On Wednesday, I printed several copies of the president’s briefing memo before checking myself in front of a mirror one last time. I headed down to the Oval Office with Tina and our team, feeling good. As we walked in, POTUS approached, arm outstretched for the handshake–bro hugs he’s known for.
“Heyyyyyyy,” he said, eyeing me with a hint of friendly ridicule, “look who decided to shave today!”
* * *
In his remarks during the signing ceremony, Obama talked about the unique history of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. He shouted out prominent people we had invited, like Wat Misaka, the first nonwhite NBA player.3 He gave props to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of second-generation Japanese Americans who proudly fought in World War II, despite many of their families being thrown in internment camps. The executive directors of dozens of nonprofits were in attendance, from anti–domestic violence organizations to criminal justice reform groups. In the very room where LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the president was formally recognizing the unique contributions that all communities make to the American project.
With his remarks finished and while a Hindu priest recited a prayer, the president walked to his left to light the Diwali diya, symbolizing the victory of light over darkness. Centered on the wall behind the president and the pandit, just above the diya, hangs artist Gilbert Stuart’s famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. The painting was saved by Dolley Madison when the British burned down the White House in 1814, nearly a century before they beat and jailed my grandfather for standing up for his human rights. From the back of this room, I watched as Obama became the first president of the United States to personally celebrate Diwali, honoring the dignity and contributions of South Asian Americans right alongside everyone else. Middle School Me smiled.
* * *
Six months later, it became clear why work on these kinds of executive orders was a priority. On April 20, 2010, the oil and gas company British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico started to spill what would ultimately be two hundred million gallons of crude oil into the ocean over the course of eighty-seven days. It was the biggest oil spill in US history. Sixteen thousand miles of coastline were affected, along with the livelihoods of thousands of families.
A sizable percentage of American fishermen in the Gulf happen to be of Vietnamese descent, and many don’t speak English as their first language—potentially complicating an already dire situation. Overnight, I and other OPE staffers handling outreach to constituencies affected by the spill began to receive emailed reports from the White House Situation Room. These updates would arrive every few hours, outlining everything from areas impacted to environmental and economic damage. It was a critical tool that guided our outreach efforts toward the people who needed it.
On the ground, there were rumors that BP might try to get these Vietnamese American fishermen to sign complicated legal documents with measly settlements, knowing that they couldn’t understand the labyrinthine language. They would need help navigating this and other aspects of post-disaster life.
While there are great nonprofit organizations serving AAPI communities in the region, they weren’t equipped to deal with challenges of this magnitude. They needed support in the form of federal government liaisons, translators, and interpreters—not to tell people whether to sign things like settlement documents (that was obviously a choice for their families to make independently), but to assure that everyone had the same equal access to understanding what was going on in the first place. Thanks to the executive order, there was now a mechanism in place tying assistance across federal agencies and community groups; the Obama Administration was able to send staff from OPE and Whappy to help.
When he campaigned on bolstering government in a way that assures none of our fellow Americans fall through the cracks, Obama obviously couldn’t have predicted the oil spill or BP’s gross negligence. And yet, our ability to respond to those types of disasters is exactly what he knew the richest and most powerful country in the world was capable of.
I’ve thought about this experience often in the years since, especially as our politics has grown more cynical and fatalist. The Americans we were able to help in the Gulf lived mostly in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi: places where Obama is despised. These red states didn’t vote to elect him, and they wouldn’t be voting to reelect him. That didn’t matter to the president. Our job was to be there for them, no matter what their political affiliation.
The Sunday afternoon when my intern and I stood alone with the president in the middle of the colonnade, there were no journalists around who might print sound bites of his words. No donors nearby who might hear what he said and feel motivated to write a big check. The president simply meant what he said as he thought about the Americans his executive order would help: “I’m glad we’re finally doing that. It’s the right thing to do.”
1?Okay to use here too!
2?The AAPI community is a very large umbrella encompassing groups as culturally, financially, and economically disparate as wealthy Japanese American doctors, Hmong farmers, and Native Hawaiians; when I was President Obama’s representative to the Council on Native Hawaiian Advancement Conference in 2009, I became the first Executive Branch representative to ever visit the Papakōlea Homestead, in what was a very emotional afternoon for all (a homestead is like a reservation, except unlike Native Americans and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians still don’t have federal recognition, largely because of the US Senate).
3?New York Knicks, 1947, in case you’re wondering.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN NASCAR AND CHILL
Why is NASCAR considered a sport? I mean, just look at it: A bunch of cars drive around a circle for a few hours, crashing every now and again while drunk fans hoot and holler at the carnage. Dodgeball is more of a sport than NASCAR. Or bowling.
As a northeastern elite, my interaction with NASCAR was minimal until 2010. That’s when, in the midst of my multifaceted DC social life—the kind I had hoped for in moving from the uniformity of Los Angeles—I met a very handsome, quiet guy at a bar. Our first date was a few days later at Townhouse Tavern on R Street, a dive by Dupont Circle. Josh is from a small, rural town in Mississippi. He has a distinctively southern accent and the kind of relaxed, laid-back personality that any high-strung northeasterner like me envies. I was looking forward to getting to know him, and had a good feeling going into the evening.