The political adviser talks with Amy Chozick about campaign promises and life inside the Obama White House.

Your memoir, ''Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,'' goes all the way back to your childhood. It opens on the day John F. Kennedy visited Stuyvesant Town in 1960. Did you anticipate that you would write a book one day? Yes, I had notes about the Kennedy visit in crayon in my drawer. There are things that are so vivid in the moment you, in some recess of your mind, record them and keep them.

There are some great pictures in the book. Did you always have the mustache? I wasn't born with one. I have a little scar on my upper lip, acquired sliding under the dining-roomtable when I was playing pretend baseball as a kid. So when I could grow a mustache, I did.

Has President Obama read the book? I shared it with him after it was printed because I didn't want to put him in the position, or me in the position, of negotiating or discussing elements of it.

You wrote that he had a hard time with media coverage and would...