On a tumultuous day at an international climate conference early in his administration, President Barack Obama confronted a senior Chinese official who offered what the US delegation deemed weak commitments. Mr. Obama declined the offer. Not enough
Chinese officials were outraged. “What do you mean it’s not good enough? Why is it not good enough?” he demanded. He referred to a past conversation with John Kerry, then a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. “I spoke with Senator Kerry, and Senator Kerry said that was enough.”
Obama looked at him evenly. “Well, Senator Kerry is not the President of the United States,” he replied.
A sharp moment of relief, a young American president thinking his own way as he clashes with a stubborn foreign power, comes to life here. New Oral History Project on the Obama Administration Released Wednesday. Six years after Obama stepped out of office, a project by Insight, a social sciences institute at Columbia University, has amassed perhaps the most extensive collection of interviews yet of the era.
The researchers interviewed 470 Obama administration veterans, commentators and activists who were in the midst of big events at the time, including Mr. Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, amassing a total of 1,100 hours of recordings. Transcripts of the interviews will be released in installments over the next three years, with the first set of 17, released Wednesday, focusing on climate change, a central focus that continues to shape the national debate today. was a problem.
“This study will yield hundreds of new insights, many of which will change our understanding of the Obama era and, more generally, the period from 2008 to 2016.” said Peter Behrman, founding director of Insight and principal investigator of the study. Obama Oral History Project.
Obama’s inauguration has been marked by what Evan McCormick, who led the foreign policy portion of the project, has said his presidency resonated around the world as an “Obama moment.” is. “What became clear in our interviews was that the moment of great hope and anticipation brought about by the election of the first black president was global,” he said.
Oral histories of past presidency have been a valuable resource for historians and researchers for decades.of University of Virginia Mirror Center has implemented projects like this dating back to the Jimmy Carter presidency. The Columbia project was organized with support from the Obama Foundation.
The first part of the interview does not include interviews with former presidents, first ladies, or other prominent figures from the Obama era. Instead, this paper is not an extensive look at Obama himself or the eight years of his administration as a whole, but rather one issue that researchers thought was important to Obama’s inauguration: policy debates. A solid focus on the otaku feast.
Still, the vibe of some of his executives behind the scenes comes through in this limited first interview. Obama used to tease scientists and engineers while drinking his favorite Fijian water. “At school I was separated from you,” he used to say. “I’m a lawyer. I don’t like math. I don’t do math.” Stephen ChuWhen the Nobel Prize-winning physicist-turned-energy minister showed up with 30 slides when five would have sufficed, the furious president would say: I made it. Look no further for them. ”
The focus on climate change in the first series of interviews also highlights the larger trade-offs Mr. Obama has made between competing priorities. Records reveal, for example, how he made health care a top legislative goal at the start of his 2009 term, perhaps ultimately leading to the drastic climate change he would argue. It makes the possibility of countermeasures hopeless.
At one point, when he was passing all of his influence, Law for Adjustment of Medical ExpensesI explained the timing calculations to Mr. Chu regretfully. “Look, I know I said energy and health care, but next year,” he said. “Next is energy.”
By the time he turned more serious attention to clean energy programs in the form of cap-and-trade schemes that create market incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Obama’s political capital had dried up.the bill he imposed passed the House of Representatives but Not a Democratic-majority Senate.
“When Obama was President, I was really hopeful,” he recalled. Carol M. Browner, his White House Coordinator of Energy and Climate Change Policy. “I felt that climate change was finally here. And we were. Then the Senate would never take up the bill.”
Chu considered Obama an “extraordinary president” who set aside personal politics, but still voiced the disappointment of many allies that Obama made no effort to pressure Congress. rice field. In an interview with Oral History, Mr. Chu compared Mr. Obama to President Lyndon B. Johnson, famous for being a powerful congressman who passed groundbreaking civil rights legislation and the Great Society’s anti-poverty program.
“He was less connected to Congress than I expected,” Chu said. At some point in 2012, he recalled asking Obama if he had seen a Steven Spielberg movie. “Lincoln” He detailed the moral compromises made to pass the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. “Right now, I’m not asking President Obama to do anything immoral,” Chu said. “But using the president’s authority to actually collect votes is something he wanted more of. He was too gentlemanly, too callous for that.”
After being re-elected in 2012, Obama was once again determined to save the planet from ecological catastrophe. “President Obama is clearly ready to rock and roll on climate change into his second term,” State Department Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters at Columbia. He spoke of the arduous journey. Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, including scenes with Chinese officials. “Obama comes in like a gangbuster.”
Obama’s successor, President Donald J. Trump, later said: withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreementbut President Biden reverted to agreement.
Oral History organizers will also interview dissatisfaction with Obama, including longtime environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, who helped found the global grassroots organization 350.org. focused on.
“What frustrates me about Obama and many others in this area is that they lump climate change—climate change, with other problems they face—and I think we tended to think about it in the same way that we think about … check it off as one item on your checklist,” he said.
“No matter how much I love him,” McKibben added. “It was clear that at a deep level he was indifferent to such things and would not suffer to gain public opinion at the cost of political pain.” “
But advisers insisted Obama cared and said he regretted his early failures. Just before he left the East Room of the White House in 2015, Clean Power Plan announced It imposes a ceiling on the carbon emissions of power plants, he said. Gina McCarthyThe Environmental Protection Agency director and later Mr. Biden’s climate change adviser said he was determined to take action for his two daughters.
“I promised to do something about the climate,” he told her. “We didn’t deliver in our first term, and that means a lot.”
audio creator Palin Bellows.
