Kamran’s Reviews > A Promised Land > Status Update

If the rough patch lasts long enough, though, you may find yourself in a dreaded situation in which problems compound, then congeal into a broader narrative about you and your presidency. The negative stories don't let up, which leads to a drop in your popularity. Your political adversaries, smelling blood in the water, go after you harder, and allies aren't as quick to defend you.

I was left with an impression that would become all too familiar in my dealings with aging autocrats: shut away in palaces, their every interaction mediated by the hard-faced obsequious functionaries that surrounded them, they were unable to distinguish between their personal interests and those of their nations, their actions governed by no broader purpose beyond maintaining the tangled web of patronage...

Iowa may have convinced me and my team that I could end up being president. But it was the New Hampshire loss that made us confident that I'd be up to the job.