“Don’t we want to see if it works?” my novelist asked.
“No, that’s okay,” said Diane Keaton.
“Come on, we have to test it. It’ll be fun!”
“Well, really, I . . .”
“All right then.” He grabbed me by the arm, pulled me close, and took a decidedly old-fashioned selfie. “Oh good, it works!” he announced.
“That was . . . impressive,” I said, as he released his trophy back into the wild. It was a fittingly surreal end to the most grueling three weeks of my life.
I WALKED INTO THE OFFICE ON MONDAY ASSUMING THAT, WITH THE dinner over, I would simply pick up where I left off. I would write speeches for senior staff, and occasionally for POTUS, always on the lookout for remarks involving jokes, Jews, or some combination of the two. If only it were that easy. Something was missing. Was it the joy of writing comedy? The chance to eavesdrop on Arianna Huffington and George Clooney? The fact that my Diane Keaton picture never arrived in the mail?
But as the weeks rolled on, I realized it wasn’t a lack of glamour that was bothering me. Instead, I kept thinking back to a line Valerie liked to include in her commencements: “Put yourself in the path of lightning.” For just one night, a seventeen-minute comedy monologue was the center of political attention. It was the place to address controversies, to take shots at opponents, to project confidence to the public we served.
Now, however, lightning was once again striking the campaign trail. More and more speeches—for both the president and senior staff—were the ones I could not legally write. I kind of liked having job security. I kind of loved drinking Kennedy Center beer. But nothing was as intoxicating as being part of the action.
Not long after the dinner, I asked Favs if I could leave the White House for the campaign. He agreed, but proposed a plan that kept me in Washington: I would work on political speeches for POTUS, but from the Democratic National Committee in D.C.
Which is how I found myself, a few weeks later, standing beside a conference table covered in turkey pinwheels and cheap champagne. Straut said something generous. Coworkers wrapped leftovers in paper napkins. I turned in my blue badge and BlackBerry. Just like that, I was no longer a government employee.
“Jeeeeeee-ZUSS! Jee-EEE-EEEEEEE-zussssss!”
Leaving the building, I passed by Preacher Man. Whistle Guy’s screeching echoed down the street. Walking to the bus stop I noticed the Druid, stoic as always on his bench. It had only been a year, yet somehow I’d grown used to having them around.
How strange, I thought. These people no longer pay my salary.
Would I be back a few months from now? Was I leaving for good? That was up to the voters to decide.
7
GOING EASTWOOD
The Republican National Committee headquarters, perched conveniently on Capitol Hill, is everything an office building should be. The four-story fa?ade is as white and well-maintained as the people who work there. Gray accents provide a restrained pop of color. Tasteful moldings lend class. Imagine if a bank branch mated with a country club and raised a perfect child. That’s the Republican National Committee. It’s a lovely place.
Compare this to the Democrats. As far as I can tell, the DNC headquarters was designed by someone who had never seen a building before. Mud-colored concrete follows a blueprint of random angles and arbitrary curves. Gray metal awnings punctuate walls the way a cat on a keyboard punctuates a sentence. Rainwater pools in ill-conceived balconies, trickling to the sidewalk and leaving rusty streaks behind. My freshman year of college I wore a fedora to class in the sincere belief it would establish me as both stylish and smart. The outside of the Democratic National Committee is the architectural equivalent of that hat.
And yet, remarkably, the inside is worse. The humorist Will Rogers once declared, “I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.” He meant it as a joke, but whoever came up with the DNC floor plan clearly took it as a motto. For example, why insert the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, by law a separate entity from National Committee, right in the middle of the second floor?
That might not sound like much of a problem. It was a nightmare. My new desk was also on the second floor of the DNC and should have been a short walk from the elevator. But to avoid even a hint of unlawful collusion, I was barred from entering the Congressional Committee office at any time. Legally speaking, their carpets were made of molten lava. This meant that each morning I took the following route. First, I rode the elevator to the third floor. Then I walked the entire length of the building, past the reception desk, the break room, and the fund-raising offices. Next, I descended a fluorescent-lit flight of neglected concrete steps. Having reached the second floor, I then walked halfway back across the building, in the exact opposite direction, until I reached my cubicle. This daily trek didn’t exactly make me Lawrence of Arabia. But neither did it suggest a well-oiled machine.
I suppose I could have followed the example of my intern, an eager poli-sci student named Devlin. Devlin showed up early. He never once complained about the labyrinthine commute. But such cheerful blindness to our surroundings proved impossible for me to summon. Of course he’s excited about everything, I thought. He’s twenty-one. I was now twenty-five, and grizzled by a year of government service. Even small signs of dysfunction were exhausting.
Before long, I began working from home. Presidential campaigns are often described in military terms—battleground states, foot soldiers, air cover—but in 2012, my war room was a French bakery called Le Caprice. Each morning I’d tell myself I was only buying coffee. Then a poll would have Romney up in Colorado, or a Senate Democrat would say something dumb.
Oh, well, I’d think. Better have a chocolate croissant.
Around 10:30 A.M., after my first almond cookie but before my goat cheese and prosciutto sandwich, I’d get to work. This was less thrilling than my new job title implied. “Speechwriter to the President” suggested access and influence. In reality I was a kind of rhetorical handyman, keeping our stump speech up to code. Changing Iowa to Ohio and vice versa. Tracking down numbers for Favs and Cody. Turning talking points into remarks and remarks back into talking points. Compared to 2008, my job was way more important. It was also way less fun.