This remarkable feature in The New Yorker by David Remnick recounts his inside access to President Obama in the days after the election. It is an extraordinary bit of writing and a bittersweet, yet hopeful take on the President’s reaction to this election.

There is a lot to process in the President’s analysis of the state of the nation and what’s ahead for us. But, as a father who had to explain the results last week to my two dismayed daughters, I especially appreciated this:

How did he speak with his two daughters about the election results, about the post-election reports of racial incidents? “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. . . . This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. . . . You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

The whole article is fascinating. It’s well worth a read, or two.

I was going to close by saying how much I will miss President Obama, his class and character and wit and his keen, poetic way with words. But, now, I don’t think he will be as removed from the eye of the storm as he had anticipated or hoped. He is needed now in a new way, as a counterpoint to what is to come and as a beacon for what can be. I imagine he will not ride quietly off into the sunset any time soon.