I started writing this book shortly after my presidency ended – shortly after, that is, Michelle and I boarded Air Force One for the last time, headed west for a long-delayed break. On the plane, the mood was fluctuating. We were both physically and emotionally drained, not only from the hardships of the last eight years but also from the unexpected results of an election in which, as my successor, a political leader had been chosen that was the polar opposite of everything we had fought for (…).
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First of all, I was hoping to offer an honest representation of my presidency: not just a historical memory of the major events that occurred during my dual term and the important personalities I had to deal with, but also an account of some of the difficulties on the plane. political, economic and cultural that have contributed to determining the challenges my administration has had to face and the choices that my team and I have made (…). I am painfully aware that a more gifted writer would have found a more concise way to tell the same story (after all, my office in the White House was right next door to what Lincoln once used as his office and is now a bedroom. bed where, behind a glass case, an autographed copy of the Gettysburg Speech is still preserved: 272 words in all). Every time I went to work, however, whether it was to describe the early stages of my election campaign, my administration’s handling of the financial crisis, negotiations with the Russians on nuclear weapons or the forces that led to the Spring Arabic, my mind resisted a simple, straightforward narrative. (…). I could not always explain my motivations by referring to avalanches of data or recalling a briefing held at the Oval Office, because perhaps they had been shaped thanks to a conversation with a stranger during the election campaign, a visit to a military hospital or a lesson my mother received when I was a child. From my memories only apparently secondary details continued to emerge (my attempts to find a secluded spot for an evening cigarette; laughter with my staff during a card game aboard Air Force One) which, however, returned, better than public events, my experience in the eight years I spent in the White House.
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Beyond the work it took to fix thoughts on the page, what I hadn’t fully anticipated was the turn events would take in the three and a half years since that last flight on Air Force One. As I write these words, the country is struggling in the grip of a global pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans dead, companies forced into bankruptcy, and millions of people out of work. Across the nation, individuals from all walks of life took to the streets to protest following the police killing of unarmed black men and women. And, perhaps even more troubling, our democracy appears to be on the brink of a crisis rooted in the fundamental conflict between two opposing views of what America is and what it should be.; a crisis that has left the body politic torn, angry and distrustful, and which has allowed a continuous violation of institutional norms, procedural guarantees and respect for those fundamental notions that Republicans and Democrats once took for granted.
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This is not a completely new conflict. In some ways, indeed, it has always defined the American experience. It is inherent in those founding documents in which it is proclaimed that all men are equal and, at the same time, that a slave counts three fifths of a free man. It finds expression already in the first opinions expressed by our courts, such as when the judge of the Supreme Court explains in no uncertain terms to the Native Americans that the rights of their tribes to transmit the property are not exercisable since the court of the conqueror does not have the power to recognize the just claims of the conquered. It is a conflict that was fought on the fields of Gettysburg and Appomattox, but also in the corridors of Congress, on a bridge in Selma, among the vineyards of California and on the streets of New York; a conflict in which soldiers but also, and more often, union organizers, suffragists, porters, student leaders, waves of immigrants and LGBTQ activists, armed with nothing but pickets, leaflets and a pair of walking shoes. At the heart of this never-ending battle is a simple question: is it important to us that America’s reality matches the ideals on which it was founded? Do we really believe that our principles of self-government and individual freedom, equal opportunity and equality before the law should apply to everyone? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not by law, to reserve these prerogatives to a privileged few?
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I realize that according to some, the time has come to abandon the myth: an analysis of America’s past and even a superficial look at the headlines show how the ideals of this nation have always been secondary to conquest and submission, to a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend that this is not the case is to be complicit in a rigged game from the start. And I confess that there were times, in the course of writing this book – as I reflected on my presidency and all that has happened since – when I had to wondering if I wasn’t too measured in telling the truth as I saw it, too cautious in words and deeds, in the belief that by appealing to what Lincoln called the best angels of our nature, I had a better chance of leading us all to the America we promised.
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I don’t have an answer. What I can say with certainty is that I am not yet willing to abandon the possibility of that America, and not for the exclusive good of future generations of Americans but for the good of all humanity. In fact, I am of the idea that the pandemic we are experiencing is both a consequence and a momentary interruption of the incessant march towards an interconnected world, a world in which peoples and cultures cannot help but collide. In such a world – a world of global supply networks, instant capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist organizations, climate change, mass migration and increasing complexity – we will either learn to coexist, cooperate and recognize the dignity of others or we will succumb. . And this is why the world looks to America – the only great power in history made up of people of all races, faiths, cultures from all corners of the planet – to understand if our experiment in democracy can work.. To understand if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To understand if we can really live up to our creed and what it means.
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It is still all to see. By the time this first volume is published, elections in the United States will have just taken place, and while I believe the stakes could not be higher, I also know that in no way will a single election be able to answer. If I remain confident it is because I have learned to trust my fellow citizens, especially those of the new generation: the conviction that all people have equal value seems to be rooted in them as well as the commitment to transforming into reality the principles that parents and teachers they transmitted them perhaps without fully believing it. This book is especially aimed at those young people: it is an invitation to reinvent the world once again and to realize, through hard work, determination and a good dose of imagination, an America finally in tune with the best of us.
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© 2020, Garzanti Srl, Milan
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November 14, 2020 (change November 15, 2020 | 00:06)
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