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Inside the White House: Letters to the President
Poziom:
Temat: Społeczeństwo i nauki społeczne
(birds chirping)
The President:
These letters, I think, do more to keep me in touch with what's
happening around the country
than just about anything else.
(birds chirping)
Some of them are funny,
some of them are angry,
a lot of them are sad or
frustrated about their current situation.
Mr. Kelleher:
In his first week as President, he asked for ten letters every
day and every day since,
we've given it to him.
(music playing)
We get 65,000 paper
letters every week,
we get something like 100,000
e-mails, 1,000 faxes,
2,500 to 3,500 calls per day.
And our job is to take all that
information in, to do it --
the best analysis we can about
what we're hearing from the
public and respond individually
to all those folks so they know
that the President is listening.
(music playing)
Anyone that sends a message to
us, it comes into our offices,
our staff sorts through them,
they identify those that meet
our three tests: Are they
something that's representative
of the mail that's coming in, is
it representative of something
in the news, and is it something
that's a compelling message?
They pile that mail together;
some of it ends up here on my desk.
(music playing)
I sort through it,
categorize it by issue,
and then every day I go through
them and pick the ten that best
represent what's
happening right now.
It's a good dialogue -- a
direct relationship between
constituents who have these
concerns and the President who
desperately wants to
get those messages.
The President's talked
about being in a bubble,
and our job is to make sure that
he gets out of it every day.
(music playing)
Hey, Joni.
>> Hey, Mike.
Mr. Kelleher:
How you doing?
>> Great, how're you doing?
Mr. Kelleher:
Good.
How's everybody doing?
>> Thank you.
Everyone's doing well.
(music playing)
>> Hey, Katie.
Ms. Johnson:
Thank you.
So this is for tomorrow?
>> Yep.
Ms. Johnson:
Okay.
>> Is that good?
Ms. Johnson:
Yep.
I'll give it to him.
He probably replies to somewhere
between three and four a night,
so over the course of the week,
you're writing 15 to 20 letters.
So he writes a lot.
And he hand writes every
single one of them.
Some are longer,
some are shorter,
and the issues totally vary.
(music playing)
The President:
Lately, I've been getting a lot of health care letters and this
is a good example.
"Dear Mr. Obama, my
son-in-law, age 42,
had a heart valve
replaced two years ago.
His wife and two children pay $1,200 per month for health insurance.
They cannot get another provider
because he has a pre-existing condition.
He's now unemployed, so my
husband and myself are helping them.
We're in our mid-60s and this
is draining our retirement."
There's so many letters like
that that I'm receiving every day.
You know, here's another one.
A woman whose husband retired
from AT&T at 61 is waiting to
get on Medicare.
You now have the company in
negotiations with the union and
may decide to stop
health care for retirees.
Got another one, an antique
business in Alabama,
they are on the verge of losing
their business because they just
can't afford to
pay the premiums --
their premiums increased $70
per month just this month.
So a lot of the stories
are heartbreaking.
People who work hard -- a
lot of times they'll say,
"I've never written
to a President before,
I'm not looking for a handout, all I want is just a fair shake in."
And it ends up being a powerful
motivator for me when we try to
move this health agenda forward.
Now, some of them are more
cheerful and, you know,
this one for example.
"With all the huge money
difficulties facing our country,
I thought you might like to see
how someone spent their $250
stimulus money.
Thank you for all the pleasures
from tending my raised bed and
from the vegetables
I hope to enjoy."
So she set up a vegetable garden
and she sent me a picture.
There's a beautiful letter that I got just a couple of days ago
I'm going to be responding -- from a woman who had found a
letter and she's
forwarded it to me,
a letter from her father when
he was fighting in World War II.
She had just been born and he
had just gotten news of her
birth and he sent this letter,
"My Dearest Daughter..."
And explained what he was doing
in Europe during World War II
and why this was so important
and what the country meant to
him and that someday she'd
be old enough to read it and
understand why this
was so important.
You know, you get letters
like that and it --
it gives you a sense of what's
best about America and inspires
you, and makes you want to work
that much harder to make sure
that that -- that spirit is reflected in our government.
