Instead, I doubled down on hope. “There’s this girl,” I gushed. “I’ve never had the guts to ask her out, and she’s never indicated she wants me to! Can you believe how much we have in common?”
Her name was Amy. She was spontaneous, rebellious, into both Batman and computer science. Clearly out of my league. But in moments of doubt, my candidate’s words rang through my head. “When we have faced down impossible odds, when we’ve been told we’re not ready or that we shouldn’t try or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.” The phrase had lodged itself in my head like a mantra, or a tumor.
Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can.
Throughout February, however, Amy politely hinted I could not. I tried every offer in my arsenal: home-cooked quesadillas, the final third of a bottle of Yellowtail, The Sopranos on DVD. She declined.
Then, just when it seemed hopeless, a window opened. Amy had caught the Obama bug. On March 4, the day of the Rhode Island primary, I asked her if she wanted to drop everything and go to Providence to knock on doors. To my surprise, she said yes. Before she could reconsider, I borrowed my roommate’s car without permission and we took off down I-95.
From the moment we arrived, it was obvious that my candidate was not destined for victory. Rhode Island voters treated my suggestion to vote for Obama the same way Amy had treated my suggestion to meet up for a study break at 1 A.M. Yet even the most ardent fives had the sense something historic was happening. They disagreed with us, often strongly. Even so, they were happy to see young people on their front porches, working to change the country we all loved. One Hillary supporter offered lemon squares. Another asked me to come inside, worried I might freeze. Opening his door, a bearded man asked me a question I had yet to hear on the campaign trail.
“Are you Jewish?”
I told him I was, and he invited me into his modest white home to say Sabbath prayers with his family. I got the impression they would have consumed a heaping tray of bacon cheeseburgers before voting for my candidate. Still, they welcomed me with kindness in their eyes. This was the way politics was supposed to work. This was the way life was supposed to work.
Returning to the street to meet Amy, I felt more confident than ever that the universe was about to change. Who cared if we lost Rhode Island? America was on the brink of a new and shining chapter. We would be the ones to usher it in. I didn’t feel disappointed. I felt elated. I felt powerful and giddy and unprecedented.
As Amy and I got back in the car, I knew she felt the same way, and I thought about leaning in to kiss her. But that seemed too ordinary. Too politics-as-usual. Too status quo. Before I had time for a second thought, or even a first one, I heard myself speak.
“Want to drive back to New Haven naked?”
My offer was totally unimaginable, and yet somehow within the realm of possibility. The Barack Obama of propositions. It took her just a moment to reply.
I don’t remember how we got our clothes off while driving. All I know is that if they gave out merit badges for this sort of thing, we would have earned them. The city proved challenging, especially at speed bumps and red lights, but then we hit the highway and were free. I pulled into the left lane, zooming past drivers who gaped when they glimpsed the passenger side.
Was this a date? Was it a misdemeanor? Whatever it was, we didn’t want it to end. We glanced at each other and laughed uncontrollably. We tensed nervously with every cop car we saw. We decided to break into an aquarium—trust me, it made sense at the time—and when that failed we pulled back onto the highway and continued our naked ride.
They said this day would never come, I thought.
I wish I could say my defining moment in politics was the caucus-night address that introduced me to Barack Obama, or the February rally when I first saw him in person. Or maybe the historic “race speech” six weeks later, long after whatever existed between Amy and me had sparked, sputtered, and flamed out.
But that would be a lie. The moment that changed my life came on a busy interstate, my bare cheeks pressed into the seat of my roommate’s borrowed Nissan. Just a few months earlier, cynicism had flourished. But now? Now we were building a better world, a world where strangers invited you into their homes to break bread, and girls you had a crush on took their clothes off for no reason. We weren’t just fighting for change. We were change. My foot was on the gas. My skin tingled with anticipation.
I was twenty-one years old, in Barack Obama’s America. Anything was possible.
2
HOW TO NOT LAND A WHITE HOUSE JOB
* * *
DO NOT CLEAN THE OFFICE.
OBAMA BOYS ARE THE JANITORS!!
* * *
Janice Maier, the chair of the Wayne County Democratic Party, didn’t like me. In fairness, she didn’t like Obama either. At more than eighty years old, a proud Hillary supporter, she viewed her candidate’s young rival as an upstart. By extension I was a fetus, and an annoying fetus at that. It didn’t matter that the primary campaign had ended a month ago. Janice still viewed my arrival with the frosty disdain of a Roman forced to welcome a Visigoth to the baths.
She couldn’t bully me physically. At approximately four foot ten, she possessed both the stoop and jowls of a cartoon witch. But what she lacked in size she made up for in fiery, persistent hate. Hence the allcaps sign about janitors. Late one night I left our one-room campaign headquarters, and when I returned the next morning I found the note pasted against a wall. Only two people had an office key. I was one of them. The other was Janice Maier.
This was not the kind of challenge I had anticipated upon moving to Ohio. In May, the Democratic primary and my academic career ended with simultaneous whimpers. Two weeks later, I pointed my car toward a swing state. Obama for America had offered me something called an “organizing fellowship,” a polite term for “indentured servitude.” I worked unpaid, sixteen-hour days. In exchange, someone in headquarters found me a spare room in a stranger’s house that smelled overwhelmingly of wet dog. I couldn’t believe my luck. Each morning I popped out of bed, brushed dog hair from my button-down shirt, and happily harassed the good people of Canton, Ohio.
“Excuse me, are you registered?” I would ask.
“Nah, I don’t vote.”
“Terrific! Let’s sign you up!”
When I wasn’t registering voters, I was calling Obama supporters and inviting myself to their homes. The campaign dubbed the ensuing meetings “one-on-ones.” If a one-on-one went well, the new volunteer would host a house party and play a motivational DVD for their friends. If it went really well, the volunteer might make an extravagant, heartfelt gesture, like bringing lasagna to the office for the staff.