I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.
Taken separately, these comments were mere hiccups. But string them together and they suggested a blind spot where ordinary Americans were concerned, the BMW zooming down the shoulder of the highway, wondering why the rule-following Fords and Hondas are upset. POTUS was still less popular than we would have liked. Romney led in plenty of polls. But between our opponent’s emerging flaws and the fact that a large chunk of McCain’s base had died of old age, Obama wasn’t toast just yet.
“Do we have a shot?” friends asked.
“It’ll be close,” I’d say, toeing the cautiously optimistic party line. “But I’d rather be us than them.”
Us and them. Obama’s election was supposed to end that kind of thinking. Watching the inauguration on a barroom screen, I was certain a new era had arrived. We would heal old wounds. We would find new ways to work together. Sure, we would have our disagreements, but always with the knowledge that we belonged to the same team.
Instead, the opposite had occurred. In just a few years, dividing lines had rippled across America like cracks in a car windshield. It wasn’t just conservative versus liberal. Each time I biked to work I passed McPherson Square, the local headquarters of the new movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Pedaling by their tarp village in my navy-blue suit, I could feel their antiestablishment loathing seeping through the fabric. But I’m a Democrat! pleaded the voice inside my head. This led to an imaginary argument that ended, inevitably, in rage. Hey, pal, I may not be a white guy with dreadlocks, but I believe in justice, too!
At other times, however, I had to concede the occupiers’ point. This was especially true in January 2012, when I worked on POTUS’s speech before something called the Alfalfa Club.
Put ten thousand protestors in a tent camp with ten thousand typewriters, and they would never dream up anything as offensive as the Alfalfa. Founded in 1913, the club’s stated mission is to bring together America’s most powerful people for no good reason at all. The sole guiding principles are (a) an excess of food and (b) an excess of alcohol. It’s the grown-up equivalent of the fridge at the Kennedy Center, minus the symphony and ballet.
The club meets just once a year, on the third Saturday of January, in the ballroom of a Washington hotel. There, decked out in tuxedos and gowns, two hundred Alfalfans dine on lobster and steak while roasting each other gently. (Jokes about money are acceptable, for example. Jokes about power are not.) Along with “nominating” a presidential candidate to give a tongue-in-cheek acceptance speech, the club inducts new members. These are grown men and women who, for the term of their initiation, willingly agree to be referred to as “sprouts.” Ridiculous, I know.
But before you dismiss the Alfalfa entirely, consider who the list of former sprouts includes: Henry Kissinger. Warren Buffett. Alan Greenspan. Sandra Day O’Connor. Mike Bloomberg. Neil Armstrong. Newt Gingrich. Chuck Schumer. Madeleine Albright. Colin Powell. Steve Forbes. Bill Clinton. Jeb Bush. George W. Bush. George H. W. Bush. Others have names you wouldn’t recognize, but represent organizations you would. Marriott. Procter & Gamble. The army. The air force. General Motors. Goldman Sachs. All have a seat at the table.
I doubt many Alfalfans see their club as a tool for protecting the status quo, but that’s the way it’s worked out. The organization barred African Americans until a decade after the Civil Rights Act. Doors were closed to women until 1994. Even the banquet’s date is retrograde: it honors the birthday of Robert E. Lee.
It’s hardly surprising that America’s first black president found the Alfalfa less than wonderful. In 2009, Barack Obama spoke there, just as every president had before him, but he didn’t exactly pay his respects. “Look at the person sitting on your left,” he said. “Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my e-mail address.”
Nor did POTUS let the Robert E. Lee thing slide. Instead, he thrust it into the spotlight: “If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old. And very confused.”
By normal standards this was nothing. At the Alfalfa, it was the rough equivalent of insulting everyone’s mother and farting loudly into the mic. When POTUS left, I imagine he vowed never to return.
Yet in 2012, he returned. Plenty of the speechwriters were livid. The club was the embodiment of everything we had promised to change. Was it really necessary to flatter these people, just because they were powerful and rich?
In a word, yes. In fact, thanks to the Supreme Court, the rich were more powerful than ever. In 2010, the court’s five conservative justices gutted America’s campaign finance laws in the decision known as Citizens United. With no more limits to the number of attack ads they could purchase, campaigns had become another hobby for the ultrawealthy. Tired of breeding racehorses or bidding on rare wines at auction? Buy a candidate instead!
I should make it clear that no one explicitly laid out a strategy regarding the dinner. I never asked point-blank if we hoped to charm billionaires into spending their billions on something other than Mitt Romney’s campaign. That said, I knew it couldn’t hurt. Hoping to mollify the one-percenters in the audience, I kept the script embarrassingly tame.
I’ve got about forty-five more minutes on the State of the Union that I’d like to deliver tonight.
I am eager to work with members of Congress to be entertaining tonight. But if Congress is unwilling to cooperate, I will be funny without them.
Even for a politician, this was weak. But it apparently struck the right tone. POTUS barely edited the speech. A few days later, as a reward for a job well done, Favs invited me to tag along to a speechwriting-team meeting with the president.
I had not set foot in the Oval Office since my performance of the Golden Girls theme song. On that occasion, President Obama remained behind his desk. For larger gatherings like this one, however, he crossed the room to a brown leather armchair, and the rest of us filled the two beige sofas on either side. Between the sofas was a coffee table. On the coffee table sat a bowl, which under George W. Bush had contained candy but under Obama was full of apples instead. Hence the ultimate Oval Office power move: grab an apple at the end of a meeting, polish it on your suit, and take a casual chomp on your way out the door.
I would have sooner stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Desperate not to call attention to myself, I took the seat farthest away and kept my eyes glued to my laptop. I allowed myself just one indulgence: a quick peek at the Emancipation Proclamation.