Top Obama aides — White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and White House Counsel Neil Eggleston — organized a conference call for White House alumni. Some of them worried at first that it was bad news, that the White House was about to tell them that thanks to recent government hacks, their personal data was now sitting in Beijing.

Instead, Obama got on the line to deliver a message about as big as it gets in politics.

“Much in the same way that the Reagan Revolution required Bush Senior” to cement the legacy of a truly transformative president, Obama said, “we’ve got to make sure that we’re laying the foundation” for the next Democrat elected, according to someone who heard the call.

“It’s important for us to set the record properly and tell a story about what happened over the last 6½years, less for our benefit and more to create the political climate going into the next election so the agenda that we’ve set continues,” Obama said.