Uh-oh, I thought. This can’t end well.
I was right to be worried. The summer of 2014 wasn’t the first time terrible things happened. But it was the first time I began regularly hearing the phrase “The world is falling apart.” Objectively, this just wasn’t true. In 2014, terrorists killed eighteen people in the United States; approximately the same number were killed by cows. Your odds of dying a violent death, being assaulted in a United States city, developing terminal cancer: by historical standards, all these were near their all-time lows. Yet the number of Americans certain the sky was falling rocketed to new heights.
I blame the media. More accurately, I blame social media. Thanks to Twitter, you could follow every tragedy as it unfolded. Thanks to YouTube and Facebook, you could now watch, rather than merely read about, the world’s most horrific events. We were experiencing less violence than almost any generation in human history. But we were witnessing more violence than ever before.
There is, I must admit, another reason I may have been less frantic about the universe than my peers. At the very moment civilization appeared to be collapsing, my speechwriting career was really taking off.
AT THE WHITE HOUSE, THE UPPER ECHELON OF STAFF IS MADE UP OF “commissioned officers.” Commissioned officers, in turn, are grouped into three tiers. Special Assistants to the President are outranked by Deputy Assistants to the President. Deputy Assistants to the President are outranked by Assistants to the President. Assistants to the President, in theory at least, answer directly to the commander in chief.
Commissions cannot be handed out like candy. The total number of SAPs, DAPs, and APs (pronounced “saps, daps, and apps”) is tightly controlled. So when Kyle O’Connor, a POTUS speechwriter since the first campaign, announced he was leaving his SAP spot for a job at a tech company, it was a big deal. Subtly at first, and then with increasing shamelessness, I pestered Cody for a promotion. Late that summer, he decided I had earned it. There were still dozens of DAPs and APs who outranked me. But as a newly minted Special Assistant to the President, I was now technically a member of the White House senior staff.
My new title came with a raise. Preacher Man now owed me an extra cent a year. But inside the building, where everyone was underpaid relative to the private sector, what mattered more than money was access.
In that regard, becoming a SAP was like winning a sweepstakes. A few days after my promotion became official, I made my way to the operations office, where a young woman walked me through a grab bag of new perks. I could now park inside the White House campus, order frozen yogurt from the West Wing takeout window, and reserve a table at the Navy Mess. I received a commissioned-officer certificate for framing. My business cards were upgraded with a fancy raised seal. Technically, people were even supposed to refer to me as “The Honorable David Litt,” although sadly no one ever did.
The most extraordinary new benefit was the one saved for last. Opening a small folder, the young woman from operations retrieved a silver key, about an inch long and a quarter-inch thick. I recognized it instantly. It was the same key Terry wore around his neck, the key I was certain granted access to the bunker and escape pod. Now, it was being placed in my outstretched hand.
The operations associate noticed my startled expression. She met my gaze with a solemn, weighty stare.
“This,” she told me gravely, “will get you into the senior staff gym.”
13
BUCKET
So I had done it! I had earned the right to puff away on the elliptical next to some of the world’s most powerful people. I had not, however, joined their ranks. The line between senior staff and really senior staff was drawn anew each morning. If you held a standing invitation to Denis McDonough’s 7:30 A.M. meeting, you were one of the few people who truly had the president’s ear.
If, like me, you were invited to the 9 A.M. in the Roosevelt Room, you got to participate in White House show-and-tell. In fairness, these meetings were often quite informative. Puerto Rico’s debt service. Community college dropout rates. The changing nature of retirement plans. It’s nearly impossible to find a subject about which someone, somewhere in the federal government is not currently geeking out. One memorable morning, a scientist spent ten minutes lecturing us on America’s unique blend of topsoil. I mean this sincerely: I have never felt so patriotic about dirt.
Not every 9 A.M. was successful. There was the time, for instance, that a National Security Council director briefed us on the chaos facing villages along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The moment the presenter finished, a hand shot up. It belonged to one of our growing number of Silicon Valley transplants.
“I was just thinking,” sighed the technologist. “If only we could teach those girls to code.”
Even now, years later, I don’t know what to make of that moment. On one hand, what the fuck? On the other, the Obama White House was shaped, and often improved, by these minor culture clashes. Palo Alto vs. the State Department. CEO types vs. protest-march types. Those who liked college basketball vs. those who only pretended to like college basketball. (In Obamaworld, there was no other choice.)
Then there was the culture clash that dwarfed all others. Were you the type of person who preferred to stay in Washington, creating and implementing new policy? Or did you long to hit the campaign trail?
Out of necessity, plenty of staffers kept a foot in both worlds. But just as there are chocolate people and vanilla people, nearly everyone swore allegiance to one side. Campaign people saw policy people as eggheads without street smarts. Policy people saw campaign people as simpletons without attention spans. Both sides had a point.
That said, I was a campaign person. I loved the collective intake of breath at a rally the moment a candidate took the stage. I loved watching crowds roar over words like freedom and citizenship.
Most of all, I loved winning. And not just for the speedball of adrenaline and dopamine it produced. I loved winning because, in a polarized democracy, the quickest route to change was replacing Republicans with Democrats; the greatest obstacle to change was vice versa. If day-to-day governing was like choosing the right words, elections were like choosing a language.