How Obama and his chief speechwriter made sense of America’s ‘beautiful mess’

Editor’s note: This story was adapted from the September 14 issue of CNN’s “Meanwhile in America,” the US policy email for global readers. click here read and subscribe to past issues.

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There has been such turmoil since Barack Obama left the White House in January 2017 that his presidency feels like it happened in a distant time.

While history’s judgments will stretch for decades, it is already clear that the first black president’s two terms in office sparked a backlash that has shaped America ever since. After all, he was succeeded by Donald Trump, who began his political start by writing a racist and false conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States.

The current conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which is sweeping the country to the right, owes much to Senate Republicans’ refusal to grant Obama a top bench election, which was his constitutional prerogative. And from Obama’s landmark health care bill to the Iran nuclear deal, Republicans have spent much of their time trying to undo his legacy since his presidency ended.

Obama’s chief speechwriter Cody Keenan has released a new book, Grace, that breaks down 10 days in 2015 that felt, even then, to be one of the most historic, tragic, and politically pivotal periods of Obama’s tenure in the White House. Keenan draws an inside account of an emotional week and a half during which the Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage rights and saved Obamacare, and the President delivered an eternal eulogy in memory of a pastor who was among nine people killed in a racially motivated massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.

The then-president, who stunned Americans by singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral, summed up this exciting week after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples should have the same basic rights as everyone else. “(It’s) sometimes two steps forward and one step back, forced by the persistent effort of committed citizens,” he said. “And then sometimes there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that comes like a thunderbolt.”

In the meantime spoke to Keenan this week about his book, which is less a standard Washington treatise with a scorecard of political victories and losses and more a reflection on the painful process of forging change. It is a meditation on the craft of speechwriting itself and its place in a presidency more than most rooted in the power of rhetoric.

Our interview is below.

What exactly is the role of a speechwriter in a presidency? President Obama used rhetoric in a way few other presidents do — to outline a problem, propose solutions, and inspire policy action to try to forge a common national understanding. What is lost when a president doesn’t?

A sense of direction. Some shared national histories and priorities. A moral compass. Failing that, we’re off. It can feel like everyone is there for themselves. And when a president fills that void with division and petty resentment, pretty ugly stuff bubbles up. The bottom end of the job is keeping our basest instincts in check, fighting fires and preventing the worst.

At its best, however, the rhetoric of a presidency can inspire, change hearts and minds, and even change the course of the country. We had no illusions about how difficult this would be—but my speechwriting team and I always approached each speech as if we could do it. Otherwise why bother?

What is the process behind a great speech? How do you decide what the President wants to say, how many drafts go back and forth, etc.?

The process started with Obama. We stole some time in his schedule to sit down with him and ask ourselves, “What is the story we want to tell and why?” If he was in overdrive that day, his moral imagination was capable of a great speech buoyant from the start – and his meticulous edits would get her where she needed to be.

When he wasn’t at his game that day, I would sometimes try to provoke him with some of the day’s political idiocy. The prologue to Grace reveals the course of Obama’s speech at Selma. I bugged him with Rudy Giuliani’s clumsy monologue, trying to convince the Republican base that he, too, thought Obama was insufficiently American.

Obama ignored it and brushed it off his shoulder, but he felt it addressed a worthwhile topic to explore in Selma: who gets to decide what it means to be an American? Was a group of mostly poor, mostly black Americans who had their heads bashed in for daring to march for the right to vote somehow not part of “Real America”? That challenge probably inspired his best speech, one that rephrased American history more fully and truly, becoming the purest distillation of what he believed patriotism and American exceptionalism really are. It also became our purest collaboration – thanks to a “snow day” in Washington, we were able to bounce five drafts back and forth, each one better than the last.

(Obama traveled to Selma, Alabama, in March 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the turning points in the civil rights struggle, when peaceful protesters were beaten by state troops on the Edmund Pettus Bridge).

One criticism of Obama has been that he sometimes reached out for a speech too readily — and that speeches sometimes became a substitute for action in deadlocked Washington. How do you react to this?

Believe me, there were times when we, as speechwriters, criticized him for being too willing to reach for a speech! But I think criticism also affects all of the people who have been working behind the scenes every day — White House staffers, congressional staffers, attorneys and activists and organizers — in a system that is often designed to stymie change and sap your passion , falls short. There were nights when we went home relieved when we managed to move the ball forward just a little bit. The great moments of victory and progress are not without all those thousand days. And you definitely don’t get them if you not only keep the American people informed of what you’re doing, but also get activated to the cause.

Have you ever run out of words?

This is how it might feel. I write in the book that neither Obama nor I wanted to write a eulogy after the Charleston terrorist attack. We had already written too many obituaries after mass shootings. We had a passionate debate in the Oval Office just four days before the eulogy, during which he said for the only time, “We’ve run out of words.”

But finally he found the words. He even sang them. And they were inspired by the families of the Charleston Nine.

So I don’t think you can run out of words. Inspiration can come from anywhere – be it an extraordinary act of grace or a clumsy attempt at birth by a broken politician.

The book contains the most honest and poignant assessments of how Obama, as President, dealt with race that we have read yet. This is an area of ​​his presidency that has not yet received much attention from commentators, and it is still a bit early for historians. What effect did the President’s speeches have on this topic?

Honestly. Which is sometimes the most shocking thing in politics. Think of the “race speech” in Philadelphia in the heat of the 2008 primary. What kind of politician says, “I want to give a long and honest speech on race before the next primary?”

That honesty didn’t just show up in explaining the black experience to the rest of the country, exciting as that might be. In “Race Speech,” he sought to identify with the rest of the country and explain the grievances of whites and bring people together across race and class to push back the real obstacles to progress. In his speech marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, he added some sharp criticism of where the civil rights movement has fallen short in the decades since and where it may regain a foothold as the country’s conscience.

Above all, he practiced a policy of reconciliation, not blame. He has not held us responsible for past sins or berated us for our faith. That will not do. Instead, he gave us a chance to change for the better, pointing out that America has always done it when it’s best. This may not always be satisfactory. But that made him the first Democrat in more than four decades to win states like Indiana and North Carolina — and the first president since Eisenhower to win 51% of the vote twice.

The Charleston and Selma speeches—and also the Philadelphia race speech—are some of the most direct and profound declarations of race in American life and politics in recent decades. Obama explains the black experience to the rest of the country, and sometimes vice versa. You were instrumental in the first two. What do you hope future Americans will take away from these speeches in the coming decades?

What Obama did with the Charleston speech – and he tore up the second half of my draft – was a prime example of reconciliation politics. He used the lyrics of “Amazing Grace” to build a structure for the back half of the speech that gave people a chance to see where we might have been blind and change our minds. That’s a tone I think our best politicians can achieve.

But I really hope that one day his speech in Selma will show up in the textbooks. It told the story of America more fully and truthfully, with a broader cast of characters that more of us can relate to. In this speech he wanted to give the young generation of today their marching orders. And what could be more important than protecting this multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-everything democracy–this beautiful mess–and proving that it can function in a way that lives up to our founding ideals?