Thanks, Obama Read online

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  But the president saved his most memorable moment for the speech’s final minutes. “I have no more campaigns to run,” he announced. The line was supposed to be classy and high-minded. To everyone’s surprise, however, the Republicans broke into spontaneous applause.

  For a moment, I thought President Obama would simply ignore them. Instead, he paused and nodded tersely. I had watched him long enough to know what was coming next.

  Uh-oh. He’s gonna say some shit.

  POTUS looked directly at his opponents and grinned. “I know,” he said, “because I won both of them.” Republicans glowered. Democrats, so recently humiliated at the polls, went nuts. Our critics would say the president’s comeback was beneath the dignity of his office. But as far as I was concerned, while no squirrels were eaten, POTUS was acting positively Lincoln-esque.

  PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ATTITUDE WASN’T THE ONLY THING UNSHACKLED. So was the way he got his message across. When I first received my blue badge, there were really only two communications tools available to the White House: interview or speech. True, we had a new-media office. Once a year POTUS chatted with YouTube stars. But we treated the Internet as an accessory rather than a necessity, lipstick rather than pants.

  That changed with Between Two Ferns. From the moment the video aired, we wondered why we hadn’t done something like it sooner. When February 2015 rolled around, and Americans had their second chance to buy insurance through Obamacare, there was no doubt we would promote the law online again. The only question was with whom.

  The answer was a drug deal. Not literally. No narcotics were exchanged for cash. In the White House, rather, a “drug deal” referred to a communications bargain in which media appearances were swapped. In this case our dealer was BuzzFeed, a site that became famous for listicles that spread like bird flu online:

  17 WAYS YOU KNOW YOU GREW UP ON A HOUSEBOAT

  15 FERRETS WHO JUST CAN’T EVEN

  That sort of thing.

  In 2011, however, BuzzFeed developed highbrow ambitions. Poaching Ben Smith, an editor from Politico, the newly created BuzzFeed News produced some of the best coverage of the 2012 campaign. Now, a few years later, BuzzFeed News was a player, and looking for the ultimate badge of media cred. They wanted a sit-down interview with the president. We wanted a video plugging Healthcare.gov.

  Hence the drug deal. POTUS and Ben Smith would meet in the residence for an on-the-record chat that met the highest journalistic standards. Then the president would cross the hall to the library. There he would join a separate division of the company, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, to shamelessly promote his law.

  Our press team had no problem setting up the Ben Smith interview. From the start, however, it was clear that BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and the White House did not see eye to eye. Kori Schulman, our deputy digital director, was assigned to safeguard the president’s equities. Like me, Kori was in her twenties. But applied to us, millennial was an adjective. Applied to our viral-content counterparts, it was a full-time job. With the relentless enthusiasm of an Instagram star on vacation, they proposed an idea: force POTUS to try weird American foods, then film him when he got grossed out.

  “We think it will break the Internet!” they announced.

  Kori and I tried to explain that there are certain unwritten rules to being president, and that one of those rules is “Don’t mock things voters eat.” But our dealers were unfamiliar with the concept of unwanted attention, and coming up with a replacement theme for the video was a nightmare. Prisoner swaps have been negotiated in less time.

  Even when we did settle on a suitably inoffensive concept—“Things Everyone Does that You Do Too”—our equities proved difficult to protect. No, Kori and I explained, POTUS would not vape on camera. No, the president would not pull underwear from the crack of his ass.

  “Are you sure? We really think it will break the Internet.”

  Eventually, we reached an agreement: POTUS would do things that were silly without being embarrassing. Making faces in the mirror. Using a selfie stick. Shooting a pretend jump shot. Mispronouncing February as he delivered his health care plug. The day before the shoot, when BuzzFeed Motion Pictures arrived for a walk-through in the residence, I hoped that we were finally on the same page.

  One look at our video’s director disabused me of this notion. I’ll call this person Manbun after his most distinguishing feature, the same way some people are called Charity or Faith. Also, I get that not everyone dresses in business attire. I really do. But wearing skinny jeans to a White House meeting? As a nation, can’t we agree that this is treason?

  Perhaps I could have forgiven Manbun’s clothing if his personality hadn’t so perfectly matched it. For several minutes, he preened about the library, resembling nothing so much as a human Bo. Finally, he turned to Kori.

  “I’m thinking we film the basketball shot first, then the selfie stick, then the health care plug.” He pursed his lips in a caricature of thoughtfulness. #Listening. “What do you think?”

  Kori was quick to reply. “Actually, we should do the health care plug first. We need to remind POTUS why he’s doing this. Then we can do the basketball shot, then the selfie stick.”

  Manbun struck another pose. #ReallyListening. He remained frozen for several seconds. Then he suddenly sprung back to life.

  “Great! So we’ll do the basketball shot first, then the selfie stick, then the health care plug.”

  This was not an accident. He employed this tactic repeatedly. (1) State an opinion. (2) Make a big show of asking for feedback. (3) Restate the exact same opinion word for word.

  It speaks to Kori’s character that at no time did she kick Manbun enthusiastically in the testicles. She didn’t even forcibly shave his head. And that, of course, is the essence of being a staffer. You deal with nonsense gladly, smile cheerfully at people who demean you, all so that your boss can worry about more important concerns. On the day of the drug deal, POTUS had no knowledge of the thousand small headaches his team had endured. After his straight-news interview, he bounded into the library, Hope Hall shadowing behind with her camera.

  “Okay, what are we doin’?”

  We began with the health care plug, a victory we had secured after hours of intense back-and-forth. As Kori predicted, starting with the serious stuff gave POTUS license to enjoy everything that came after. The basketball shot; the selfie stick; getting frustrated and saying, “Thanks, Obama,” sarcastically: everything ran smoothly, almost eerily so. When our director indicated he was finished, POTUS invited the BuzzFeed Motion Pictures team to join him for a photo. Hope Hall dropped to one knee to film POTUS as he joked around with the crew. My jaw finally unclenched.

  And then, just when I thought it was over, Manbun stepped forward. Reaching into his pants pocket, he retrieved a bright orange business card. Then he placed it in Barack Obama’s hand.

  “Here you go, Mr. President. Just in case you ever need more filming done.”

  I was stunned. Under any circumstance, Manbun’s sales pitch would have been presumptuous. But with Hope kneeling right there on the floor, recording the entire exchange? It was unspeakably rude. From the corner of the room where I stood with other White House staffers, a small, collective gasp could be heard. President Obama merely smiled. He began heading for the door. I thought he would simply leave.

  But he didn’t. Instead, POTUS paused and turned directly toward his staff. When he spoke it was in a stage whisper, each word overflowing with disdain.

  “Great,” he said, gesturing with the orange card. “Maybe I’ll put this in my Rolodex.”

  It is impossible, on the page, to capture the beauty of that moment. In fact, that’s part of the beauty. Plausible deniability was preserved. But to those watching, there was absolutely no doubt what the president had done. It was the rhetorical equivalent of a body slam.

  Nor was President Obama finished. Walking out the door, he turned to Marv, his aide.

  “Man,” he said loudly, shaking his
head, “I just love it when people give me their cards.”

  Not all good presidents are good people. LBJ created Medicare and signed the Civil Rights Act while conducting his private life in a manner that would make a gorilla blush. But Barack Obama was the kind of person who noticed when a member of his staff was being insulted, and refused to walk away. He used his power to defend the dignity of others. He didn’t have to do that. But he did.

  I think this basic decency was reflected in President Obama’s policies. I know for certain it’s what convinced so many people to join his team, and remain there, even when times were hard. I still wasn’t sure if POTUS could recover from the 2014 elections. I was only slowly rebuilding my trust. But as he left that library, with Hope Hall trailing behind him, a part of me loved Barack Obama more fiercely than ever before.

  (Also, I have it on good authority that later, off the record, he made fun of Manbun’s hair.)

  GIVE BUZZFEED MOTION PICTURES CREDIT: THEY DID INDEED BREAK the Internet. Their video received tens of millions of views. By the end of spring, thanks to Obamacare, sixteen million more Americans were insured.

  That wasn’t all. The unemployment rate, 9.3 percent when POTUS took office, was down to 5.5 percent. Deficits were shrinking. Dependence on foreign oil was falling. We moved forward on new climate rules. We began to normalize relations with Cuba, untangling one of the last vestigial conflicts of the Cold War. President Obama was through waiting around for Congress. He was getting things done.

  Americans took notice. Our approval ratings, thirteen points underwater on Election Day, were by April back to an even split. This was not supposed to happen. According to the narrative, Obama’s White House was in its final throes. Instead, we defied political gravity every day.

  “What’s the mood like over there?” people asked.

  “Everyone’s feeling great!” I said. And this time I was being completely honest. There is nothing more exhilarating than being part of something meaningful as it rises from the dead. It animates your present. No less important, it justifies your past. All the vacations skipped, weddings or birthday parties not attended, lucrative job offers turned down. Everything suddenly makes sense. I had never been so happy in the White House.

  Nor, as March turned to April, had I ever been so excited for a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As the big day drew closer, a comedy-writer friend from college, Andrew Law, captured the moment perfectly with a joke.

  After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, “Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?” And I told them, well, I have something that rhymes with “bucket list.”

  Take action on immigration? Bucket. Let’s go for it.

  New climate regs? Bucket. Why not?

  I wondered if POTUS would cut the joke. Swearing in public, even in pun form, was risky. Besides, I could still remember that Biden “big stick” line from 2012. But this was the fourth quarter, and President Obama made only one change. In the very last sentence, he crossed out the words Why not?

  Bucket, read the new version. It’s the right thing to do.

  The rest of POTUS’s edits were no less fourth-quartery. Next to a joke about the Koch brothers, he’d written in the margin: Something sharper—tougher? Another setup referenced a recent comment from Dick Cheney. The former VP had said Obama was the worst president of his lifetime. When I tried a singe-don’t-burn punch line—“And here I thought we were friends!”—POTUS was unimpressed. We should come up with something sharper and more cutting here, he wrote. Then, for emphasis, he added:

  It’s Cheney!

  The president’s energy was contagious. Jokes seemed to flow naturally that year. But that didn’t mean the process was easy. We struggled to find a set piece, an unmistakable highlight of the night. How could we meet the moment? What could we do that we hadn’t done before? I was on the verge of giving up when I remembered a holiday party.

  Staffers like me crashed White House parties with two main objectives: stealing food and stalking celebrities. One night in 2014, I accomplished both. After pursuing my quarry past the eggnog and gingerbread houses, I cornered him between the lamb chops and the cauliflower mac and cheese.

  “I write jokes for the president,” I said. “And I’m a huge fan of Key and Peele.”

  I was lucky. Keegan-Michael Key was not just a star of Comedy Central’s most popular sketch show. He was also the most extroverted person I had ever met.

  “Wow, thanks for saying hi!” he said, in a tone that suggested he actually meant it.

  “POTUS loves your show, too. Maybe we can find a way to work together?” I got Keegan’s e-mail and sent a follow-up. Then I promptly forgot the whole thing.

  I wasn’t lying, however. POTUS really was a fan. In particular, he enjoyed the recurring character of “Luther, Obama’s Anger Translator.” On Comedy Central, while his costar Jordan Peele impersonated the president with trademark calm, Keegan jumped in after every sentence to rant about the nonsense America put him through. Each year I had taken the lead on the Correspondents’ Dinner, we quietly wondered if we could put POTUS and Luther together in real life. But the timing was never right. In 2012 we weren’t eager to suggest that Barack Obama was secretly an angry black man. In 2013 we were only two weeks removed from the Boston bombings. In 2014 we needed to stay humble after Healthcare.gov.

  In 2015, though? Bucket. I fished Keegan’s e-mail from my inbox.

  A few days later, I heard back. Luther was a go. I threw together a script. Lovett punched it up from Hollywood. The next day, Cody and I went to the Oval to show the president our draft. There was no need for POTUS to practice his anger translator’s lines, but he read them anyway, relishing the chance to vent.

  “Y’all are ridiculous!” he told an imaginary press corps, swiping his finger through the air. He had penciled in that part himself. He added another joke as well, a few paragraphs later, about the media’s coverage of the ebola epidemic.

  What was that—one of the fifteen times you declared my presidency over?

  Back in school, when my improv comedy troupe warmed up before a show, a sense of bulletproof authority would sometimes fill the air. We could see the future, and the future was awesome. What was true in a college common room was no less true in the Oval. As President Obama reached the end of his script, there was the quiet, bubbly feeling that comes from being on the verge of something special.

  “Do you want us back here tomorrow morning?” asked Cody. Ordinarily we did one last run-through around noon on the day of the speech. This time, however, POTUS shook his head.

  “Nah,” he said. “The truth is, I’m pretty fucking good at this.”

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I SMUGGLED KEEGAN INTO THE WEST Wing, hiding him in Cody’s office to avoid journalists’ prying eyes. Finally, when we were sure the reporters had left for pre-parties, the two of us went to the residence to rehearse.

  A podium was set up in the Map Room, the same place POTUS had practiced his immigration speech five months before. But this time the president was in a tuxedo and a far more relaxed mood. He and Keegan chatted as though they’d been doing shtick for years.

  There was, however, a problem. The commander in chief couldn’t keep a straight face. “Hold on to your lily-white butts,” cried Keegan. The line, one of Lovett’s suggestions from Los Angeles, was Luther’s first of the night. POTUS burst out laughing.

  “Okay, okay. I’ve got to keep it together.”

  But this was a promise President Obama clearly couldn’t keep. He lost it every time. “I’m only getting a little worked up,” he warned. “For the real thing, I’m going for it.”

  It took us a half dozen stops and starts, but finally, we reached the last page of the script. Here, we had written in a twist. POTUS would begin discussing climate change deniers in Congress, and it would make him furious. He’d grow angrier and angrier, eventually getting so worked up that even Luther couldn’t calm him down.

  “That part won’t be hard
,” he assured Keegan. “I really do get angry, you know.” Then he thought for a moment.

  “I’ve just got to keep it together.”

  But he still couldn’t manage it. During the second run-through, POTUS was just as hopeless as before. And there was no time for more practice. POTUS and Keegan stood on either side of me while I jotted down their final edits. Then we jumped in the motorcade and sped toward the Hilton for the speech. President Obama took his seat at the head table. Keegan went to his hotel room to put on a gray suit and eight gold rings. I spent the evening in my usual fashion, bouncing around with nervous energy like a gas molecule. It was only by chance that I happened to be standing right behind the curtain when POTUS ducked backstage. He smiled and shook his head.

  “I just can’t break,” he said.

  I was surprised POTUS knew the comedy jargon for laughing in the middle of a scene. I was unsurprised, however, by what came next.

  “So, are we funny?”

  It was the question President Obama had been asking for years. For years, I’d stammered a reply. Now, though, I had the perfect answer. I thought about his pep talk in the Roosevelt Room five months earlier. I thought about his determination to write his own history, to speak his own language, no matter the obstacles in his path. I thought about the twenty months left in the fourth quarter, and grinning, I looked America’s first black president in the eye.

  “Hold on,” I said, “to your lily-white butts.”

  14

  THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

  Steve and I sat in the catwalk, as frosty as exes at a parent-teacher conference. Below us, Luther the Anger Translator strode onstage. Keegan hadn’t been kidding when he promised POTUS he would go for it. His veins bulged. His eyes bugged. As he screamed his opening line, the one about butts, my eyes darted to the president.

  Please don’t break. Please-don’t-break-please-don’t-break-please-don’t-break.

  To my horror, I saw POTUS swallow a laugh. It looked like he was about to lose it. And then, an instant before the point of no return, something clicked. It was like a bicycle changing gears. The president’s solemn expression snapped into place. When he continued, it was in the calm, backyard-trampolines tone he used for the weekly address: