“What happened to that picture of me and Bibi? I liked that one.”
Favs jumped in. “We had to cut it.”
“Well, why?”
Suddenly, the Oval Office fell completely silent. Plenty of people have compared the president to Hitler. But in all of American history, no one had ever compared the president to Hitler to the president. And none of us wanted to become the first.
It turns out that time slows down when you’re trying not to insult the commander in chief. I remember considering, in surprising detail, just how doomed we were. Favs wasn’t saying anything. Lovett wasn’t saying anything. I wasn’t saying anything. There was no way out.
There must be someone in this room who can tell the president the truth, I thought. But I couldn’t begin to imagine who that might be. We needed someone bold. We needed someone daring.
We needed someone who didn’t give a fuck.
In that moment, out of nowhere, I heard a voice. And it was Lips.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” I heard myself say, “we just couldn’t use that picture. You kind of look like Hitler in it.”
The moment the words left my mouth, my out-of-body experience ended. What had I just done? All eyes were on POTUS. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
And then, President Obama began to laugh. Not his ordinary laugh, a self-aware one that was an act of judgment as much as reflex. This was an expression of something visceral inside him, a place beyond even his formidable self-control. He clasped his hands together. His feet kicked off the floor. He rocked back into the couch cushions. For just a fraction of a moment, I even think he forgot which person was the president. I had never seen him laugh so hard, and would never see him laugh so hard again.
Eventually the meeting returned to normal. Favs and Lovett resumed their confident banter, and I went back to sitting quietly on the couch. But I realized something. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid.
The president finished his read-through not long after. We stood to leave, clutching our copies of the script. Before I could reach the door, however, POTUS looked right at me.
“Thanks, Litt,” he said.
10
JUICE IN PURGATORY
A few hours later, I was backstage at the Correspondents’ Dinner, washing my hands in the restroom reserved for POTUS. Suddenly, I heard the pounding of a fist. This was not the polite, inquisitive knock you associate with someone who hopes to use the facilities. It was the frantic, violent knock you associate with someone who hopes to flush cocaine.
I flung the door open to reveal an embarrassed-looking Secret Service agent. Thirty seconds earlier, he had grudgingly allowed me into the president’s hold room. Now he regretted his mistake. For standing behind him, looking Zen-like by comparison, was President Obama.
I should have expected this. Who else would warrant such urgent knocking? But in my hurry, I had no time to think. All my brain could process was that I had opened a door and found an acquaintance on the other side.
“Oh, hi!” I said, as if Barack Obama were a second cousin and not the most powerful person on earth. Fortunately, he seemed not to mind.
“Litt. We still funny?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Just a week earlier, I had worried my White House career was on the verge of an early end. Now, hustling out of the hold room, I could feel my head begin to swell. I just said hello to the president, and Secret Service didn’t shoot me. Maybe I’m becoming indispensable!
If I ever needed to regain perspective, however—or be reminded how quickly things can change—all I had to do was see a movie. In 2013, several films were released in which the White House was blown to smithereens by paramilitaries, North Koreans, or people who simply disliked G.I. Joe.
I did not care for this trend. More than once I went to the movies to unwind after a stressful workday, only to see my office obliterated during the coming attractions. In one trailer, for Olympus Has Fallen, a plane bristling with machine guns strafed the State Dining Room. The rest of the audience barely noticed, but I clutched my popcorn and winced.
Oh, man, I thought. Chase is totally fucked.
It was discomforting to see my colleagues so casually exterminated. It was even more discomforting to realize my own death wasn’t interesting enough to show on-screen. Cabinet secretaries were executed in dramatic fashion. Secret Service agents were launched skyward by explosions or cruelly double-crossed. But low-level speechwriters? We weren’t even cannon fodder. Incinerated in a single CGI blast, my entire existence was mere kindling for the sweaty heroics of Gerard Butler or Jamie Foxx. During one trailer, as a grim-looking terrorist launched a rocket into the Grand Foyer, I found my rooting interest was with neither the president nor the hunky antihero destined to save him.
There’s still hope! I thought. Maybe the speechwriter’s at the dentist.
These movies, it must be said, were not entirely realistic. I never once worried that a shape-shifting supervillain would compromise the Oval Office before raining destruction upon earth from outer space. But the part about my life not being worth much? That was distressingly real. While junior-level staff rarely spoke about it, we knew the implicit bargain. We were low-profile people in one of the world’s most high-profile targets. In a worst-case scenario, our final moments might be spent watching an escape pod rocket skyward and thinking, Well, fair enough. It didn’t matter how many times I said hello to the president. I was completely disposable.
Knowing this, it was impossible not to envy certain colleagues. Terry, for example. He wrote national-security speeches, worked in the West Wing, and always wore a large silver key around his neck. Clearly he had access to a top secret bunker and would be one of the lucky few to repopulate the earth. If the earth ever needed repopulating, it could do worse than Terry. Still, it was hard not to feel left out.
Once you started looking, insecurity about security was everywhere. One morning a poster appeared outside Ike’s:
* * *
ACTIVE SHOOTER PREPAREDNESS WORKSHOP
* * *
A few days later, I noticed another, smaller sign taped over the first: SECOND SESSION ADDED DUE TO OVERWHELMING INTEREST.
There was only one place where, in both the emotional and physical sense, I felt completely secure. The plane. From the day I arrived in 2011, I dreamed about tagging along on a POTUS trip. Now, as a presidential speechwriter, I was permitted to travel when remarks were delivered out of town.