George Packer

"Barack Obama was a writer before he became a politician, and he saw his Presidency as a struggle over narrative."

"More than any modern President, Barack Obama had a keen sense of the limits of American power—and of his own."

"After Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the burden of proof is on anyone who would make the case for military action as a force for good."

"Progressives find it hard to imagine that there are others who in good faith don’t want the better world they’re offering and will fiercely resist it."

"At the heart of Obama’s narrative was a belief that progress, in the larger scheme of things, was inevitable, and this belief underscored his position on every issue from marriage equality to climate change. His idea of progress was neither the rigid millennial faith of Woodrow Wilson nor Bush’s shallow God-blessed optimism. It was human-scale and incremental."

"It’s hard to build a narrative around actions not taken, disasters possibly averted, hard realities accommodated. The story of what didn’t happen isn’t an easy one to tell."

"Barack Obama was always better at explaining the meaning of democracy than at fighting its opponents."