Thanks, Obama Page 17
That doesn’t mean he laughed at everything. One of my fellow speechwriters, Kyle O’Connor, had written a joke about the cliquey nature of the Senate. It was a great idea, but required a Valley-girl accent to work: “So I found out that Mitch was talking with Rand who was talking with Lindsey who said that John and Ted were, like, talking?”
President Obama gamely gave it a try, but it was a disaster. He sounded forced and awkward, like a grandmother accenting the last syllable of Beyoncé. Throwing caution to the wind, I jumped in with my best Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless impression. POTUS’s expression remained grim.
“That might be funny . . . if a comedian did it.”
I swallowed hard, wishing I had stayed silent. We cut the joke from the script.
The rest of the meeting passed without incident. President Obama approved some jokes, told us to make others edgier, and sent us on our way. But surviving ten minutes in the Oval couldn’t erase my feelings of fraudulence. The days of proudly strutting back to my office were over. The days of dark, harrowed circles under my eyes had begun. At work I continued faking it. What else could I do? But Jacqui, regularly awakened by my tossing and turning, knew the full extent of my fear.
A few days before the dinner, a second meeting gave us a chance to present the edgier material POTUS had requested. (“A book burning with Michele Bachmann. I like that!”) It also gave us a chance to show him slides. Not everyone approved of displaying silly, photoshopped pictures in the middle of the president’s monologue. Compared to well-delivered setups and punch lines it felt like cheating, and to some extent it was. But if years of writing have taught me anything, it’s that people hate words and love pictures. Why not give them at least some of what they want?
Besides, POTUS liked the slides almost as much as the audience did. He laughed when he saw his face on a cover of Senior Living Magazine. He appreciated our putting a “Blame Bush Library” next to the real thing.
Most of all, he enjoyed a series of three pictures photoshopping the First Lady’s new hairdo—eyebrow-length bangs—onto his head. POTUS with bangs, in front of an American flag. POTUS with bangs, relaxing alongside his wife. POTUS with bangs, walking side by side with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. In the edited images, President Obama looked like Moe from the Three Stooges. It was hard not to laugh.
In fact, there was only one slide the president felt the need to change. A few weeks earlier, the White House had released a photograph of the president shooting clay pigeons at Camp David, and his critics accused him of doctoring the image. Obama, they insisted, was a gun grabber. His only reason for holding a firearm would be to melt it into a solar panel, or stuff the barrel with a gay pride flag. Their accusation was ludicrous, of course, utterly bananas. Naturally, it spread like wildfire on right-wing blogs.
Now, at Cody’s suggestion, we were going to present an “undoctored” image to the world. In our picture of what had “really” happened, POTUS was still firing a gun. But in the background, we added a lightning storm, a monster truck, and a kitten the size of a black bear shooting lasers from its eyes. As we prepared to leave the Oval, POTUS held us back. He had an edit to request.
“Can we get a NASCAR in there?”
“We can do that,” I said.
President Obama smiled contentedly. Then he perked up, struck by a sudden insight.
“Can Biden be driving the NASCAR?”
If only the president’s enthusiasm was more infectious. In 2009, pitching jokes as an anonymous intern at a speechwriting firm, I had imagined the glories of responsibility. Now, four years later, I was learning the truth: responsibility kind of sucks. Every argument over a punch line chipped away at my psyche. Each time a member of the joke-writing diaspora schemed to get more of their own material into the script, it was my job to scheme back. Not a moment passed when it didn’t feel as though everything was falling apart.
And yet in the world outside my head, everything was coming together. The slides looked good. The jokes were solid. Steven Spielberg, Tracy Morgan, and Barack Obama playing Daniel Day-Lewis playing Barack Obama had filmed their scenes. By Friday afternoon, just twenty-four hours before the dinner, I began to consider the possibility that everything might go as planned.
And then, sitting in my office, I got a phone call. It was Terry.
He had a question.
“So I’m looking through these pictures of the president with the First Lady’s bangs, and I’m just wondering, is the joke supposed to be that POTUS looks like Hitler?”
I immediately opened the slides in question The first photo was harmless. So was the second. Then I reached the third slide, the one with the president and the Israeli prime minister.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
It was shocking. The president didn’t ordinarily look like Hitler in photographs. He certainly didn’t look Hitler-y in person. But at that exact angle, with that specific haircut, there was no mistaking it. Even without the mustache, the resemblance was uncanny.
Just a month earlier, I might have tried to keep the slide in the script anyway. It was funny. Besides, would anyone think we were trying to make POTUS look like a Nazi? But I wasn’t risking another international incident. I was done listening to Lips. Thanking Terry profusely, I hurried to save my speech.
On April 27, the day of the dinner, Cody was at a wedding. But Favs and Lovett were in town for the occasion, and they joined our day-of meeting instead. These final run-throughs were always casual. Instead of sitting at his desk or in his armchair, the president plopped down on a couch.
As usual, the meeting began with small talk. POTUS asked Favs about his new speechwriting business. He teased Lovett about his life in L.A. Meanwhile, I sat there stunned. I couldn’t believe how casually my former colleagues charmed the president. What better proof that bringing me back to the White House was a mistake?
I was so busy wallowing that I barely heard POTUS ask a question.
“What happened to that picture of me and Bibi? I liked that one.”
Favs jumped in. “We had to cut it.”
“Well, why?”
Suddenly, the Oval Office fell completely silent. Plenty of people have compared the president to Hitler. But in all of American history, no one had ever compared the president to Hitler to the president. And none of us wanted to become the first.
It turns out that time slows down when you’re trying not to insult the commander in chief. I remember considering, in surprising detail, just how doomed we were. Favs wasn’t saying anything. Lovett wasn’t saying anything. I wasn’t saying anything. There was no way out.
There must be someone in this room who can tell the president the truth, I thought. But I couldn’t begin to imagine who that might be. We needed someone bold. We needed someone daring.
We needed someone who didn’t give a fuck.
In that moment, out of nowhere, I heard a voice. And it was Lips.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” I heard myself say, “we just couldn’t use that picture. You kind of look like Hitler in it.”
The moment the words left my mouth, my out-of-body experience ended. What had I just done? All eyes were on POTUS. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
And then, President Obama began to laugh. Not his ordinary laugh, a self-aware one that was an act of judgment as much as reflex. This was an expression of something visceral inside him, a place beyond even his formidable self-control. He clasped his hands together. His feet kicked off the floor. He rocked back into the couch cushions. For just a fraction of a moment, I even think he forgot which person was the president. I had never seen him laugh so hard, and would never see him laugh so hard again.
Eventually the meeting returned to normal. Favs and Lovett resumed their confident banter, and I went back to sitting quietly on the couch. But I realized something. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid.
The president finished his read-through not long after. We stood to l
eave, clutching our copies of the script. Before I could reach the door, however, POTUS looked right at me.
“Thanks, Litt,” he said.
10
JUICE IN PURGATORY
A few hours later, I was backstage at the Correspondents’ Dinner, washing my hands in the restroom reserved for POTUS. Suddenly, I heard the pounding of a fist. This was not the polite, inquisitive knock you associate with someone who hopes to use the facilities. It was the frantic, violent knock you associate with someone who hopes to flush cocaine.
I flung the door open to reveal an embarrassed-looking Secret Service agent. Thirty seconds earlier, he had grudgingly allowed me into the president’s hold room. Now he regretted his mistake. For standing behind him, looking Zen-like by comparison, was President Obama.
I should have expected this. Who else would warrant such urgent knocking? But in my hurry, I had no time to think. All my brain could process was that I had opened a door and found an acquaintance on the other side.
“Oh, hi!” I said, as if Barack Obama were a second cousin and not the most powerful person on earth. Fortunately, he seemed not to mind.
“Litt. We still funny?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Just a week earlier, I had worried my White House career was on the verge of an early end. Now, hustling out of the hold room, I could feel my head begin to swell. I just said hello to the president, and Secret Service didn’t shoot me. Maybe I’m becoming indispensable!
If I ever needed to regain perspective, however—or be reminded how quickly things can change—all I had to do was see a movie. In 2013, several films were released in which the White House was blown to smithereens by paramilitaries, North Koreans, or people who simply disliked G.I. Joe.
I did not care for this trend. More than once I went to the movies to unwind after a stressful workday, only to see my office obliterated during the coming attractions. In one trailer, for Olympus Has Fallen, a plane bristling with machine guns strafed the State Dining Room. The rest of the audience barely noticed, but I clutched my popcorn and winced.
Oh, man, I thought. Chase is totally fucked.
It was discomforting to see my colleagues so casually exterminated. It was even more discomforting to realize my own death wasn’t interesting enough to show on-screen. Cabinet secretaries were executed in dramatic fashion. Secret Service agents were launched skyward by explosions or cruelly double-crossed. But low-level speechwriters? We weren’t even cannon fodder. Incinerated in a single CGI blast, my entire existence was mere kindling for the sweaty heroics of Gerard Butler or Jamie Foxx. During one trailer, as a grim-looking terrorist launched a rocket into the Grand Foyer, I found my rooting interest was with neither the president nor the hunky antihero destined to save him.
There’s still hope! I thought. Maybe the speechwriter’s at the dentist.
These movies, it must be said, were not entirely realistic. I never once worried that a shape-shifting supervillain would compromise the Oval Office before raining destruction upon earth from outer space. But the part about my life not being worth much? That was distressingly real. While junior-level staff rarely spoke about it, we knew the implicit bargain. We were low-profile people in one of the world’s most high-profile targets. In a worst-case scenario, our final moments might be spent watching an escape pod rocket skyward and thinking, Well, fair enough. It didn’t matter how many times I said hello to the president. I was completely disposable.
Knowing this, it was impossible not to envy certain colleagues. Terry, for example. He wrote national-security speeches, worked in the West Wing, and always wore a large silver key around his neck. Clearly he had access to a top secret bunker and would be one of the lucky few to repopulate the earth. If the earth ever needed repopulating, it could do worse than Terry. Still, it was hard not to feel left out.
Once you started looking, insecurity about security was everywhere. One morning a poster appeared outside Ike’s:
* * *
ACTIVE SHOOTER PREPAREDNESS WORKSHOP
* * *
A few days later, I noticed another, smaller sign taped over the first: SECOND SESSION ADDED DUE TO OVERWHELMING INTEREST.
There was only one place where, in both the emotional and physical sense, I felt completely secure. The plane. From the day I arrived in 2011, I dreamed about tagging along on a POTUS trip. Now, as a presidential speechwriter, I was permitted to travel when remarks were delivered out of town.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, many aspects of working at the White House are not as cool as you would expect. Air Force One is exactly as cool as you would expect. I’ll never forget my first drive to Andrews Air Force Base. Passing through the thick metal gates, our van pulled onto a tarmac the size of a golf course. We zipped by Cessnas, 757s, cargo carriers. Finally we stopped, just a dozen yards from the plane that dwarfed them all.
I had seen Air Force One before, of course. On TV. In movies. On the news. But to me, the presidential aircraft had always been like the surface of Jupiter or Art Garfunkel’s living room. I knew such a place existed. I just never imagined setting foot there myself.
Now the plane’s sky-blue belly was so close I could touch it. I didn’t, of course. Instead, I walked carefully below a jet engine big enough to hold a trailer, and at the bottom of the rear staircase, I gave my name to a uniformed guard. He ushered me forward with a nod. Just a few steps later, I gasped. I was standing next to the exact same cargo hold where Harrison Ford killed his first terrorist in Air Force One.
Todd, a flight attendant, offered me a tour of the aircraft’s five sections. Reporters sat at the very back of the plane. Next came the VIP guest cabin, which was followed by the staff cabin for people like me. After that came the conference room. This was where President Obama usually spent his time, either working or playing cards. Finally, at the nose of the aircraft, POTUS had a fully appointed office with a small private bedroom attached. Air Force One was (in the old, pre-Trump sense) a Russian nesting doll of access. You could always move backward from your assigned seat, but you needed permission to move up.
Not every part of the plane was fancy. With its leather recliners, wood trim, and wall-to-wall beige carpeting, the interior of the staff cabin resembled nothing so much as my grandparents’ den. But what Air Force One lacked in luxury, it made up for in countless other ways. With airspace cleared ahead of us, we shaved hours off coast-to-coast trips. From the phone in my armrest I could dial anyone, anywhere. (President Obama spoke with foreign leaders. I called Jacqui to show off.) If I caught an ankle in the extendable footrest, or a forkful of crispy taco salad went down the wrong pipe, a pint-size emergency room stood waiting to receive me.
The plane’s most extraordinary feature, however, was the image it projected. Nothing, not even the White House, so clearly symbolized the president’s influence and reach. We are America, the aircraft seemed to say. You know us. You envy us. You’ve seen us on TV. And the man up front can do anything.
BUT COULD HE REALLY? IN A DIVIDED COUNTRY, WAS OBAMA’S PLACE in history still his to decide? To put it less poetically, could he make Washington work?
We certainly hoped so. We were sick of gridlock. Voters were, too. Yet where our economic plan was intensely detailed, our anti-gridlock plan was vague. Our theory—inasmuch as we had one—was that after a 2012 victory, obstruction would melt away.
“I believe that if we’re successful in this election—when we’re successful in this election—that the fever may break,” POTUS declared.
Just a few weeks after Election Day, a tragedy and its aftermath seemed poised to prove him right. On December 14, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a young man with an AR-15 rifle murdered twenty children and six adult staff. There had been mass shootings before, but this was different. No one, not even the president, could hear the news without feeling something rip apart inside. As POTUS addressed the nation from the briefing room, he paused, eyes watering, completely overcome.
“You realize,” he said, “no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together.”
Here at last, in the midst of unimaginable anguish, was Barack Obama’s clearest argument for government’s role. His was not a technocratic diagnosis, a blanket assumption that Washington knows best. Nor was it partisan: there was room for both Democrats and Republicans in the vision he described. Instead, his view of government was rooted in the responsibilities of family and the facts of modern life. In the twenty-first century, we cannot raise our kids alone.
For a moment, Washington seemed to agree. Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Pat Toomey to try and strengthen firearms background checks. Their proposal wouldn’t end gun violence completely. Still, it was an obvious start. And it was popular; even a majority of Republicans supported the idea. If I had learned anything from watching Schoolhouse Rock!, this bill was destined to pass.
But the National Rifle Association understood something I didn’t. Schoolhouse Rock! was a lie. In Mitch McConnell’s Congress, even the most appealing bills were at the mercy of nearly insurmountable math. For starters, advancing any piece of legislation took sixty votes in the Senate—a three-fifths majority. If that doesn’t sound daunting, consider this: no presidential candidate has won a three-fifths majority of the vote since Richard Nixon in 1972.
It was easy, in other words, to make nothing happen. And on the background-check bill, nothing did. The NRA held its ground. Its allies in Congress quietly ignored popular opinion. The proposal died with a whimper instead of a bang.