Much of the buzz about Jodi Kantor’s new book, The Obamas, has centered on the gossipy angles of First Lady Michelle Obama’s adjustment to the White House and open conflict with top Obama advisers. But there are also less inside-baseball anecdotes of interest.
One such example in the book–which is, by the way, so relentlessly positive toward President Obama that it reads like a series of letters the president wrote to himself to buck up his spirits–comes when the president realizes his campaign promises on Guantanamo and detainee policy were foolhardy now that he has all the information. One day, the president brought in a group of law professors and civil liberties activists to meet with him, in the hope they would criticize him there in private and not do so publicly:
