Thanks, Obama Read online

As the 2014 Correspondents’ Dinner approached, I didn’t think one night of comedy could fix everything. That said, I thought it could help. If POTUS was ambitious in his material and flawless in his delivery, voters might feel the old spark rekindled. Reporters might decide the narrative wasn’t so set after all. As the joke-writing process began, our task seemed clear. Take big swings.

  And not just at our opponents. By making fun of our own low moments, we could show the world we had moved on. This concept—self-deprecation—is one that a surprising number of important people fail to grasp. I know far too many speechwriters who have lived through some version of the following exchange.

  POLITICIAN (doing his best cool dad impression): I love making fun of myself! Whadaya got?

  SPEECHWRITER (nervous): Well, I was thinking we could joke about the idea that you’re kind of a diva?

  POLITICIAN (recipient of a sudden personality transplant): What? A diva? Why would anyone find that funny?

  If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of this question, here is my advice: Do not answer it! Fake a seizure. Play dead. Flee the country. Whatever you do, don’t open your mouth.

  Where self-deprecation was concerned, President Obama’s joke writers were lucky. While I can’t say he truly enjoyed making fun of himself, he understood its value. No less important, he had a sense of gallows humor. A friend of mine who worked in the National Economic Council was first introduced to POTUS at the end of 2013.

  “This is David Edelman,” said my friend’s boss. “He’s working on tech issues.”

  Without missing a beat, POTUS eyed him skeptically.

  “You’re not the guy who designed my website, are you?”

  There was another reason the president liked making fun of himself: it earned him the right to mock people who genuinely pissed him off. In our first Oval Office meeting for the 2014 dinner, our draft included a full page of one-liners about Healthcare.gov. In exchange, we got to make fun of everyone from Mitch McConnell to the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers to the hosts of Fox & Friends.

  We also took a shot at the growing number of Republicans obsessed with Vladimir Putin. This was a truly bizarre trend. Prominent conservatives had recently begun heaping praise upon the Russian autocrat, often in not-quite-unsexual terms. “I know the only time that Vladimir Putin shivers is when he takes his shirt off in a cold Russian winter,” Governor Mike Huckabee declared, as if he’d read a particularly ham-fisted profile on Grindr. Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani were less swoony, but not by much. With the help of our graphics department, we came up with an image to meet the moment: Mike, Sean, and Rudy at a slumber party, giggling over a poster of a shirtless Vlad.

  We added the slide to our growing list of audiovisual bells and whistles: more than a dozen photoshopped images; a parody of The Matrix; a video starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as her character from Veep. We even held a brief photo shoot where the First Lady, looking deeply confounded, held up a picture frame made of popsicle sticks. Then we added the resulting picture to the slide deck. Tech-wise, it was our most ambitious Correspondents’ Dinner to date. No one could accuse us of not swinging big.

  “You’re sure all this stuff will work?” asked Cody. “After health care, we can’t have any screw-ups.”

  “I’ve got this,” I promised. “We’ll do a run-through the morning of the speech.”

  THE RUN-THROUGH IN QUESTION TOOK PLACE ABOVE THE HILTON ballroom, in a small, enclosed catwalk about thirty feet above the stage. The floor was made of concrete. Wires splayed in all directions. At the far end sat a gloomy metal cage that brought to mind a third-world zoo.

  Inside the cage sat Steve. Steve did not work for the White House. Steve worked for the Washington Hilton. From the moment we met, he made it clear he considered the Hilton the more important institution of the two. With his close-cropped hair, permanently put-upon expression, and belly perfectly designed for resting cups of coffee, Steve oversaw the A/V booth with the territorial instinct of a panther and the work ethic of a house cat.

  The only other person at the run-through was Jenn, the newest member of the White House graphics team. The kind of person who wore purple fanny packs without irony, Jenn also served as fan club president for the Canadian rock band Rush. She was not the type to keep her emotions in check.

  And right now she was nervous. “Does everything look okay? Do you need me to bring a backup computer? Is there anything we need to triple-check?” But Jenn’s anxiety only made me calmer. The cool, battle-hardened veteran, I promised her everything would be fine.

  My sense of icy, been-there-done-that composure was further reinforced when I returned to the Hilton that evening. There, a CAT team member checked the pin on my tuxedo jacket, lowered his assault rifle, and ushered me into the hotel’s back entrance with a nod. I stalked the predinner receptions for finger food. I made the president’s last-minute edits. Then, as POTUS prepared to address the crowd, I headed for the catwalk.

  Jenn was already there, MacBook at the ready, hyperventilating in a flowing purple gown. Steve was there as well. His expression suggested he had DVR’d something—Ice Road Truckers, maybe—and held us personally responsible for keeping him from his show.

  As the president’s monologue began, however, I was too high on adrenaline to give either of them much notice. This was our chance to get out of the barrel, and with a jolt of excitement, I realized it just might work. The Veep video was a hit. The self-deprecating section on health care left the crowd impressed and applauding. And POTUS’s timing—already good to begin with—grew better every year. In the ballroom below, he landed joke after joke. Before I knew it, the only thing standing between us and a huge success were a few remaining slides.

  “Two weeks ago, Senator Ted Cruz and I, we got a bill done together.”

  “Okay,” I said from the catwalk, “go to slide.”

  This was where Steve came in. Stretching out a reluctant arm, our A/V expert pushed a large square button. On the giant screens in the ballroom, the live feed of POTUS was replaced by an image of hell freezing over. The audience laughed.

  “Okay, go back,” I said. Before releasing his button, Steve was supposed to wait for my cue. But he had already resumed splaying grumpily in his chair. The slide had vanished from the screen.

  POTUS continued his monologue, unaware that above him, a passive-aggressive war was breaking out. With each slide—Biden shoe ambush, Game of Thrones staff meeting, Raging Socialist High School—Steve took just a little bit longer to press his button. Each time, he gave a slightly more exasperated scowl before slumping back into his seat.

  “Everywhere I look, there are reminders that I only hold this job temporarily,” said POTUS.

  “Okay, go to slide.”

  Steve once again leaned forward. But this time, too busy loathing me to pay attention, he failed to place his finger in the center of the button. Instead he clipped the side. To the confusion of the audience, a picture flashed on-screen, then disappeared. I was furious. Steve was jeopardizing President Obama’s big moment! This was completely unacceptable!

  And that’s when I noticed that our next slide was missing entirely.

  In a state of shock, I double-checked Jenn’s laptop. There was Slide 13—the president, looking frowny, standing in the Oval Office. And there was Slide 15—computer code from The Matrix. But Slide 14, the picture of the First Lady holding her popsicle-stick picture frame, was nowhere to be found. Slide 13; Slide 15. Frowny-face Obama; The Matrix. There was nothing in between them. And POTUS had no idea. In less than ten seconds, the president of the United States would be humiliated, and it would be my fault.

  By now, Jenn realized what was happening and, leaping into action, she panicked. “Where’s the slide? Where’s the slide?” she gasped, in a tone I thought was reserved for missing children. “There is no slide,” I replied, in a tone I thought was reserved for climbing the guillotine steps.

  Steve, meanwhile, was in heaven. This was way better
than Ice Road Truckers. As the seconds ticked away in slow motion, he rested his hands contentedly on his belly, as though we had all learned a valuable lesson about not bothering the A/V guy. Jenn had a series of small strokes. I stared at the tiny monitor in the catwalk, totally numb.

  POTUS, meanwhile, kept going. “George W. Bush took up painting after leaving office, which inspired me to take up my own artistic side.”

  The president paused, waiting for an image only three people in America knew did not exist.

  “I’m sure we’ve got a shot of this,” the president said. My skin had turned clammy. My mouth was sandpaper dry. POTUS licked his lips, annoyed.

  “Maybe not.”

  I have never been the kind of person who refers to “my career” as if it is something I gave birth to. Still, it was distressing to watch it die. President Obama was about to look foolish. A new wave of “hapless president” stories would soon dominate the news. Heads would roll, beginning, understandably, with mine.

  But then, just as I was wondering if Silicon Valley recruits disgraced former speechwriters, something happened. In the blink of an eye, POTUS composed himself. He looked out across tables full of reporters, each one eager to write about yet another White House screw-up. Then he broke into an exasperated grin. “The joke doesn’t work without the slide,” he explained. Suddenly, the audience was in on the secret. They began to laugh.

  “Oh well.” Another pause. “Assume that it was funny.” He chuckled at his own ad-lib, and the audience joined him. Then he turned to Joel McHale, the night’s headliner.

  “Does this happen to you, Joel?”

  It was not the highlight of the evening. But neither was it the story of the night. POTUS finished his ad-lib, delivered his serious close, and took his seat. The crowd stood to applaud. I sat in Steve’s cage inside the catwalk, grateful for the president’s quick thinking.

  Still, another chance to escape the barrel had been squandered. And changing the narrative was about to become harder than ever. Summer was almost upon us.

  NEVER WORN A SUIT AND TIE TO WORK DURING A D.C. SUMMER? Want to experience it for yourself? It’s easy! First, wrap something snug around your neck, like a scarf or boa constrictor. Next, drape yourself in thick, barely breathable material. Wool works nicely. So does a hefty coat of tar. To approximate the discomfort that results from hot sun and black leather dress shoes, wrap your feet snugly in a colony of fire ants. Last but not least, fill a stockpot with water. After heating to a gentle simmer, climb inside it. Now try to do your job.

  Women, who could wear skirts or dresses, had it easier during summers. But not by much. Whether you work in a T-shirt or full military uniform, Washingtonians are united by the season-long schvitz they take each year. It builds character. It’s a good subject for small talk. It is not conducive to running a country. Brains slow-cook in their owners’ skulls. Adults who can afford long vacations flee the district, leaving twenty-three-year-olds disproportionately in charge.

  Perhaps this is why summer was to Obamaworld what winter is to Game of Thrones. Madness flourished like mosquitoes in the heat.

  August 29, 2008: Sarah Palin is nominated for vice president.

  August 7, 2009: The term death panel is coined.

  August 28, 2010: Glenn Beck holds his “Restoring Honor” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  July 30, 2011: The single worst day of the debt ceiling crisis.

  August 30, 2012: Clint Eastwood speaks at the Republican Convention. (This one backfired, but it was such a bad idea that it still counts.)

  August 1–30, 2013: Government shutdown fever takes hold.

  Seriously, what was wrong with summer? And where pandemonium and general awfulness were concerned, the summer of 2014 would dwarf them all.

  First came ebola, a disease from the opening scene of a Michael Crichton novel. Horrifying symptoms. Rapid transmission. No known cure. When an outbreak hit West Africa in December 2013, most Americans barely noticed. But on August 2 of the following year, a U.S. citizen was infected. Suddenly, everyone lost their minds.

  Myself included. I tried my best to keep things in perspective: the American who contracted the virus was a missionary overseas; our public health system was light-years ahead of Liberia’s or Sierra Leone’s. But the facts failed to reassure me. Sitting on our gray Martha Stewart Living sofa, Jacqui and I planned for our new lives.

  “We can camp out in the woods. I’ll bring my fishing gear.”

  “You never catch anything.”

  “Okay, fair point. But maybe if we were starving I’d improve?”

  Then there was ISIS, the ebola of terrorist organizations. Murdering scores of innocent people, burning victims alive, forcing women into sexual slavery: their atrocities were impossible to fully catalog, let alone comprehend. On August 7, with the group gaining territory, President Obama authorized air strikes against ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. On August 19, in retaliation, they beheaded an American journalist named James Foley on film.

  This was a turning point. Practically overnight, ISIS went from interchangeable foreign bad guy to nationwide bogeyman. The president’s critics were quick to pounce. Country Clubbers said he was soft on terror. Flat Earthers and Holy Warriors went further, accusing him of being on the terrorists’ side.

  The second charge was extravagantly false, and the first wasn’t much better. Rather than backing down in the fight against ISIS, POTUS stepped up raids and air strikes, taking out top commanders along with scores of troops. With our military’s help, Iraqi and Kurdish forces began rolling back the borders of the so-called Islamic State. But if fearful Americans were looking for a leader of the chest-thumping, why-I-oughta-kill-those-dang-terrorists-myself variety, they had voted for the wrong guy. Earlier that year, when POTUS and his foreign-policy team were asked to define an “Obama Doctrine,” they settled on the following:

  “Don’t do stupid shit.”

  Inspiring, I know. But what the slogan lacked in soaring vision, it made up for in common sense. President Obama wasn’t opposed, on principle, to throwing America’s weight around. He simply believed the best course of action often involved self-restraint. Put another way, there are few things more dangerous than a president doing a bad John Wayne impression. He refused to indulge in clash-of-civilizations rhetoric favored by both right-wing pundits at home and ISIS propagandists abroad.

  This was almost certainly the right decision. It deprived some of the world’s most sadistic killers of an easy recruiting tool. But at times it put POTUS at odds with the national mood. When the Foley beheading video was released, President Obama was in Martha’s Vineyard; he chose not to cut his vacation short. Also, he referred to ISIS as “ISIL.” While technically accurate, this could come across as tone deaf, like a waiter who explains that it’s wagyu beef, not Kobe, on which you are currently choking.

  Even our political allies could be frustrated by President Obama’s near-pathological calmness. Still, his message to the public was simple, never directly stated but always easy to infer. Don’t freak out.

  It fell on deaf ears. America was in a freak-out state of mind. And politics only made things worse. Hoping to jump-start his 2016 presidential campaign, Texas governor Rick Perry announced that ISIS might have already crossed America’s southern border. Not to be outdone, fellow candidate Rand Paul insisted you could catch ebola by standing near the wrong guest at a cocktail party. Cable news networks occasionally pointed out that these claims were nonsense. More often, they luxuriated in the kind of ratings boost only a national panic could provide. One day I happened to glance at MSNBC. There, live on camera, the Reverend Al Sharpton was being taught to don a hazmat suit.

  Uh-oh, I thought. This can’t end well.

  I was right to be worried. The summer of 2014 wasn’t the first time terrible things happened. But it was the first time I began regularly hearing the phrase “The world is falling apart.” Objectively, this just wasn’t true. In 2014, terrorists k
illed eighteen people in the United States; approximately the same number were killed by cows. Your odds of dying a violent death, being assaulted in a United States city, developing terminal cancer: by historical standards, all these were near their all-time lows. Yet the number of Americans certain the sky was falling rocketed to new heights.

  I blame the media. More accurately, I blame social media. Thanks to Twitter, you could follow every tragedy as it unfolded. Thanks to YouTube and Facebook, you could now watch, rather than merely read about, the world’s most horrific events. We were experiencing less violence than almost any generation in human history. But we were witnessing more violence than ever before.

  There is, I must admit, another reason I may have been less frantic about the universe than my peers. At the very moment civilization appeared to be collapsing, my speechwriting career was really taking off.

  AT THE WHITE HOUSE, THE UPPER ECHELON OF STAFF IS MADE UP OF “commissioned officers.” Commissioned officers, in turn, are grouped into three tiers. Special Assistants to the President are outranked by Deputy Assistants to the President. Deputy Assistants to the President are outranked by Assistants to the President. Assistants to the President, in theory at least, answer directly to the commander in chief.

  Commissions cannot be handed out like candy. The total number of SAPs, DAPs, and APs (pronounced “saps, daps, and apps”) is tightly controlled. So when Kyle O’Connor, a POTUS speechwriter since the first campaign, announced he was leaving his SAP spot for a job at a tech company, it was a big deal. Subtly at first, and then with increasing shamelessness, I pestered Cody for a promotion. Late that summer, he decided I had earned it. There were still dozens of DAPs and APs who outranked me. But as a newly minted Special Assistant to the President, I was now technically a member of the White House senior staff.

  My new title came with a raise. Preacher Man now owed me an extra cent a year. But inside the building, where everyone was underpaid relative to the private sector, what mattered more than money was access.