As you’ve probably gathered by now, many aspects of working at the White House are not as cool as you would expect. Air Force One is exactly as cool as you would expect. I’ll never forget my first drive to Andrews Air Force Base. Passing through the thick metal gates, our van pulled onto a tarmac the size of a golf course. We zipped by Cessnas, 757s, cargo carriers. Finally we stopped, just a dozen yards from the plane that dwarfed them all.
I had seen Air Force One before, of course. On TV. In movies. On the news. But to me, the presidential aircraft had always been like the surface of Jupiter or Art Garfunkel’s living room. I knew such a place existed. I just never imagined setting foot there myself.
Now the plane’s sky-blue belly was so close I could touch it. I didn’t, of course. Instead, I walked carefully below a jet engine big enough to hold a trailer, and at the bottom of the rear staircase, I gave my name to a uniformed guard. He ushered me forward with a nod. Just a few steps later, I gasped. I was standing next to the exact same cargo hold where Harrison Ford killed his first terrorist in Air Force One.
Todd, a flight attendant, offered me a tour of the aircraft’s five sections. Reporters sat at the very back of the plane. Next came the VIP guest cabin, which was followed by the staff cabin for people like me. After that came the conference room. This was where President Obama usually spent his time, either working or playing cards. Finally, at the nose of the aircraft, POTUS had a fully appointed office with a small private bedroom attached. Air Force One was (in the old, pre-Trump sense) a Russian nesting doll of access. You could always move backward from your assigned seat, but you needed permission to move up.
Not every part of the plane was fancy. With its leather recliners, wood trim, and wall-to-wall beige carpeting, the interior of the staff cabin resembled nothing so much as my grandparents’ den. But what Air Force One lacked in luxury, it made up for in countless other ways. With airspace cleared ahead of us, we shaved hours off coast-to-coast trips. From the phone in my armrest I could dial anyone, anywhere. (President Obama spoke with foreign leaders. I called Jacqui to show off.) If I caught an ankle in the extendable footrest, or a forkful of crispy taco salad went down the wrong pipe, a pint-size emergency room stood waiting to receive me.
The plane’s most extraordinary feature, however, was the image it projected. Nothing, not even the White House, so clearly symbolized the president’s influence and reach. We are America, the aircraft seemed to say. You know us. You envy us. You’ve seen us on TV. And the man up front can do anything.
BUT COULD HE REALLY? IN A DIVIDED COUNTRY, WAS OBAMA’S PLACE in history still his to decide? To put it less poetically, could he make Washington work?
We certainly hoped so. We were sick of gridlock. Voters were, too. Yet where our economic plan was intensely detailed, our anti-gridlock plan was vague. Our theory—inasmuch as we had one—was that after a 2012 victory, obstruction would melt away.
“I believe that if we’re successful in this election—when we’re successful in this election—that the fever may break,” POTUS declared.
Just a few weeks after Election Day, a tragedy and its aftermath seemed poised to prove him right. On December 14, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a young man with an AR-15 rifle murdered twenty children and six adult staff. There had been mass shootings before, but this was different. No one, not even the president, could hear the news without feeling something rip apart inside. As POTUS addressed the nation from the briefing room, he paused, eyes watering, completely overcome.
The president’s tears captured the country’s attention, and rightly so. But no less important were his words at a prayer vigil a few days later, when he spoke about his own worries as a father.
“You realize,” he said, “no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together.”
Here at last, in the midst of unimaginable anguish, was Barack Obama’s clearest argument for government’s role. His was not a technocratic diagnosis, a blanket assumption that Washington knows best. Nor was it partisan: there was room for both Democrats and Republicans in the vision he described. Instead, his view of government was rooted in the responsibilities of family and the facts of modern life. In the twenty-first century, we cannot raise our kids alone.
For a moment, Washington seemed to agree. Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Pat Toomey to try and strengthen firearms background checks. Their proposal wouldn’t end gun violence completely. Still, it was an obvious start. And it was popular; even a majority of Republicans supported the idea. If I had learned anything from watching Schoolhouse Rock!, this bill was destined to pass.
But the National Rifle Association understood something I didn’t. Schoolhouse Rock! was a lie. In Mitch McConnell’s Congress, even the most appealing bills were at the mercy of nearly insurmountable math. For starters, advancing any piece of legislation took sixty votes in the Senate—a three-fifths majority. If that doesn’t sound daunting, consider this: no presidential candidate has won a three-fifths majority of the vote since Richard Nixon in 1972.
It was easy, in other words, to make nothing happen. And on the background-check bill, nothing did. The NRA held its ground. Its allies in Congress quietly ignored popular opinion. The proposal died with a whimper instead of a bang.
Not that passing the Senate would have done the bill much good. After the 2010 landslide, Republicans redrew House districts to protect incumbents from pesky annoyances like the voters’ mood. Such rampant gerrymandering was a disgrace. It was also a success. In 2012, Democrats won a slim majority of votes for Congress. But Republicans won a large majority of the seats. An election that was supposed to teach lawmakers to respect the will of the people had instead taught them the opposite. Our representatives had nothing to fear.
No wonder, then, that the fever didn’t break. If anything, it got worse. And just as McConnell predicted, people blamed Obama for the dysfunction others caused. The Tuesday after the Correspondents’ Dinner, POTUS held a press conference to mark the first hundred days of his second term. It was supposed to be a victory lap. Instead, ABC News correspondent Jon Karl ticked off a list of laws Congress had failed to pass. Then he delivered his challenge.
“My question to you is: Do you still have the juice?”
Other presidents might have relished this moment. Bill Clinton, for example, loved the drama of the nation’s highest office. Nothing made him happier than playing himself in the movie version of his life.