Letters to President Obama

Having just visited Washington, D.C., this recent New York Times article about the 10 letters a day that get delivered to President Obama was especially interesting to me. The article covers the White House Office of Correspondence and its director Mike Kelleher. They choose 10 letters per day to pass along to President Obama to read, and the article discusses how those letters have affected our President. The article says,

He chooses 10 letters, which are slipped into a purple folder and put in the daily briefing book that is delivered to President Obama at the White House residence. Designed to offer a sampling of what Americans are thinking, the letters are read by the president, and he sometimes answers them by hand, in black ink on azure paper.

Reading the article got me thinking that a compilation of those letters – and President Obama’s responses for a select few – would make a fascinating book. A quick Amazon search reveals a whole list of books about letters written to presidents.

One is entitled Kids’ Letters to President Obama and another called Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the Files of the National Archives. I personally have never written a letter to one of our presidents, but I think it’d be fascinating to see what other Americans have taken the time to send our country’s leaders.