Dear Madam President summary

The author has worked in communications for both the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations. In this role, she found herself in some very important rooms. She’s attended meetings at 10 Downing Street, the German Chancellor’s office and the Kremlin. But it's what she learned in the Oval Office that prepared her the most for how to conduct herself in these halls of power.

Her experiences in the White House taught her the importance of speaking her mind.

By 10:00 p.m. on election night, 2016, it had become increasingly clear that Donald Trump was going to win. Palmieri found herself sitting with another female colleague on the Hillary Clinton campaign team. Together, they tried to process the devastating news.

At this point, you might assume that the women shed some tears. After all, they were shocked and demoralized. But they didn’t. They just stoically nodded to each other as the news came in.

During her career in the highest echelons of politics, Palmieri has weathered a fair number of crises. She was in the White House during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the Russian government’s leaks and hacks and the televised beheadings of ISIS.

It’s common knowledge that riding out political storms such as these requires a cool head and a rational approach to problem-solving. But dealing with a crisis also requires something else: a warm heart, and knowing when to listen to it.

The United States has seen many presidents come and go. There have been significant differences between them in their political positions, but there’s one thing they all seem to have in common: they age visibly during their presidency.

In fact, it’s almost an American pastime to remark on how much older presidents look when they leave the White House. When Palmieri recently looked at photographs of Barack Obama taken during his 2008 election campaign, she thought he could have almost passed for the son of the man who left the Oval Office in 2017.

June 26, 2015, was no ordinary day in American politics. For Jennifer Palmieri and millions of progressive liberals like her, it was a day of celebration. The previous two days had seen the Affordable Care Act pass into law, the legalization of gay marriage and serious discussions about removing the Confederate flag from government buildings. Years of struggle had suddenly come to fruition in the space of just a week.

Though Palmieri couldn’t stop smiling that day, she looks back now with mixed feelings. Even as she walked through her Brooklyn neighborhood that night and saw people everywhere celebrating progress, she wondered if there might be more sinister consequences to these societal changes.