LEADING FROM BEHIND THE RELUCTANT PRESIDENT AND THE ADVISORS WHO DECIDE FOR HIM RICHARD MINITER ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK 053-50854_ch00_4P.indd iii 6/28/12 11:00 AM leading from behind. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Miniter. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fift h Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www .stmartins .com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miniter, Richard. Leading from behind : the reluctant president and the advisors who decide for him / Richard Miniter. — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-250-01610-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-250-01629-4 (e-book) 1. Obama, Barack. 2. Obama, Barack—Political and social views. 3. Obama, Barack —Friends and associates. 4. Presidents—United States— Staff . 5. Political leadership—United States. 6. United States—Politics and government—2009– 7. United States—Foreign relations—2009– I. Title. E908.3.M56 2012 973.932092—dc23 2012024080 First Edition: August 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 053-50854_ch00_4P.indd iv 6/28/12 11:00 AM CONTENTS Th e Perspective ix Introduction 1 1. Th e Women 9 2. Health Care, by Hook or Crook 45 3. Nothing Is Sure but Debt and Taxes 77 4. Killing bin Laden Loudly 115 5. Israel’s Dilemma 169 6. Fast and Loose and Furious 201 7. What Kind of Leader Is Obama? 233 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s 2 4 7 Notes 249 About Sources and Methods 273 Bibliography 275 Index 277 053-50854_ch00_4P.indd vii 6/28/12 11:00 AM THE PERSPECTIVE Th is book is about presidential leadership at a partic u lar historical mo- ment, and is the fi rst book of its kind in the Obama years. Leading from Behind is solely concerned with the six pivotal decisions of the Obama years and how and why the president decided as he did. It is a book about leadership and decision-making, grounded in history, fact, and direct ob- servation. Th e quality of the president’s leadership is the essential question of the year 2012. It is important that this question be answered fairly. In that spirit, I have relied extensively and exclusively on President Obama’s admirers and advisors, allies, and associates. Democrats all. Th e stray few Republicans, who were interviewed for this book, were consulted solely to gather their eyewitness accounts of President Obama in private meetings. All of the secondary sources, newscasts, and newspapers, are mainstream outlets that, if anything, tend to favor the president over his critics and rivals. 053-50854_ch00_4P.indd ix 6/28/12 11:00 AM CHAPTER 1 the women You can be stylish and powerful, too. Th at’s Michelle’s advice. —Barack Obama speaking to graduates at Barnard College, May 14, 2012 Every examination of a president should begin with the people and events that shaped him. In the case of Barack Obama, four strong- minded women, who intertwined their lives with his, were the most formative: his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham; his wife, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson; his mentor, Valerie Jarrett; and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, also has a starring role, as we will see in chapter 2. Each continues to play an important part in presidential decision making—though, in his mother’s case, an indirect and perhaps uncon- scious one. Stanley Ann Dunham Her fi rst name was Stanley because her father wanted a boy. Or perhaps, as Obama’s mother later said, she was named aft er a 053-50854_ch01_4P.indd 9 6/28/12 11:01 AM 10 LEADING FROM BEHIND Bette Davis character that her mother liked.1 Like many details of Stanley Ann Dunham’s life, the truth is hard to pin down. Barack Obama’s mother was born in Kansas and moved through a series of American suburbs, from the Midwest to the West and North- west, throughout her childhood. She inherited her father’s gypsy ways. Stanley Ann’s father, a diffi cult man who oft en forced the family to move, only stayed in one place for the years when he fought in World War II. He had no real career, but a string of unrelated jobs. By contrast, her mother later rose from bank clerk to executive—a role model for her young and increasingly in de pen dent daughter. In high school, Stanley Ann was “bookish” and prone to disappear with fast- driving boys who were willing to drive from Washington State to California for a weekend lark. Obama, himself, would later become an avid reader with a penchant for mysterious adventures, such as his 1981 trip to Pakistan. It wasn’t an offi cial college trip and was not connected to any course of study. He had no friends there and the war- torn, poor country was hardly a tourist destination. He likely went for the same whimsical reasons his mother took sudden and strange trips in her teens and twen- ties: a desire for dramatic personal adventure. Swept up in the progressive causes of the early 1960s, Stanley Ann attended Rus sian language classes at the University of Hawaii, where she met a foreign student from Kenya. His name was Barack Obama. He was interested in Soviet economics, smoked a beloved pipe, and spoke with a British- colonial accent. She found him romantic and exotic. Shortly aft er John F. Kennedy’s election, Stanley Ann and Barack Sr. conceived a baby, Barack Jr., but they never lived together. Th e union didn’t last. Barack Sr. went on to study at Harvard and later married an American woman he met there. Th ey settled in Nairobi and had several children together. His career as civil servant ended abruptly when he published an article in an African academic journal, in which he faulted Kenya’s revolutionary leader, Jomo Kenyatta, for failing to adopt a consistent Maoist line on economic policy. (Kenyatta was initially fonder of Soviet thinking, as Barack Obama Sr. had been in his university days. And, the new leader of an in de pen dent Kenya didn’t tolerate criticism.) Stumbling drunkenly, Obama’s father was struck by a car on a 053-50854_ch01_4P.indd 10 6/28/12 11:01 AM THE WOMEN 11 crowded street in Kenya’s capital city. As a result of his injuries, a surgeon amputated both of his legs. Two de cades later, the gift ed student of lan- guages and economics died penniless. He did not live to see his son’s rise. Meanwhile, Stanley Ann had moved on and had married another foreign student whom she met at the University of Hawaii, Lolo Soetoro. Within a year, the new family had decamped to Indonesia. Barack Jr. was just six years old.2 On that island archipelago, Muslim radicals and Maoist revolutions clashed while seeking to topple Indonesia’s iron- fi sted dictator. Th ere was a clash inside Obama, too. He simply didn’t fi t in there. Native children taunted him and sometimes threw stones. He was new, and his grasp of their language was poor. Th e few strangers he could speak to in En glish were American oil executives who would come to his adopted father’s house to discuss deals over dinner. His mother didn’t like them and said they were shallow and materialistic. While they lived in compounds with servants, hers was a small house on a busy street in a native neighborhood. Young Obama was not encouraged to befriend the children of the American executives. He grew without the company of his countrymen or his extended family. No part of his identity was solidly locked in place. He was neither white nor black; neither American nor Asian nor African; neither Chris- tian nor Muslim. His adoptive father didn’t practice his own religion ( Islam) and his mother (nominally Christian) mocked all religions. Obama’s former teacher in Indonesia, Israella Pareira, said: “His mother was white, his father was Indonesian, and here was a black, chubby boy with curly hair. It was a big question mark for us.”3 And it was for him, too, as Obama later wrote. Th e little guidance he received from his mother about Christianity was dismissive. First, he attended a Roman Catholic school, an experience he later recounted: “When it came time to pray, I would close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and thirty brown children, muttering words.” 4 Th e irre- ligious views of his mother were stamped on him early, and fi rmly. He then moved to a Muslim neighborhood and attended a Muslim 053-50854_ch01_4P.indd 11 6/28/12 11:01 AM 12 LEADING FROM BEHIND school.5 Obama sometimes attended the local mosque with his stepfather. Some of the president’s critics, both Demo crats and Republicans, have fo- cused on the fact that Obama’s school registration card, at both the Cath- olic and Muslim schools in Indonesia, identifi ed him as a “Muslim.” Th ey miss something more important: Obama was given no distinctive religious identity, nothing to hold on to. “Muslim” was assumed by form- fi llers be- cause his father was Muslim and nearly everyone else in Indonesia was. Life in Indonesia was always changing. Obama shared a home with tropical birds, monkeys, and small crocodiles. When one pet died, an- other of a diff erent species replaced it.