fantasy land.”
His difficulty with faking emotion: “I feel it is an insult to the people I’m dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I’m not taking the American people seriously. I’m absolutely positive that I’m serving the American people better if I’m maintaining my authenticity. And that’s an overused word. And these days people practice being authentic. But I’m at my best when I believe what I am saying.”…
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How go everyone’s at-home preparations for tonight’s big convention celebration / wrap-up? Got your confetti cannons properly aligned?
Thursday Evening Open Thread: “Obama’s Way”Post + Comments (264)