“I might add a little wave there. Maybe a ‘hello,’ or something.” How strange. There I was, sick with nervousness, and POTUS was having fun.
While I doubt President Obama looked forward to spending his Saturday night with the press corps, I always got the sense he enjoyed reading jokes. Unlike most politicians, President Obama missed being treated like a normal person. I once overheard him say that this was why he loved meeting babies: they had no idea who he was.
But everyone else did. Even five-year-olds could recognize Obama. Without quite intending to, POTUS had become the most famous person on earth. And he paid a price for it. Going for a walk. Eating at a restaurant. Catching a movie. Activities the rest of us take for granted were for Barack Obama a distant memory. It’s not like joking with staff in the Oval was entirely casual. No one forgot which person was the president. But it was as close to normalcy as POTUS was likely to get.
That doesn’t mean he laughed at everything. One of my fellow speechwriters, Kyle O’Connor, had written a joke about the cliquey nature of the Senate. It was a great idea, but required a Valley-girl accent to work: “So I found out that Mitch was talking with Rand who was talking with Lindsey who said that John and Ted were, like, talking?”
President Obama gamely gave it a try, but it was a disaster. He sounded forced and awkward, like a grandmother accenting the last syllable of Beyoncé. Throwing caution to the wind, I jumped in with my best Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless impression. POTUS’s expression remained grim.
“That might be funny . . . if a comedian did it.”
I swallowed hard, wishing I had stayed silent. We cut the joke from the script.
The rest of the meeting passed without incident. President Obama approved some jokes, told us to make others edgier, and sent us on our way. But surviving ten minutes in the Oval couldn’t erase my feelings of fraudulence. The days of proudly strutting back to my office were over. The days of dark, harrowed circles under my eyes had begun. At work I continued faking it. What else could I do? But Jacqui, regularly awakened by my tossing and turning, knew the full extent of my fear.
A few days before the dinner, a second meeting gave us a chance to present the edgier material POTUS had requested. (“A book burning with Michele Bachmann. I like that!”) It also gave us a chance to show him slides. Not everyone approved of displaying silly, photoshopped pictures in the middle of the president’s monologue. Compared to well-delivered setups and punch lines it felt like cheating, and to some extent it was. But if years of writing have taught me anything, it’s that people hate words and love pictures. Why not give them at least some of what they want?
Besides, POTUS liked the slides almost as much as the audience did. He laughed when he saw his face on a cover of Senior Living Magazine. He appreciated our putting a “Blame Bush Library” next to the real thing.
Most of all, he enjoyed a series of three pictures photoshopping the First Lady’s new hairdo—eyebrow-length bangs—onto his head. POTUS with bangs, in front of an American flag. POTUS with bangs, relaxing alongside his wife. POTUS with bangs, walking side by side with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. In the edited images, President Obama looked like Moe from the Three Stooges. It was hard not to laugh.
In fact, there was only one slide the president felt the need to change. A few weeks earlier, the White House had released a photograph of the president shooting clay pigeons at Camp David, and his critics accused him of doctoring the image. Obama, they insisted, was a gun grabber. His only reason for holding a firearm would be to melt it into a solar panel, or stuff the barrel with a gay pride flag. Their accusation was ludicrous, of course, utterly bananas. Naturally, it spread like wildfire on right-wing blogs.
Now, at Cody’s suggestion, we were going to present an “undoctored” image to the world. In our picture of what had “really” happened, POTUS was still firing a gun. But in the background, we added a lightning storm, a monster truck, and a kitten the size of a black bear shooting lasers from its eyes. As we prepared to leave the Oval, POTUS held us back. He had an edit to request.
“Can we get a NASCAR in there?”
“We can do that,” I said.
President Obama smiled contentedly. Then he perked up, struck by a sudden insight.
“Can Biden be driving the NASCAR?”
If only the president’s enthusiasm was more infectious. In 2009, pitching jokes as an anonymous intern at a speechwriting firm, I had imagined the glories of responsibility. Now, four years later, I was learning the truth: responsibility kind of sucks. Every argument over a punch line chipped away at my psyche. Each time a member of the joke-writing diaspora schemed to get more of their own material into the script, it was my job to scheme back. Not a moment passed when it didn’t feel as though everything was falling apart.
And yet in the world outside my head, everything was coming together. The slides looked good. The jokes were solid. Steven Spielberg, Tracy Morgan, and Barack Obama playing Daniel Day-Lewis playing Barack Obama had filmed their scenes. By Friday afternoon, just twenty-four hours before the dinner, I began to consider the possibility that everything might go as planned.
And then, sitting in my office, I got a phone call. It was Terry.
He had a question.
“So I’m looking through these pictures of the president with the First Lady’s bangs, and I’m just wondering, is the joke supposed to be that POTUS looks like Hitler?”
I immediately opened the slides in question The first photo was harmless. So was the second. Then I reached the third slide, the one with the president and the Israeli prime minister.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
It was shocking. The president didn’t ordinarily look like Hitler in photographs. He certainly didn’t look Hitler-y in person. But at that exact angle, with that specific haircut, there was no mistaking it. Even without the mustache, the resemblance was uncanny.
Just a month earlier, I might have tried to keep the slide in the script anyway. It was funny. Besides, would anyone think we were trying to make POTUS look like a Nazi? But I wasn’t risking another international incident. I was done listening to Lips. Thanking Terry profusely, I hurried to save my speech.
On April 27, the day of the dinner, Cody was at a wedding. But Favs and Lovett were in town for the occasion, and they joined our day-of meeting instead. These final run-throughs were always casual. Instead of sitting at his desk or in his armchair, the president plopped down on a couch.
As usual, the meeting began with small talk. POTUS asked Favs about his new speechwriting business. He teased Lovett about his life in L.A. Meanwhile, I sat there stunned. I couldn’t believe how casually my former colleagues charmed the president. What better proof that bringing me back to the White House was a mistake?
I was so busy wallowing that I barely heard POTUS ask a question.