They also didn’t have to deal with a foreign government, like Russia, who would rather lie than tell the truth about just about anything.Ī government has a responsibility to deal with facts, which slows down their response to a crisis.

Harding, FDR, or any of the other presidents didn’t have to deal with instantaneous posting through social media that reached thousands, if not millions, within seconds. Every administration has had to deal with outright lies being written about their intentions, but Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. The Obama administration was the first US administration to deal extensively with the fake news, the Russian troll factories, the social media misinformation, etc. You live your life knowing that the story out there about who you are is different from the person you think you are, and want to be.” People tell you those things pass, but they don’t. All the dots in their drawing of me had been connected-fiction writer, leaker, liar, Benghazi, Iran deal.

A label would forever be attached to me: ‘Ben Rhodes, who boasted of creating an echo chamber to sell the Iran deal…’ The right-wing critics now had fresh meat for the balance of the Obama years and beyond. My involvement with one of the things I was proudest of, the Iran deal, was now permanently tainted. ”Most people told me it would pass, but that wasn’t true. But it also shows us what it means to hold the pen, and to write the words that change our world. It is an essential record of the last decade. This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s presidency. Rhodes puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history: starting every morning with Obama in the Daily Briefing waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government confronting the resurgence of nationalism that led to the election of Donald Trump. For nearly ten years, Rhodes was at the centre of the Obama Administration – first as a speechwriter, then a policymaker, and finally a multi-purpose aide and close collaborator. Chosen for his original perspective and gift with language, his role was to help shape the nation’s hopes and sense of itself. The World As It Is tells the full story of what it means to work alongside a radical leader of how idealism can confront reality and survive of how the White House really functions and of what it is to have a partnership, and ultimately a friendship, with a historic president.Ī young writer and Washington outsider, Ben Rhodes was plucked from obscurity aged 29. This is a book about two people making the most important decisions in the world.

The World as It Is by Ben Rhodes