But then, just as I was wondering if Silicon Valley recruits disgraced former speechwriters, something happened. In the blink of an eye, POTUS composed himself. He looked out across tables full of reporters, each one eager to write about yet another White House screw-up. Then he broke into an exasperated grin. “The joke doesn’t work without the slide,” he explained. Suddenly, the audience was in on the secret. They began to laugh.
“Oh well.” Another pause. “Assume that it was funny.” He chuckled at his own ad-lib, and the audience joined him. Then he turned to Joel McHale, the night’s headliner.
“Does this happen to you, Joel?”
It was not the highlight of the evening. But neither was it the story of the night. POTUS finished his ad-lib, delivered his serious close, and took his seat. The crowd stood to applaud. I sat in Steve’s cage inside the catwalk, grateful for the president’s quick thinking.
Still, another chance to escape the barrel had been squandered. And changing the narrative was about to become harder than ever. Summer was almost upon us.
NEVER WORN A SUIT AND TIE TO WORK DURING A D.C. SUMMER? Want to experience it for yourself? It’s easy! First, wrap something snug around your neck, like a scarf or boa constrictor. Next, drape yourself in thick, barely breathable material. Wool works nicely. So does a hefty coat of tar. To approximate the discomfort that results from hot sun and black leather dress shoes, wrap your feet snugly in a colony of fire ants. Last but not least, fill a stockpot with water. After heating to a gentle simmer, climb inside it. Now try to do your job.
Women, who could wear skirts or dresses, had it easier during summers. But not by much. Whether you work in a T-shirt or full military uniform, Washingtonians are united by the season-long schvitz they take each year. It builds character. It’s a good subject for small talk. It is not conducive to running a country. Brains slow-cook in their owners’ skulls. Adults who can afford long vacations flee the district, leaving twenty-three-year-olds disproportionately in charge.
Perhaps this is why summer was to Obamaworld what winter is to Game of Thrones. Madness flourished like mosquitoes in the heat.
August 29, 2008: Sarah Palin is nominated for vice president.
August 7, 2009: The term death panel is coined.
August 28, 2010: Glenn Beck holds his “Restoring Honor” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
July 30, 2011: The single worst day of the debt ceiling crisis.
August 30, 2012: Clint Eastwood speaks at the Republican Convention. (This one backfired, but it was such a bad idea that it still counts.)
August 1–30, 2013: Government shutdown fever takes hold.
Seriously, what was wrong with summer? And where pandemonium and general awfulness were concerned, the summer of 2014 would dwarf them all.
First came ebola, a disease from the opening scene of a Michael Crichton novel. Horrifying symptoms. Rapid transmission. No known cure. When an outbreak hit West Africa in December 2013, most Americans barely noticed. But on August 2 of the following year, a U.S. citizen was infected. Suddenly, everyone lost their minds.
Myself included. I tried my best to keep things in perspective: the American who contracted the virus was a missionary overseas; our public health system was light-years ahead of Liberia’s or Sierra Leone’s. But the facts failed to reassure me. Sitting on our gray Martha Stewart Living sofa, Jacqui and I planned for our new lives.
“We can camp out in the woods. I’ll bring my fishing gear.”
“You never catch anything.”
“Okay, fair point. But maybe if we were starving I’d improve?”
Then there was ISIS, the ebola of terrorist organizations. Murdering scores of innocent people, burning victims alive, forcing women into sexual slavery: their atrocities were impossible to fully catalog, let alone comprehend. On August 7, with the group gaining territory, President Obama authorized air strikes against ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. On August 19, in retaliation, they beheaded an American journalist named James Foley on film.
This was a turning point. Practically overnight, ISIS went from interchangeable foreign bad guy to nationwide bogeyman. The president’s critics were quick to pounce. Country Clubbers said he was soft on terror. Flat Earthers and Holy Warriors went further, accusing him of being on the terrorists’ side.
The second charge was extravagantly false, and the first wasn’t much better. Rather than backing down in the fight against ISIS, POTUS stepped up raids and air strikes, taking out top commanders along with scores of troops. With our military’s help, Iraqi and Kurdish forces began rolling back the borders of the so-called Islamic State. But if fearful Americans were looking for a leader of the chest-thumping, why-I-oughta-kill-those-dang-terrorists-myself variety, they had voted for the wrong guy. Earlier that year, when POTUS and his foreign-policy team were asked to define an “Obama Doctrine,” they settled on the following:
“Don’t do stupid shit.”
Inspiring, I know. But what the slogan lacked in soaring vision, it made up for in common sense. President Obama wasn’t opposed, on principle, to throwing America’s weight around. He simply believed the best course of action often involved self-restraint. Put another way, there are few things more dangerous than a president doing a bad John Wayne impression. He refused to indulge in clash-of-civilizations rhetoric favored by both right-wing pundits at home and ISIS propagandists abroad.
This was almost certainly the right decision. It deprived some of the world’s most sadistic killers of an easy recruiting tool. But at times it put POTUS at odds with the national mood. When the Foley beheading video was released, President Obama was in Martha’s Vineyard; he chose not to cut his vacation short. Also, he referred to ISIS as “ISIL.” While technically accurate, this could come across as tone deaf, like a waiter who explains that it’s wagyu beef, not Kobe, on which you are currently choking.
Even our political allies could be frustrated by President Obama’s near-pathological calmness. Still, his message to the public was simple, never directly stated but always easy to infer. Don’t freak out.
It fell on deaf ears. America was in a freak-out state of mind. And politics only made things worse. Hoping to jump-start his 2016 presidential campaign, Texas governor Rick Perry announced that ISIS might have already crossed America’s southern border. Not to be outdone, fellow candidate Rand Paul insisted you could catch ebola by standing near the wrong guest at a cocktail party. Cable news networks occasionally pointed out that these claims were nonsense. More often, they luxuriated in the kind of ratings boost only a national panic could provide. One day I happened to glance at MSNBC. There, live on camera, the Reverend Al Sharpton was being taught to don a hazmat suit.