Summary

Trust – In this chapter, the author discusses his friendship and professional relationship with Barack Obama, discussing the origins of that relationship (when the author was chairing an important government committee that Obama wanted to participate in) and how that relationship developed over the course of the author’s term as vice president.

That development, the author writes, began when he was being considered for the position – specifically, when he was being vetted (investigated) for the job even though he did not particularly want it and even though his family told him he could really do some good. He writes of the history of the vice presidency, how all the men who had held it before him had felt under-used and frustrated – something, he adds, that Obama told him he wanted to change. Obama wanted, the author says, to take advantage of the author’s...