Thanks, Obama Read online

In that regard, becoming a SAP was like winning a sweepstakes. A few days after my promotion became official, I made my way to the operations office, where a young woman walked me through a grab bag of new perks. I could now park inside the White House campus, order frozen yogurt from the West Wing takeout window, and reserve a table at the Navy Mess. I received a commissioned-officer certificate for framing. My business cards were upgraded with a fancy raised seal. Technically, people were even supposed to refer to me as “The Honorable David Litt,” although sadly no one ever did.

  The most extraordinary new benefit was the one saved for last. Opening a small folder, the young woman from operations retrieved a silver key, about an inch long and a quarter-inch thick. I recognized it instantly. It was the same key Terry wore around his neck, the key I was certain granted access to the bunker and escape pod. Now, it was being placed in my outstretched hand.

  The operations associate noticed my startled expression. She met my gaze with a solemn, weighty stare.

  “This,” she told me gravely, “will get you into the senior staff gym.”

  13

  BUCKET

  So I had done it! I had earned the right to puff away on the elliptical next to some of the world’s most powerful people. I had not, however, joined their ranks. The line between senior staff and really senior staff was drawn anew each morning. If you held a standing invitation to Denis McDonough’s 7:30 A.M. meeting, you were one of the few people who truly had the president’s ear.

  If, like me, you were invited to the 9 A.M. in the Roosevelt Room, you got to participate in White House show-and-tell. In fairness, these meetings were often quite informative. Puerto Rico’s debt service. Community college dropout rates. The changing nature of retirement plans. It’s nearly impossible to find a subject about which someone, somewhere in the federal government is not currently geeking out. One memorable morning, a scientist spent ten minutes lecturing us on America’s unique blend of topsoil. I mean this sincerely: I have never felt so patriotic about dirt.

  Not every 9 A.M. was successful. There was the time, for instance, that a National Security Council director briefed us on the chaos facing villages along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The moment the presenter finished, a hand shot up. It belonged to one of our growing number of Silicon Valley transplants.

  “I was just thinking,” sighed the technologist. “If only we could teach those girls to code.”

  Even now, years later, I don’t know what to make of that moment. On one hand, what the fuck? On the other, the Obama White House was shaped, and often improved, by these minor culture clashes. Palo Alto vs. the State Department. CEO types vs. protest-march types. Those who liked college basketball vs. those who only pretended to like college basketball. (In Obamaworld, there was no other choice.)

  Then there was the culture clash that dwarfed all others. Were you the type of person who preferred to stay in Washington, creating and implementing new policy? Or did you long to hit the campaign trail?

  Out of necessity, plenty of staffers kept a foot in both worlds. But just as there are chocolate people and vanilla people, nearly everyone swore allegiance to one side. Campaign people saw policy people as eggheads without street smarts. Policy people saw campaign people as simpletons without attention spans. Both sides had a point.

  That said, I was a campaign person. I loved the collective intake of breath at a rally the moment a candidate took the stage. I loved watching crowds roar over words like freedom and citizenship.

  Most of all, I loved winning. And not just for the speedball of adrenaline and dopamine it produced. I loved winning because, in a polarized democracy, the quickest route to change was replacing Republicans with Democrats; the greatest obstacle to change was vice versa. If day-to-day governing was like choosing the right words, elections were like choosing a language.

  And it was the upcoming elections, more than the fancy new business card or even the parking pass, that made me excited to become a SAP. As a commissioned officer, I was now exempt from the legal division between official and political activity. Unburdened by the rule that stymied me in 2012, I could finally write speeches for campaigns. And not a moment too soon. With the 2014 midterms approaching, I figured POTUS would spend the fall rallying voters on his fellow Democrats’ behalf.

  What I hadn’t realized was just how unpopular we had become. As November drew nearer, the national outlook went from dark to darker. The president’s approvals steadily declined. For Democrats running for senator or governor, it was as though Barack Obama had come down with chicken pox. Barely concealing their panic, they declined his offer to join them on the stump.

  There were a few exceptions. On October 28, we flew to Wisconsin to support our candidate for governor, Mary Burke. It was a freezing Tuesday evening, in a state the president had already visited countless times. Even so, thirty-five hundred people showed up. The president reminded the packed high school gym of the progress we had made together. He emphasized the upcoming election’s stakes.

  “Cynicism is a choice,” he cried. “Hope is a better choice.”

  The audience erupted into rapturous applause. In that room, Obama’s approval rating was a billion gazillion percent. That’s another thing I loved about campaigns. In their final days, you always felt on the cusp of victory, whether you were going to win or lose.

  We were going to lose. Badly. By eye-popping margins, voters chose cynicism—unless you’re old enough to have seen Casablanca when it first opened, 2014 was the lowest-turnout election of your life. Not everyone stayed home, of course. Plenty of Republicans showed up. John Boehner added thirteen seats to his House majority. Mitch McConnell needed six seats to take the Senate and picked up nine. Forget poor Mary Burke in Wisconsin. We even lost governors’ races in deep-blue Massachusetts and Illinois.

  The 9 A.M meeting the following morning was not one of our cheeriest. Judging from people’s expressions, you would have thought there was an open casket in the room. Policy people were grieving because the outcome made no sense. How could we rescue an economy, take out bin Laden, lay out proposals that routinely garnered support from a majority of Americans, and still get utterly whomped? Campaign people understood that logic doesn’t decide elections. But this same understanding had allowed us to hope, however illogically, that the midterms might swing our way. It was hard to tell who was more distraught.

  It fell to David Simas, the president’s political director, to analyze our defeat. Unlike the rest of us, Simas held local office before coming to Washington. He still had politician hair to prove it—a well-defined part just right of center, with two brown cliffs on either side. But the face beneath them, ordinarily home to a cautiously optimistic smile, looked haggard. Each of his PowerPoint slides was bleaker than the last. Too many independents were sick of us. Too many Democrats were tired of us. This wasn’t as bad as 2010. It was worse.

  Then, halfway through Simas’s morbid presentation, the door directly to his right burst open. President Obama walked in.

  Instantly, the mood transformed. Dispirited eyes lit up. The applause echoing through the Roosevelt Room rivaled anything on the campaign. Once the cheering finally faded, POTUS began to speak.

  “I hate losing,” he said, “and we lost bad last night. But I intend to squeeze every ounce of juice out of these next two years.”

  For several minutes, he continued in this vein of dogged optimism. I remember trying to pay attention to what he said. But I couldn’t. I was too busy watching the audience. Seated around the giant wooden conference table were the really senior staff, eyes full of misty, overwhelming gratitude. It was as though they were young children, and Barack Obama was the older brother they adored.

  I knew that look. I knew how it felt to trust Obama unreservedly, unblinkingly, no matter how daunting the odds. And I realized, with a mix of horror and heartbreak, that I didn’t feel that way anymore. Yes, we had cleaned up George W. Bush’s mess. But that wasn’t the vision that put me and so
many others under Obama’s spell. The promise that transfixed us was the one delivered on that January night in Iowa:

  “Faced with impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”

  Now it was clearer than ever. The speech that changed my life was just another act of unfounded optimism. No matter how well chosen the president’s words, our story would be written in Mitch McConnell’s language. The cynics were going to win. The believers were going to lose.

  The pep talk ended and POTUS left. I clapped and smiled. What else could I do? But how foolish that seemed now. How naive.

  AT MOMENTS LIKE THESE, I SINCERELY ENVIED BO, THE OBAMAS’ Portuguese water dog. Bo did not care about poll numbers or stalled legislation. Oblivious to his owner’s approval ratings, he strutted through the White House, somehow aware that in America, presidential pets are the closest thing we have to royalty. In 2013 he was joined by a second dog, Sunny, who shared this understanding. Free from responsibility, Sunny bounded recklessly and put his paws all over everything, like Prince Harry before he settled down.

  Now that’s the life, I thought. Give me the juiciest parts of 1600 Pennsylvania: the access, the ego boost, the extra spring of confidence in my step. But spare me the rest of it. Why do I have to lose sleep over the future of universal pre-K? Why does the thought of ending clean-energy tax credits feel so personal it balls my fists in rage?

  I didn’t even have to become a dog to be happy. I could be one of the giant spiders that infested the press office, where they got to be, and to eat, the flies on the wall. Or the red-tailed hawk who nested above the South Lawn, the one a group of fourth graders named Lincoln. Lincoln didn’t understand the concept of “administration in crisis.” Lincoln didn’t know how it felt to wonder if years of effort were in vain. To him, the White House was nothing more than a giant squirrel buffet.

  Nor did Lincoln know that presidents are expected to hold press conferences after humiliating defeats. But POTUS did. The day after the midterms he summoned reporters for Act I of the traditional post-shellacking script. Their questions left no doubt as to the narrative: “Defeated President Abandons Goals.”

  “Do you feel any responsibility to recalibrate your agenda?”

  “Why not pull a page from the Clinton playbook and admit you have to make a much more dramatic shift in course?”

  This was the part where President Obama was supposed to publicly scale back his ambitions. But something strange happened. Instead of humbling himself before the press corps, POTUS stood his ground. “The principles that we’re fighting for, the things that motivate me every single day and motivate my staff every day—those things aren’t going to change,” he said. For those who don’t speak press conference, let me translate. The president told reporters to fuck off.

  It wasn’t just talk. A few days after the presser, Beijing and Washington signed a joint climate deal, the first time China had ever agreed to limit carbon emissions. Coal-state senators like McConnell howled, but were powerless to stop it. That same week, I wrote a script for a Facebook video endorsing net neutrality. Cable companies whined fiercely, as did many of the lawmakers who counted on their donations. President Obama didn’t care.

  Yet climate and the Internet were mere warm-ups. No executive action was more fraught than immigration.

  After the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney received just 27 percent of the Latino vote, Republicans conducted an autopsy of the results. It seems almost unbelievable today, but their most urgent recommendation was unanimous. Support immigration reform! Do it now!

  GOP senators from states like Florida and Arizona got the message. Together with Democrats, they passed a bill to allow eleven million undocumented immigrants to become citizens over time. But in the House, where the Tea Party ruled and the districts were gerrymandered, reform went nowhere. In July 2014, the president announced he would no longer wait for Congress. He would act without delay.

  Then, for several months, he delayed. This time the problem wasn’t Republicans. It was Democrats. Already afraid to be tied to the president, skittish candidates begged him to hold back until after they won. He held back. They lost anyway. At the press conference the day after the midterms, reporters asked President Obama no fewer than five immigration questions, all of which were essentially the same. “Do you really want to go through with this?”

  He did. The White House scheduled an address to the nation for November 20. I asked if I could write the speech. Cody agreed to give me a shot.

  It was, by far, the most high-profile set of remarks I had ever written—a prime-time address, carried live on national TV. For the next two weeks, I fluttered about the West Wing: the Domestic Policy Council, the White House Counsel’s Office, the Office of the Chief of Staff. Mostly, however, I poured over reams of survey data compiled by David Simas and his team. Night after night, they surveyed American homes, just as Joel Benenson had during the campaign. But where Joel’s polling asked about a candidate, Simas asked about an issue.

  “So, America’s immigration system is broken. How does that make you feel?”

  In the weeks before the big address, our research focused on voters we called Up for Grabs, or UFGs. UFGs were not exactly a melting pot. Overwhelmingly white. Politically independent. Predominately female. Typically suburban and middle-aged. It is a generalization, but only a slight one, to apply the name Karen to the entire group.

  Karen wasn’t against immigration entirely. That said, she believed in playing by the rules. She bristled at the thought of people who were coming here “the wrong way.” With this in mind, I cast the president’s actions as a kind of tough love. We would surge security along the southern border. We would force five million undocumented immigrants to emerge from the shadows and learn English. We would make them pay back taxes and a fine. Only then would we let them stay. Tough, cold-blooded, and couched in the language of self-interest, my draft was engineered to win UFG support. I sent it to Cody, certain I had earned a boom!

  But Cody knew something I didn’t. A regular at the 7:30 A.M. meeting, he had noticed a change in his boss.

  “Why don’t we go up and talk to him before he sees this?” he suggested.

  POTUS time was scheduled. We arrived in the Oval, taking seats opposite the president at his desk. He reached toward my printed draft. Before he could lay a hand on it, however, Cody jumped in.

  “I figured you wanted to focus on values for this one. Make the big, moral case.”

  “Exactly,” said POTUS. “Let’s go big here.”

  For the next several minutes, President Obama described his vision in terms of sweeping principles, not cost-benefit concerns. A system that left millions of workers unable to earn citizenship was unfair. A system that separated families was unjust. A system designed to reject rather than welcome immigrants was un-American. POTUS reached the end of his outline. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pointed to my draft on the desk.

  “So Litt, I assume everything I said is in here?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I lied. “Totally.”

  We left the Oval, Cody making certain to retrieve my remarks so that POTUS wouldn’t learn the truth. I didn’t need to ask. I was getting bigfooted. A few nights later President Obama stood in the East Room, live on television, to deliver a completely rewritten speech.

  “For more than two hundred years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations.

  “Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have the chance to get right with the law?

  “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger—we were strangers once, too.”

  It’s not fair to say President Obama ignored UFGs entirely. But it is fair to say their short-term preferences commanded less of his attention than ever before. Unlike Karen, a nineteen-year-old born to undocumented parents in Tucson or Reno wasn�
��t up for grabs. She may not even have voted in 2014. But she was American. Obama was her president, too. And in what he called “the fourth quarter,” he focused on building a country that delivered on its promise for everyone, voter and nonvoter, UFG and non-UFG alike.

  The centerpiece of the president’s announcement—a plan to protect five million undocumented immigrants—would eventually be overturned by the Supreme Court. But the change in tone was permanent. The 2015 SOTU was less than two months after the immigration address, and as it drew closer, Cody went into full warrior poet mode, cloistering himself in his office for weeks. The day of the speech, I finally saw him. He looked as though he’d been subsisting on a diet of rainwater and Nicorette.

  “Are you going?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said, exhausted. “You want to?”

  Of course I wanted to. That night I loaded into the staff van, and the motorcade raced down Independence Avenue toward the brightly lit Capitol dome.

  I had moved to Washington seven years ago, but this was my first time setting foot on the floor of Congress. I felt a strange mix of awe and fury. There was Mitch McConnell! (Actually much handsomer in person.) There was John Boehner! (Actually exactly the same.) I squeezed against a wall, identifying faces of congressional Republicans like a bird watcher who deeply loathes birds. There were so many of them. And so few of us.

  If President Obama felt cowed to see a record number of critics in the audience, however, he didn’t show it. Defiantly, proudly, he ticked off his accomplishments. Job creation at the fastest pace since the nineties. The highest-ever number of college graduates. The end of the combat mission in Afghanistan. In previous years, we had often caveated our achievements, not wanting to offend those who felt progress wasn’t coming fast enough. This time, there was no pussyfooting around. “The State of the Union is strong,” POTUS declared, in the very first page of the speech. Believe it or not, it was the first time since becoming president that Barack Obama had read those words aloud.