Ben Rhodes spent years writing the words of a president. Now he’s curating the words of many — from a founding father to a recent one.
Rhodes, who served as both a speechwriter and national security adviser to President Barack Obama, has published All We Say, a book built around 15 speeches that trace what it has meant — and what Americans have argued — to be American. The collection runs from Benjamin Franklin to Donald Trump.
The premise is less anthology than argument. Rhodes is asking whether a through-line connects those voices across centuries, or whether the argument itself is the through-line — a country that has never fully agreed on its own definition.
Fifteen speeches is a narrow cut. Franklin and Trump sit at opposite ends of the timeline, but the speeches in between haven’t been named publicly beyond that framing. What Rhodes chose to leave out is, by design, as telling as what he kept.
Rhodes’s dual role in the Obama White House gave him an unusual vantage point. Speechwriters shape the words; security advisers shape the decisions. He worked inside both rooms – which means he watched policy get translated into rhetoric, and rhetoric get tested against reality.
That background colors how All We Say reads, at least in concept. It isn’t a historian’s neutral survey. Rhodes brings a specific politics to the project, and readers who disagree with that politics will likely find the curation itself worth debating.
NPR spoke with Rhodes about the book on May 27, 2026. He did not, in that conversation, name all 15 speeches or detail his selection criteria beyond the framing of an ongoing battle over national identity.
Originally reported by NPR. Read the original report.
