“At times he couldn’t help feeling, as he told one associate, a kinship with the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea,” writes David Corn in his new book on the presidency.

“He had, against tremendous odds, caught a big fish, but on the long voyage back to shore, his prized catch had been picked to pieces by sharks.”

Obama made this comment after Democratic defeats in the 201o congressional elections, the starting point for Corn’s book, Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party.