Please Mr President

President George Washington received about five letters a day and answered them all himself. By the end of the 19th century President William McKinley was so overwhelmed by the volume of mail — 100 letters a day — that he hired someone to manage the flow. Thus began what is now called the Office of Presidential Correspondence (OPC). According to Jeanne Marie Laskas, however, it wasn’t until Barack Obama that a president committed himself to reading a set number of letters a day — the ten LADs, as they became known — from ordinary Americans.

Before delving into Obama’s old mailbags Laskas talks to one of his senior advisers, Shailagh Murray. It is October 2016, a month before the presidential election, and while waiting for Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory Murray muses on the LADs. ‘They became a kind of life force in this place,’ she says. ‘It’s this dialogue he’s been having with the country that people aren’t even aware of.