We all fell silent. Was POTUS confused? Was he disgusted? Then, to my enormous relief, he grinned.
“That’s pretty good,” he said, chuckling. “A pit bull is delicious. I like that.” He smiled again, mulling things over. “I’m just letting you know, I might add something here. ‘Maybe a little soy sauce.’ Something like that.” He made a shaking gesture with his hand, sprinkling imaginary seasoning onto his canine meal.
As my heart resumed beating, President Obama finished reading the jokes, culling about a dozen or so from our list. Then he ushered us out of the Oval, shaking his head in mock disbelief. As I left the room, I heard him chuckle. When he spoke, it was with the same officious tone he used when acknowledging a congressman in the crowd.
“A pit bull,” he proclaimed, “is delicious.”
THE DAY BEFORE THE DINNER, WE GATHERED IN THE CABINET ROOM to record a short audio piece making fun of the hot mic with the Russian president. POTUS sat near the door to the Outer Oval, directly beneath a portrait of Harry Truman. I sat next to him, cast as “White House Aide.”
I had only one line: Mr. President, they’re ready for you. But with Barack Obama sitting to my right, I felt the tightness in my chest that had ruined my high school dreams of stardom.
“Mr. President they’re! ReadyFOR you.”
Ignoring my botched delivery, POTUS recorded his lines.
“I’m the president of the United States, and I’m opening for Jimmy Kimmel?”
“Right now I’m like a five on the Just for Men scale. I think I could go to six and nobody would notice.”
“I could really use a cigarette.”
POTUS was a better actor than I was. Still, his timing was off. He emphasized some of the wrong words. He paused in awkward places. We were allotted only ten minutes, enough for just two recordings, and I began to wonder what would happen if his delivery didn’t improve.
I certainly wasn’t helping. As we began our second and final take, I flubbed my line even worse than before.
“MR. PRESIDENTthey’rereadyfor . . . you?”
This made what happened next all the more remarkable. I hadn’t taken my eyes off President Obama. I knew for a fact he had not practiced. And yet the difference between his first and second read-throughs was the difference between a guy puffing through kickboxing class and Jean-Claude Van Damme. He took beats at just the right moments. He hit the precise words to sell each punch line best. His tone was the perfect blend of annoyance and self-regard. It was as if he’d spent a full day rehearsing. It was that much better.
I’d often heard senior staff describe President Obama as the smartest guy in the room, but only now did I realize what they meant. He didn’t speak seven languages or know the Latin names of species or multiply large numbers in his head. What he did, more quickly than anyone, was strip away complicated issues to their essence and make the most of the information obtained. No one was better at getting to the point.
Jon Lovett returned from Los Angeles for the dinner that year, and on the morning of April 29, he, Favs, and I did one final run-through in the Oval. By now the script was nearly final. In fact, we had only one new line to run by President Obama. During a recent speech, Vice President Biden had remarked that POTUS had a “big stick.” He was referring to foreign policy, but his hand gesture was, to put it mildly, undiplomatic. Jeff Nussbaum pounced.
“Let’s just put it this way,” read his joke. “Dreams aren’t the only thing I got from my father.”
POTUS laughed so loudly that I secretly hoped he would add the line to the script. But this was an election year; a presidential dick joke was a bridge too far. And so, with nothing more to add, we were finished. Favs and Lovett went to a fancy brunch party. POTUS went to play golf. I went home to nap.
I ATTENDED THAT YEAR’S CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER AS A GUEST OF the Agence France-Presse. It’s a wonderful organization, but they’re hardly the cool kids of the media world. Where the Time and Bloomberg tables overflowed with celebrities, the seat to my right was occupied by a well-regarded Irish novelist. His face seemed sculpted from putty. His eyes glittered beneath thick black brows. He was not exactly a movie star.
In fairness, however, I was not exactly a Washington insider. Perhaps that’s why we made quite a team. As we passed around the basket of rolls, my novelist explained his theory of Hamlet. I nodded, genuinely absorbed. Even better, by the time the salad course was finished, he was on his fourth glass of wine and his stage whisper had become a full-throated scream. At one point during the evening, Jake Tapper, then a reporter with ABC News, stood to receive a prize from the Correspondents’ Association. My tablemate snorted.
“Really?” he shouted. “Now they’re givin’ feckin’ awards to their feckin’ selves?”
The wine continued disappearing, and by the time President Obama took the stage, I had a one-man cheering section. After the audio making fun of his hot mic moment, POTUS began with a joke about the bin Laden raid.
“Last year at this time—in fact, on this very weekend—we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals.” The giant screens on either side of the podium displayed a picture of a sneering Donald Trump.
“Did you write that?” my novelist mouthed. When I nodded, he gave me two enthusiastic thumbs-up.
My mouth was dry. I clutched my chair nervously. But even in my deer-in-headlights state, it was amazing how quickly three weeks of work flew by. Before I knew it, the president was delivering his line about eating pit bulls, adding imaginary soy sauce as promised. We played a short video from a SuperPAC called Dogs for Romney, defending the right of canines everywhere to ride on the roof. For the last line of the night, the president returned to damage control.
“I had a lot more material prepared, but I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew.”
Just like that, it was over. POTUS sat down, Jimmy Kimmel told fifteen minutes of jokes, and the entire Hilton ballroom began streaming out the door. I was trying to make sense of it all when I saw someone from the corner of my eye.
“Oh my gosh. That’s Diane Keaton!” I don’t usually gape at celebrities, but this was one of my all-time favorite actresses. And now she was headed in our direction, dressed in a bowler hat, jacket, and tie.
My cheering section didn’t waste an instant. “Let’s introduce ourselves!” My novelist took off in pursuit like a cheetah in a nature documentary, only drunk. Diane Keaton saw him coming. She tried to flee. But it was hopeless. Bottlenecking her between two tables, my new friend pounced, cheerfully putting an arm around the actress’s waist. “Look at what I bought at the train station!” he shouted, as though this were an acceptable form of greeting. Then he reached into his pants pocket and produced a cardboard disposable camera. It was the kind I remembered from summer camp, the kind where you advance the film by rotating a plastic wheel.