The Bridge

Perhaps only now are we coming to realize that the election of Barack Obama was, to quote Joe Biden "a big F...ing deal." Not only did we elect an African-American President, but for only the second time in the nations history we elected a non Protestant to occupy the office. How did this happen? What nerve did Obama touch in the American psyche. Today, although it might not have been the intent of the Founders, Presidents represent a kind of national Rorschach test, on whom we project our dreams, our fears and our hopes. In our media driven culture, the individual narrative of the candidate becomes the central arc of our politics. David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of The New Yorker, in his new book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, has deconstructed the Obama narrative and given us a new narrative of the man and the President. My conversation with David Remnick: