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[music] i titled it the Promised Land because even though we may not get there in our lifetimes, even if we experience hardships and disappointmentsalong the way , i at least still have faith we can create a more perfect union, not a perfect unit but a moreperfect union. [music] good morning and welcome to a very special edition of Washington Post live. Im michelle noris, opinion columnist for washington pos and founding director of the race cd project and for this special conversation this morning i enjoyed by my dear friend elizabeth exander, poet, scholar and president of theandrew w mellon foundation. Good morning elizabeth. Good morning michelle, its wonderful to be together. It is wonderf to be together and together we both welcomed our guest for ts conversation, the 44th president of the United Statesbarack obama. I assume you recognize that guy there, good moing. Hey guys. The Washington Post brought outthe big guns for this. Are so excited to see you. I am very gratef that you have the time. Were so excited to talk to you about your book. This is a neinnovation so we have to beginith a little bit of news, we learned astrazeneca has joined two other compans with their success in a vaccine trial. What do you think about the challenges of distributive of vaccine and if youre concerned about a drift where some people have access to the vaccine and some people dont. Thats going to be the big challenge. Ithink were all excited about the results. There better even than a lot of scientists anticipated and now the challenge becomes how do we distribute it rapidly and how do we make sure people actually are willing to get vaccinated. That is both a logistical and economic and public messaging challenge. It has not been made easier by the fact that weve had a incoherence federal Mitigation Strategy to say the least when it comes to science and hold science around covid. My understanding and obviously im not a scientific expert here is that part of the challenge at least for the first two vaccines that were developed is that they have to bestored at certain temperatures. That puts a little additional challenge on distributing it widely. I think one of the first tasks for the Biden Administration coming in is going to be to make sure that we have clear protocols about who gets first, whether its frontline workers, who are most vulnerable and then move forward from there. Then we have to consider the International Issues because they are historically whats happened is that when you have drawings developed like this they are expensive and often times very poor countries are the last to get if they get it at all. An International Coordination around the process is going to be there important and finally as i said, were going to have to make sure the public messaging counteracts whatever suspicions and conspiracy theories the anti vaccination internet is pretty powerful and were going to want to make sure we roll that out in a way that elicits trust from the public as much as possible. We are starting to get a sense of what joe Biden Administration will look like and you seem some things that are familiar to you including lincoln expected to be named as new secretary of state. Will he be able to quickly convince european allies that the trunk pompeo period was an aberration and try to restore trust and a working relationship with some of the allies that right now after a rather close view of the United States . I know tony. He was mydeputy of National Security advisor. He was joes or in policy advisor when joe was Vice President and he was part of our innercircle and all our key meetings throughout my presidency. Outstanding. Mark, gracious , a skilled diplomat wellregarded around the world. And i know hes going to do a great job. The reports Archie Sullivan will serve as National Security advisor. Wicked smart, young, energetic and i think hes going to be outstanding so you are seeing a team develop that i have great confidence in. I think its going important to recognize that the confidence that our allies had and the world had in American Leadership is not going to be restored overnight. They are going to be greatly relieved and pleased to see people like tony at various conferences around the world and returning to the traditional leadership roles that the us has played but there is going to be a great sense that america is still divided. Some of the shenanigans that are going on right now around election, that is making the world question how reliable and steady the us maybe. The reversal of us physicians on things like iran deal and the paris courts are going to create some inhibitions in terms of entering into agreements, not always being certain whether or not they will be reverse by future administrations so theres been damage done that is going to take time to dig ourselves out of. But there is no doubt that joe has got the right people to do it and i have every confidence he will be able to do it, it just may not be able to happen in one session. One last question before we turn to your role in public life, we saw youactive in the president ial campaign for your former vicepresident. Will you help in any way the Democratic Candidates running for senate in georgia . I think its a huge critically importantelection. If in fact the democrats win, we will win those two seats, they will have a sliver of a majority in the senate. With the Vice President tiebreaker. So i will do what im asked to do in terms of the hopeful. At the end of the day, thats going to be determined by the people of georgia. Im always flattered when people say barack, we need you here, its going to make all thedifference. Ultimately, i think what really makes a difference is people like stacy abrams who been working 4 years in the trenches galvanizing and mobilizing people to recognize their own power. I am a huge believer in grassroots, bottomup work and i think that what started with stacy and he Gubernatorial Campaign and that she perpetuated and others got involved with, thats the reason that georgia and for joe biden and thats the reason, thatswhat i think its going to take for us to be able to sustain us down the road. Doing robo calls for some guest appearances, it gets people excited but ultimately its the people that of georgia recognizing their own power that makes all the difference. We want to get to a discussion about your book and im going to turn it over to elizabeth. Hello there. Lets talk about the writing of this wonderful book and i wanted to put out to you the idea that autobiography is a Great American genre. I think because america believes in themselves and the i in the week is what we get with the collective fiction picture of ourselves in biographies so i wonder if you were writing Promised Land how have you thought about the genre and how have you thought about writing autobiography and how a tone developed as youwere writing . Thats interesting, part of it is america believes in itself and is one of the essential elements of being american i think is this idea of self creation. That we are not bound by whatever station we were born into. Whether thats mythological, whether it is fully reflected in the reality of class barriers and race barriers, is part of us that weve internalized and i am going to get out there and make something of myself and certainly my first book dreams from my father reflected that kind of story of me as a young person trying to figure out racial identity and how i fit in to this new world first in hawaii, then in places like newyork and chicago. Theres no doubt that ive learned to write also in part from sort of the personal narrative. If you asked me whats a book that taught me to think about how i would like to write, what is buyer towrite even though i cant write that good , it would be probably the fire next time by James Baldwin. An autobiographical essay that tells a story and is internal also paints a portrait of new york, harlem and race and preachers and pimps and theres an entire world from few square blocks that suddenly gives you a picture of all of america. And of seping history. I read books like that and that was my creative writing class. There is no ubt when i thought about writing this president ial memoir, those were my models as opposed to a traditional pridential memoir with, and that then i met with things such and such and theprime minister such and such. And how well i succeeded in tracking that kind of a more literary approach toit , it will be up to the readers but that was certainly part of what i was trying to do. Of course James Baldwin didnt have to stick in long explanations of the financial cris or Nuclear Negotiations so that was the disadvantage. Every time once in a while you get in a poetic flow a you realize you know what, i got to do little history, a little work here and try to find that balance was sometimes tough. Thank you. Michelle is going to ask some more now. When we were writing this book during a period of total and transformation in america and when youre writing a book having a conversation withyourself theres also other noise thats happening in the rld and you have to decide to what degree do i too met outwardlin , this is a period when new policies wereunder interrogation or being fully raised by the cuent administration. How much did a that influence you when you are writing this book . I imagine it was almost like having a 5000 pound elhant on your shoulder whi you are writing your own work. Its interesting, i dont think it affected that much partly because even though i ended up writing this stuff into two volumes, i had a clear senseof therc of the story. And i know how the story ends , at least the end of my presidency with donald trump coming into office and i had already internalized and understood that what his presidency was going to do and what he stood for so all the stuff that was happening while i was wring wasnt really shocking or surprising to me. I would say that if anything, what probably influenced the book as i was writing may have been a growing sense of optimism based on for example what happened this summer in the wake of the George Floyd Murder and seeing young people mobilize and activate themselves the way they did. It actually strengthened my conviction that in fact despite the backwards movement that my successor represented on things like Climate Change or Voting Rights or economic equity, that there was still this underlying Forward Motion that was going to be carried on by future generations that had been affected by my presidency and would help lead us going forward. So if anything i probably got more convinced about the story that i was telling as a consequence of what i saw particularly over the last year. Is there anything about yourself that you bought in particular when you went back to write the story, your first four or eight years in office . You know, i think i came to realize how much i loved the people i worked with. I knew that, but the more i wrote, the more i appreciated how gifted, hardworking , just remarkable that the people who were part of my campaign and part of my white house were. You guys have read the book so you know that i devote an entire chapter to iowa for example. And my state director for iowa is a guy named paul seuss who remains a friend of mine but as i was writing about it, as i was talking about this guy who comes from a small midwestern town, conservative, who is not a flashy guy, kind of grumpy in his external behavior, but deep down is this hugely idealistic guy and he leads this team of kids to win the state for me and eventually launch us on the path to the white house. As im writing about it, and he would probably be embarrassed if he heard me say this because hes still kind of a grump sometimes or sarcastic, sardonic. I just realized how much i appreciated him. And how remarkable he was and he was not a big flashy figure. And i think time and again as i wre, it just made me appreciate the degree to which any worthwhile endeavor is a collective effort. Particularly the president of the uned states tends to be elevated as this singular individual, hero or villain depending on your take of any particularpresident. But ally, he and hopefully at some point she is just the front man read the front person. To a much broader and that her of a bunch of people who are making an enormous sacrifice and bringing huge skills to bear in trying to just move this big behemoth of a federal government in the direction that can actually help more people than is currently doing. Andi really , loved writing about others,probably a little bit more than i love writing about myself. There was great excitement for so many reasons including you were the first africanamerican president but what you may not know is there were many people who were excited about the first africaamerican writer to become predent. Dreams from my father was in africanamerican literature classes, taught alongside Frederick Douglasss narrative, malcom x books were reing and literacy and freedom were very important ideas that wer completely captured in dreams from myfather. So also we saw a picture of u a few days after that first election carrying a book of Walt Whitmans collected poems while going to your Daughters School so there were people who said the poets cheered and said theres something about the complexity simultaneously that poetry does. And so what i would like to know is what has your being a writer, how has that informed your governance . Its an interesting qution and i think a timely one. Because the essence to me of writing is being able to use your imagination to stand in somebody elses shoes and see through their eyes. To engage in this radical act of empathy and shape shifting where you can say all right, i can imagine what it might be like to be a young girl whos enslaved. And gone south and i can image myself as a elizabethan duke or whatever. Both as a reader and as a writer. And my politics i think has always been premed on this notion that if in fact america is to work, its going to be because we are unique among rate powers in being able to stitch together one people out of all these diverse strands of people who show up from everywhere with differentcultures and foods and music somehow it works. E pluribus unum, out of many, one. And in that sense, that is to me at least consistent with a writers ssibility. Walt whitman is to me describing not just the american countryside. Hes describing americas best polits. Abraham lincoln when he writes the second inaugural, that is a work of literature and hes imagining th sides to this great colict and what it means. And ultimately ends with malice d Charity Towards all. So that i think informed everything i did. Yosaw this during my presidency and you see it in some of the responses to the book, to a Promised Land. In our current political environment we have a lot of implications with that kind of be able to see the other side. And i think there have been a couple of reviewers and commentators who say look, obama is one side on theother hand the things. And location i think that you can see either side somehow you are paralyzed. At the sensibility means that you cant make decisions that you are because you dont knowway to turn. And the irony is that in fact for me it was the opposite. And i tried to explain his in the book, maybe some folksare impatient with it. Its precisely because i had people i had an issue and i would then feel as though i was making a gooddecision. The cause ive seen it from different angles. And this idea that overthinking problems was or is a weakness in politics i think is indicative of a culture in which we want to amplify and eliminate all gray areas and just have our way the other team as opposed to solving problems and figuring out how in factwe come together. And i, in part i suspect at least on the democratic side, donald trump eliminate all mplexity and just do atever he wants regardle of the consequences and demonizing the other side props i think this says that thats what we should be doing. We dont need some fancy overthinking poetic sensibilit we just need to, this is what we want and were going to go get it. Think thats a mistake because the outcome in terms of policy and being really bad. You end up making poor decisions and look, and the bookith bin laden, the raid into a monopod, hugely complex. It formed my is looking at a whole bunch of different angles to the problem. A whe bunch of exhaustive discussions andmeetings. But thatidnt stop me from then ultimate saying all right, thats what were going to do and it may not work so i actually think the writer sensibility is critical and useful so long as you recognize that once youve seen the complexities of any problem, you still have to make a decision and then be willing to bear the burden that your decision is not going to be perfect, that there may be some tragic unintended consequences to this issue. And you have to comfortable with that as well. You mention ths so intereing, you mentioned whitman so i am large, i contain multitudes of lines so well. I contradict myself, theres nothing wrong with that. There youo. I would love to hear about the fire next time youve given us so many wonderful descriptions of your grandparents going to a sidewalk sale, in new york. Tell us about another book that has beentransformative to you. Its one of those things where you were, if you ask me what the kind of talent that it seems like its just magic dust spriled on someone and suddenly they can write a book like that. It was the kindf book that after reading it i said my goodness, how do somebody do that . Iave to confess, shakespeare, shakespeares tragedies, i wasnt somebody who was raised on that. I i decided take a shakespeare class in college, and just reading those tragedies, it was that same kind of feeling where i thought, how is it that somebody can capture so much of what is essential about a human life quacks and yet still have a story, a plot and interesting things happen so that you are carried forward. I think come when i think about the great works of amecan writers, whether its faulkner or hemingway or langston hughes, i also see what i i mentioned earlier, that part of myself that is constantly dissatisfied and restless, and wanting to see whats next, and leaving the past behind but always been drawn back to it. So i think when you think about my own work, i have been shaped just as my character has been shaped by that quintessential jack kerouac open road, you know, looking west seen what is next. Or in the case of somebody like frederick douass, looking north to see what is next. But in either way, wanting to break the chains of whatever constraints we were born into an bound to. Thank you. Would like to ask you about the organizing structure or the frame for the book. The book begins with a section called the bat and is with a section called on the high wire, which suggests you are not sure if the bet has yielded dividends. Its interesting the notion of a bat being a way ofooking at your presidency and your life, question whether a nation was built around cultural default, built from people who loo a certain way could hold in its and democracy if that demracy is willing to elect someone who is from outside or a mority culture. How did you use that as the organizing principle for the book . Was at where for y this whole story began . You guys were talking about my literary influences. One of my profound political influences that i write about in the book is mahatma gandhi. He famously titled one of his works my experiments in truth. And so if you track gandhi is career, hes basically starting in south africa where he is advocating on behalf of collards and develops some of his techniques that he then takes to india for their independence movement. He keeps on just trying stuff in seeing if it is going to work. And developing a set of principles around nonviolence and nonviolent resistance. I thought about that when i started getting into politics, not because i thought i could mimic his extraordinary life and success, but because i thought it was a good way of thinking about a political career. That i had gotten a good education, i knew i could support a family. If i failed, there was only so far i would fall. I wasnt going to be on the streets. I could afford to take some risks, and the bet i was making from the getgo, even driving to chicago and becoming a Community Organizer and then running for the state senate and then running for the u. S. Senate and ultimately running for the presidency, was this belief that it was possible both to have a progressive politics that actually won elections and garnered a majority of people, that you could put together multiracial coalitions that, despite our racial divide, it was both possible and necessary to bridge those divides in order to advance a progressive agenda. A bet that somebody with as with a background as mine as weird and with the finding could help lead such a coalition. And maybe the biggest bet of all that i could participate in politics at the highest level without losing my soul, right . Because you know, i think the cultural stereotype is that, not just that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but political power in particular is inherently again of shady deals and insider maneuvering. And so all those were some gambles that i took, and i think that that first part of the book describes the nature of that bet. And it is a bet on america, and americas place in the world. This volume ends not with that bet having been decided. I end up making a particular bet about whether bin laden is going to be in abbottabad because if i get that wrong, i may end up being a oneterm president. But as i point out at the end of the book, despite the success of that particular endeavor, the broader question of whether or not the kind of political world and public life and public trust that i am hoping for is achievable, that is still open to question. Because i deliberately i the first volume with the contrast between thi incredible collective endeavor that was the binaden raid with the circus of birtherism that donald trump has concocted. Most tngs were are happening ae same time. And its an indicator that its not at all clear which is the more prevalent tre in american politics. Is it that kind of conspiracy mongering, raciallyharged spectacle . Or ist this deliberate, thoughtful, you know, profesonal, analytically rost process of solving problems in getting stuff don and at the end o the book we dont know yet. Sugst a quick question about that circus or that spectacle. When you first heard the first rumblings of that, the carnival barker you described is sarah palin who talks about w safe to palin it seemed as if the dark spirit that is long been working on the edges of the modern Republican Party, xenophobia, antiintellectualism, paranoids, work on their way to the center stage. When you first heard that, have a chance to revisit this in this book. Im wondering if you feel like you should pushed harder against those forces, if you shouldve hrd something more loudly picketed push harder but with that afflict like . At was that earlier conversation with yrself what it sounded like when you were writing a portion of the book . I dont know what that wou mean to push harder because she was a nominee on the other side of a contested president ial ce, and i push pretty hard against by beating her. And john mccain, right . We won by sizable margins, contesting that worldview. The opposition that plays repeatedly with the party that refuse to work with you. Revisiting this did you think ho you might have tempered optimism and hope you might appeal to the better aels with the a different use of the levers of power . Yeah. Look, a couple observations. Firs of all, i probably should note, and i try to do so in the book, but maybe it interviews because people remember sarah palin, that they are less likely to remember, for example, pat buchanan who was peddling that same kind of politics back in 1992, and before that. Theres a long history of this. The difference i think with palin was that she became the nominee, whereas with pat buchanan, despite him doing well in the republican primary, george h. W. Bush really tried to sideline him as much as he could. And so this was the first act of that kind of approach becoming central to republican identity, and really consuming and overwhelming the more what to that point had been viewed as more established responsible brand of republican conservatis conservatism. Post election, by the time i am president theres no doubt that as i am writing about this im wondering, are the steps i could have taken to counteract or challenge more directly these kinds of attitudes that were looking in the Republican Party . Look, im always requisite of this. There is a school of thought that i think describe in the book. There were critics within the Democratic Party who felt as if i tried for two hard for too long to reach out and to be bipartisan, to accommodate republicans, to assume the best as opposed to just call them out and be more pugilistic and aggressive in going after them. And i understand that impulse. What those critics never kind of ascribed for me was what exactly that was going to do in terms of me actually getting stuff done, as opposed to just feeling good. Perhaps their argument is that i wouldve rallied my side and w went out seen higher turnout in midterm elections and so forth. Because people ultimately are tivated by the sse of it is a fight, a opposed to were tryingo cut deals. But part of my goal in writing this book was to clarify for people the degree to which they country really is divided. This is a big, complicated country, and in order to get anything done, certainly legislatively, you have to figure out how to pick off and accommodate folks who are significantly more conservative than my base in chicago or manhattan or san francisco. And me denouncing or decrying attitudes that were not sufficiently woke, was not going to give me more votes to pass healthcare or deal with Climate Change or what have you. And cerinly at least in my first two years when i still had a majority but was hampered by a filibuster role and the senate, which is one of the villains of my book,his nonconstitutional rulehat arose out of a bad decision by aaron burr that ends up creating a supermajority requirement in the senate. Given that that was the reality at the time, thenly way i could get stuffone, i needed been nelsons vote. Ben nelson was a conservative democrat from nebraska. He had to be conservative t get elected. I had to get the vote of robert bu in my first two years. Then are arrayed in the senatet also a former klan leader, you know, whos the states economy was based on cult and Joe Lieberman who is part of our caucus and had endorsed john mccain in the race against me, but he was part of our caucus. Part of what i want people to come out reading this book understanding is that there is a prophetic voice, because were talking about James Baldwin earlier. There is a prophetic voice that a writer can or a civil rights leader or an activist or a Movement Leader can use to motivate and mobilize and change society. And that prophetic voice oftentimes is the thing that will open up possibilities for politics. Because its changing peoples hearts and changing peoples minds. But the language of politics itself is very rarely moved or shaped by that kind of prophecy. Because ultimately you need votes, and that is a much more, and mario cuomo is terms, its pros and not poetry. My challenge as president was campaigning and some high poetry, using a writers sensibility to describe who are, what we might be. Once you get to governing and then i am dealing with Mitch Mcconnell and john boehner and ben nelson and robert byrd, sometimes regresses in particular overestimate the degree to which high rhetoric is going to actually move votes. Because the country and what i wanted to ask about and what i wanted to go from there is young people. You said you were writing this book explicitly to younger people so what is your diagnostics for e Unfinished Business that they have to take up as they movelong side of an as ty come to lead us . Well, i am so excited to see this generatn coming up. If us old folks will just get out of the way. And thats true culturally, in terms of our politics. I think their instincts are really good. It is Second Nature for them to receive that all people have intrinsic worth a dignity. It is Second Nature for them to not discriminate against people because their differences in race or gender identity or, you know, who they pray to. And they are sophisticated but smart. They are taking in culture from not just all across the country but all around the world. And they are highly idealistic. The question for them is going to be how do we build institutions that work in this modern era and that reflect those good impulses . I think the big work of this next generation is to channel their natural idealism as well as skepticism about existing institutions into a rebuild of those institutions to work for them and that can meet the current challenges. Lets just take the criminal justice system. I think young people understand the need to remake that in a pretty significant way. And their challenge then is going to be, okay, how do we get granular about reimagining what policing would look like . So that, for example, we are not sending Police Officers with live ammunition to deal with a homeless person who might need a Mental Health services and an intervention, and as a way to deescalate. But how do you practically do that . How do we create on the Climate Change front, how do we actually create an economy that can still prove jobs for young peoe and keep the engine of the economy going . But actually is going to preserve the planet for our kids and our grandkids. And how do we make a politics that is responsive . I think they recognize, whether it is around minimumwage laws or gun laws or immigration reform, that their whole bunch of this the majority of ericans believe in, and yet you cant get congress t do anything about it. Why is that . There are all kinds of instutional reboots that have to be done, and that going to require not just imagining better outcomes, but its actually going to be some reengineering, some tinkering to make these institutions work better. And thats hard to do. The best example of that is the fact that were not going to be able to get good voting reforms so everybodys vote is counted so that its easier for everybody to vote so that everybodys votes actually count in terms of being able to fluence congress. We are not going to get that that until you get over the hope of having a majority inongress to pass a new votingights law. Each of these cases your these barriers, you have to get over the hump in order to create the institutional change that is necessary to keep things going a better direction. So we only have a little time left, antidote elizabeth has a question about an observation she had in the book. I think we both a early readers had a chance to dive into this and there are things we both really particularly appreciated yo use of character, your use of language, the way that you explain was a difficult topics and make them accessible. One of the things i areciate your willingness to talk about flaws. And this misstep you may. Since what young people to read, i know we do have a lotf time but he could quickly address whether that was done to leave breadcrumbs for the next generation, to know that most ople dont come out into leadership fully formed. And as it is harder and hder to work in public life,heres a recent event. You are one of the more confident people i know in sports of boardgame anything to do. Look, we all left kids who are roughly the same age, and they are remarkable. They are far superior than i was at their age. But they are also bombarded with this message, partly because of their phones, and they are seeing People Living the best lives on instagram and their hearing about how Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire by 27. You know, they are comparing themselves, their baselines, against which they assess themselves, are so out of whack, compared to what most of us are actually experiencing in our 20s and 30s, that i worry about sometimes. And and i want young people to e that somebody who ended up having a very successful political career, you know, didnt know what the heck he was doing at 23, 24, 25. Even well into his 30s, was still experiencing doubts and confusion in making mistakes, that even when i was running and was on the cover of Time Magazine and attracting these huge crowds, i would make gaffes and i would botch a debate. And thats okay. I probably cant transmit this to a book. I think it has to be lived, but i tried to describe malia and sasha, one of the great gif of getting to be my agend now is im just not afraid of much. Because i have kind of,ve been knocked down a bunch of times. I have embarrassed myself. I have publicly failed, and people have written entire articles about my feelings. I have been criticized and ostracized and demonized, but i am still here. Im okay. And thats a hard thing to internalize in your 20s for your 30s, to the extent that the book can help a young person say, okay, you know what, its worth me taking a chance, its worth me trying hard things, its okay when i screw this up. Because thats part of the process. Then i think it is worth it for me to be able to share that with them. Elizabeth has one last, final, quick question. Yes. The most beautiful moment in the book to me is when you were in oslo, you have won the nobel peace prize. You look out the window and a sea of People Holding candles aloft. And you say, if i may i will read your words, whatever you do wont be enough. I heard their voices say. Try anyway. What do those words mean to you now . I think thats what we tell ourselves hopefully every morning when we get up, right . Thats not unique to politics. Life will throw stuff at you. That would be disappointments. There will be pain and there would be lost, and we know at the end of the day we die. Thats the one certainty that we have come at this is temporary. And yet there is this massive possibility of joy along the way, as long as we try, as long as were open to it, as long as we experience it. And more than anything, as long as we reach out and are sharing this time on earth with others that we love and we care about, and that hopefully were continually expanding that, the circumference of that love and concern, to reach more and more people. Because that fills us up. You know, thats not just, thats not just a political point of view. Thats a writer point of view. And ultimately a spiritual point of view. Thats how we get through the tough times and enjoy the good ones. And, unfortunately, we are out of time. We could go on but the clock tells us we would have to say goodbye. Elizabeth, it has been so fun to conduct this conversation with you. Thank you so much. What a joy. Thank you, michelle. And president obama, thank you so much for joining us and helping us understand the writing process and providing this book. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate you guys to make great writers in your own rights here. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was indeed that wraps up our live coverage of president obamas conversation with the Washington Post. If you missed any of this discussion we will hear it again tonight at 8 30 p. M. Eastern right here on cspan2. You are watching booktv on cspan2, and you begin with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, greeted by americas cabletevision companies as a blic service and brought to todayy your television provider. Tonight on the communicators we take a look at issues independent phone broadband and figure providers face with matt holcomb president and ceo of aca connects and patricia boyers. I memset done such a great job of serving their communities and beating the needs and keeping americans connected with so many of our member stepping up to adopt the fccs pledge to keep americans connected. But by the same token we also recognize that there are still continuing needs, needs to serve students, needs to work with schools, needs to work with hospitals and medical facilities so that we can improve telehealth, ways that we can increase the Broadband Network speeds come ways that we can serve unserved areas. Watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on cspan2. Good evening and welcome to tonight live online author event with greenlight bookstore. I am chelsea from green light and were thrilled to host and nights event with perri klass, resenting her

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