Former Obama advisor reflects on the 'Battle for American Identity'
Ben Rhodes, a former advisor to President Obama, discusses themes from his new book, which compiles significant speeches throughout American history. The book, titled 'All We Say', explores the evolving concept of American identity. Rhodes reflects on the importance of these speeches in understanding the nation's values and challenges.
- ▪Ben Rhodes served as a speech writer and security advisor for President Obama.
- ▪His book, 'All We Say', includes 15 speeches from various historical figures.
- ▪The book addresses the meaning of being American and the ongoing battle for American identity.
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| Original publisher | NPR Topics: News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.npr.org/2026/05/27/nx-s1-5835275/former-obama-advisor-reflects-on-the-battle-for-american-identity |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 11:16:03 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T15:28:01.742Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T15:37:28.650Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | gZwqK9YxjUny |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Politics Former Obama advisor reflects on the 'Battle for American Identity' May 27, 202611:16 AM ET Terry Gross Ben Rhodes was a speech writer and security advisor for President Obama. His book, All We Say, is a collection of 15 speeches — from Ben Franklin to Trump — about what it means to be American. Sponsor Message Facebook Flipboard Email
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at NPR Topics: News.
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