President Obama must be just thrilled his old girlfriends kept their letters. Vanity Fair today publishes an excerpt of Barack Obama: The Story, a biography written by Washington Post reporter David Mariniss. The excerpt focuses on the 20-something Obama's relationships with Alex McNear and, later, Genevieve Cook, when he studied at Occidental College and then Columbia, notes CBS News. Some snippets:
- Obama letter to McNear: "Remember how I said there's a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—(TS) Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance.” (Daily Intel has some fun with this one.)
- Another from Obama to McNear: "Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me. The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions [and] classes; make them mine, me theirs."