I was lucky to receive it. Most rogue interns never get a second chance. And here it’s worth mentioning that I benefited from what was known in 2009 as being fortunate, and is now more commonly called privilege. It’s not like I flashed an Ivy League gang sign and was handed a career. If I had stood on a street corner yelling, “I’m white and male, and the world owes me something!” it’s unlikely doors would have opened. What I did receive, however, was a string of conveniences, do-overs, and encouragements. My parents could help me pay rent for a few months out of school. I went to a university lousy with successful D.C. alumni. No less significantly, I avoided the barriers that would have loomed had I belonged to a different gender or race.
Put another way, I had access to a network whether I was bullshit or not. A friend’s older brother worked as a speechwriter for John Kerry. When my Crisis Hut term expired, he helped me find an internship at West Wing Writers, a firm founded by former speechwriters for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. In the summer of 2009, my new bosses upgraded me to full-time employee.
Without meaning to, I had stumbled upon the chance to learn a skill. The firm’s partners were four of the best writers in Washington, and each taught me something different. Vinca LaFleur helped me understand the benefits of subtle but well-timed alliteration. Paul Orzulak showed me how to coax speakers into revealing the main idea they hope to express. From Jeff Shesol, I learned that while speechwriting is as much art as craft, and no two sets of remarks are alike, there’s a reason most speechwriters punctuate long, flowy sentences with short, punchy ones. It works.
The firm’s fourth partner, Jeff Nussbaum, had carved out a niche writing jokes for public figures. It was he who taught me about the delicate balance all public-sector humorists hope to strike. Writing something funny for a politician, I learned, is like designing something stunning for Marlon Brando past his prime. The qualifier is everything.
At first I didn’t understand this. In June, President Obama’s speechwriters asked Jeff to pitch jokes for an upcoming appearance at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. I sent him a few ideas, including one about the president and First Lady’s recent trip to see a Broadway show:
“My critics are upset it cost taxpayer dollars to fly me and Michelle to New York for date night. But let me be clear. That wasn’t spending. It was stimulus.”
Unsurprisingly, my line about stimulating America’s first couple didn’t make it into the script. But others did. The morning after the speech, I watched on YouTube as President Obama turned to NBC reporter Chuck Todd.
“Chuck embodies the best of both worlds: he has the rapid-fire style of a television correspondent, and the facial hair of a radio correspondent.”
That was my joke! I grabbed the scroll bar and watched again. The line wasn’t genius. The applause was largely polite. Still, I was dumbfounded. A thought entered my brain, and then, just a few days later, exited the mouth of the president of the United States. This was magic.
Still, even then, I had no illusions of becoming a presidential speechwriter. When friends asked if I hoped to work in the White House, I told them Obama had more than enough writers already. I meant it.
Besides, working for well-heeled clients came with its own set of perks. One of our clients, a bona fide billionaire, owned a pro basketball team. A few months after starting my new job, I was invited to a game. As I took my plush seat in a luxury box, I marveled at the bounty before me. Free beer. An amazing view. Unlimited hot dogs. The perfect afternoon.
Then the subject turned to Obama’s proposed health care law, and suddenly everything changed. My host’s eyes took on a wistful, faraway quality.
“I’ll tell you,” the billionaire sighed, looking out from the owner’s box. “It just doesn’t pay to be rich anymore.”
In fairness, our client was not the only one who had come slightly unglued over Obama’s policies. On April 15, 2009, I was walking through downtown Washington when I came across a crowd of people railing against government and waving tricornered hats. It was hard to take them seriously while they were wearing Halloween costumes. Imagine watching someone dressed as a sexy kitten endorse a Medicare privatization scheme. Still, I shouldn’t have dismissed them. On television and in person, the conservative colonists multiplied with alarming speed.
Some of the leaders of the backlash said their name was an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already.” Maybe this was true at first. But the Tea Party was soon infused with paranoia that had nothing to do with taxes. While the ugliness caught Washington observers by surprise, anyone who had spent time in a battleground state recognized it instantly. Back in Ohio, volunteers had been told to check boxes corresponding to a voter’s most important issue: economy, environment, health care. But what box were you supposed to check when a voter’s concern was that Obama was a secret Muslim? Or a terrorist? Or a communist? Or the actual, literal Antichrist? How could you convince a voter whose pastor told them your candidate would bring about the biblical end of days?
Other people were just plain racist. Outside an unemployment center in Canton, a skinny white man with stringy hair and a ratty T-shirt told me he would never, ever support my candidate. When I asked why, he took two fingers and tapped them against the veiny underside of his forearm. At first I didn’t understand.
“You won’t vote for Obama because you’re a heroin addict?”
It took me at least ten seconds to realize he was gesturing to the color of his skin.
This sort of thing was not part of every conversation. It would be wrong to say racism was the only thing eroding Obama’s support. But it would be equally wrong to deny its existence. Better to say that bigotry was like one of the Beach Boys who wasn’t Brian Wilson. The lyrics would have been the same without those unmistakable ooohs and ahhs, but it would have been a whole different sound.
For the first few months of the campaign, this paranoid, prejudiced stew simmered in the background. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his vice president, and everything blew up. As a speechwriter, I learned to use the phrase permission structure to describe the conditions that allow a choice to be made. If you’re counting calories, for example, “cheat day” might be the permission structure for a plate of deep-fried chicken wings followed by several slices of chocolate cake.
Sarah Palin was a permission structure unto herself. With the mannerisms of June Cleaver and the worldview of Joe McCarthy, she gladly trumpeted what the Bush administration merely implied.
“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America.”
“He’s palling around with terrorists.”