HISTORY IS NEVER FINISHED. THERE IS ALWAYS MORE INFORMATION to unearth. That’s especially true with recent history, when the dust hasn’t settled and the lead players remain in their roles.
This book is the first telling of a tumultuous year in US politics and chronicles events that were under way as it was being reported and written. Showdown is primarily based on more than a hundred interviews with key participants: past and present White House officials, Democratic and Republican members of Congress, political strategists, Capitol Hill staffers from both parties, and others. These sources often speak to reporters and authors on background—meaning they cannot be quoted by name. This is a common, though sometimes regrettable, practice in journalism, but one with an obvious trade-off. It is usually impossible to penetrate the bastions of power and influence in Washington (or elsewhere) without depending on unidentified sources—especially when the topics at hand are recent decisions and actions for which there are no official records to examine.
Of course, it’s best when sources are completely identified, and whenever possible I have named sources. But without relying on confidential sources, the inside story of an ongoing presidency could not be told. Many government officials are not allowed to discuss publicly their experiences and observations. In some cases, sources requested anonymity because speaking freely about the president and the White House (or members of Congress) could harm their professional relationships and damage their careers.
When I recount private meetings and conversations, these accounts are generally based on interviews with people who witnessed these events or learned of them directly from a participant. In several instances, participants consulted notes they had taken during those meetings before discussing these events with me; at other times sources shared such notes with me. When I describe the thoughts or opinions of a particular official, these passages are based on interviews with one or more sources who possessed direct knowledge of that information—or on public comments that explicitly indicated what a person was thinking.
Though there are no books yet published that span the full period covered by this book, there are several works that I found highly useful for understanding Barack Obama and his presidency.
Foremost among those was Jonathan Alter’s The Promise: President Obama, Year One (Simon and Schuster, 2010). Richard Wolffe’s Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House (Crown, 2010) offered a valuable deep dive into the White House during the first few months of 2010. Ron Suskind’s controversial Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (HarperCollins, 2011) probed the crucial nexus of politics and economic policy.
In The Audacity to Win: How Obama Won and How We Can Beat the Party of Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin (Penguin Books, 2010), David Plouffe presented a gripping, from-the-inside account of the 2008 campaign that revealed much about the president and his top advisers. David Remnick’s The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (Random House, 2010) was a penetrating and perceptive biography that tied Obama’s past to the present. But no book may better explain the young Obama than his own elegant Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Crown, 2007).
As noted above, much of this book is drawn from interviews. But I also benefited from the fine journalism conducted by reporters who covered the events depicted in this book as they were occurring. Two daily online political newsletters were especially valuable: “First Read,” compiled by the political unit of NBC News, and “Playbook,” written by Politico’s Mike Allen. Each provides a blow-by-blow rundown of the prominent political and policy stories of Washington (and compiles the must-read news stories of the day). RealClearPolitics, a site that aggregates political articles (while offering original reporting and tracking polls), was also quite useful.
There are specific reporters to whom I owe thanks for either particular articles or ongoing coverage of a specific story. John Heilemann, the coauthor of Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (HarperCollins, 2010), the go-to account of the 2008 presidential campaign, wrote an excellent piece in New York magazine revealing and evaluating post-midterms shifts at the White House (“The West Wing, Season II,” January 23, 2011).
No one covered the New START ratification battle better than Josh Rogin, who writes “The Cable” blog for Foreign Policy. He broke news and provided much insight on the complicated twists and turns, and explained the policy and technical intricacies of the ratification fight. The New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote a fine ticktock covering this skirmish (“Obama Gamble Pays Off With Approval of Arms Pact,” December 23, 2010).
Ryan Lizza’s marvelous examination in The New Yorker of the impact of the Arab Spring on Obama’s foreign policy—which disclosed Obama’s early Presidential Study Directive concerning the possibility of democratic change in North Africa and the Middle East—was an incisive review of the president’s decision making during the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings (“The Consequentialist,” May 2, 2011).
Politico’s David Rogers, a veteran journalist who has long reported on Washington’s budget wars, covered the near government shutdown and subsequent debt-ceiling showdown with more knowledge (and better sources) than perhaps any other reporter. His work was essential for understanding the complexities of each of those squabbles. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post also superbly covered those confrontations and produced sharp daily accounts (often working with her colleagues at the newspaper). One particularly valuable wrap-up of the debt-ceiling clash was reported and written by her, Paul Kane, Brady Dennis, Alec MacGillis, David Fahrenthold, Rosalind Helderman, Felicia Sonmez, and Dan Balz (“Origins of the Debt Showdown,” August 6, 2011).
During the 2011 budget and debt-ceiling tussles, the Huffington Post mounted live blogs that published up-to-the-second reports. Afterward, these running accounts served as handy chronologies—as did a daily explainer that was produced during the debt-ceiling fracas by my colleagues at Mother Jones for our website. Talking Points Memo also provided valuable daily—sometimes hourly—coverage of the budget and debt-ceiling battles and the subsequent fight over the payroll tax cut. Ditto for Greg Sargent’s blog, “The Plum Line,” at the Washington Post. Ezra Klein’s “Wonkblog” column for that newspaper was an ever-useful source of analysis of budget policy.
In the days immediately following the Osama bin Laden raid, several news organizations quickly produced riveting accounts of the daring operation. Mark Mazzetti, Helene Cooper, and Peter Baker handled this assignment for the New York Times (“Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden,” May 2, 2011). Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo did the same for the Associated Press (“Osama Bin Laden Dead: How One Phone Call Led U.S. to Bin Laden’s Doorstep,” May 2, 2011). Greg Miller and Joby Warrick covered this territory for the Washington Post (“Bin Laden Discovered ‘Hiding in Plain Sight,’ ” May 3, 2011). Marc Ambinder at the National Journal wrote one of the first behind-the-scenes articles (“The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden,” May 2, 2011). Another good account of the raid and the intelligence work that led to the mission later appeared in Target: Bin Laden: The Death and Life of Public Enemy Number One, an e-book produced by ABC News.
All official remarks made by President Barack Obama can be found at www.whitehouse.gov.