Invention as Intervention in the Rhetoric of Barack Obama Stefan Iversen and Henrik Skov Nielsen Te terms “narrative” and “story” ofen recur in the vast and still rapidly growing research into the rhetoric of former US president Barack Obama. Although not surprising in itself—even prior to Obama’s presidency, numerous scholars identifed storytelling as “the essence of American presidential leadership, and the secret of presidential success” (Cornog 2004: 1)—the omnipresence, the impact, and the diversity of the stories told by and about Obama have turned investigations of such narratives not into an optional but an integral part of most accounts of the distinctive features of the communicative strategies Obama employed during his two terms as president. As Molly Andrews notes, “the strategic use of political storytelling is a hallmark of the Obama presidency, and has been applied in virtually every key moment when he has needed to get his message across to the American people” (2014: 85). Readings have focused on how Obama makes use of his personal biography