I had moved to Washington seven years ago, but this was my first time setting foot on the floor of Congress. I felt a strange mix of awe and fury. There was Mitch McConnell! (Actually much handsomer in person.) There was John Boehner! (Actually exactly the same.) I squeezed against a wall, identifying faces of congressional Republicans like a bird watcher who deeply loathes birds. There were so many of them. And so few of us.
If President Obama felt cowed to see a record number of critics in the audience, however, he didn’t show it. Defiantly, proudly, he ticked off his accomplishments. Job creation at the fastest pace since the nineties. The highest-ever number of college graduates. The end of the combat mission in Afghanistan. In previous years, we had often caveated our achievements, not wanting to offend those who felt progress wasn’t coming fast enough. This time, there was no pussyfooting around. “The State of the Union is strong,” POTUS declared, in the very first page of the speech. Believe it or not, it was the first time since becoming president that Barack Obama had read those words aloud.
But the president saved his most memorable moment for the speech’s final minutes. “I have no more campaigns to run,” he announced. The line was supposed to be classy and high-minded. To everyone’s surprise, however, the Republicans broke into spontaneous applause.
For a moment, I thought President Obama would simply ignore them. Instead, he paused and nodded tersely. I had watched him long enough to know what was coming next.
Uh-oh. He’s gonna say some shit.
POTUS looked directly at his opponents and grinned. “I know,” he said, “because I won both of them.” Republicans glowered. Democrats, so recently humiliated at the polls, went nuts. Our critics would say the president’s comeback was beneath the dignity of his office. But as far as I was concerned, while no squirrels were eaten, POTUS was acting positively Lincoln-esque.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ATTITUDE WASN’T THE ONLY THING UNSHACKLED. So was the way he got his message across. When I first received my blue badge, there were really only two communications tools available to the White House: interview or speech. True, we had a new-media office. Once a year POTUS chatted with YouTube stars. But we treated the Internet as an accessory rather than a necessity, lipstick rather than pants.
That changed with Between Two Ferns. From the moment the video aired, we wondered why we hadn’t done something like it sooner. When February 2015 rolled around, and Americans had their second chance to buy insurance through Obamacare, there was no doubt we would promote the law online again. The only question was with whom.
The answer was a drug deal. Not literally. No narcotics were exchanged for cash. In the White House, rather, a “drug deal” referred to a communications bargain in which media appearances were swapped. In this case our dealer was BuzzFeed, a site that became famous for listicles that spread like bird flu online:
17 WAYS YOU KNOW YOU GREW UP ON A HOUSEBOAT
15 FERRETS WHO JUST CAN’T EVEN
That sort of thing.
In 2011, however, BuzzFeed developed highbrow ambitions. Poaching Ben Smith, an editor from Politico, the newly created BuzzFeed News produced some of the best coverage of the 2012 campaign. Now, a few years later, BuzzFeed News was a player, and looking for the ultimate badge of media cred. They wanted a sit-down interview with the president. We wanted a video plugging Healthcare.gov.
Hence the drug deal. POTUS and Ben Smith would meet in the residence for an on-the-record chat that met the highest journalistic standards. Then the president would cross the hall to the library. There he would join a separate division of the company, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, to shamelessly promote his law.
Our press team had no problem setting up the Ben Smith interview. From the start, however, it was clear that BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and the White House did not see eye to eye. Kori Schulman, our deputy digital director, was assigned to safeguard the president’s equities. Like me, Kori was in her twenties. But applied to us, millennial was an adjective. Applied to our viral-content counterparts, it was a full-time job. With the relentless enthusiasm of an Instagram star on vacation, they proposed an idea: force POTUS to try weird American foods, then film him when he got grossed out.
“We think it will break the Internet!” they announced.
Kori and I tried to explain that there are certain unwritten rules to being president, and that one of those rules is “Don’t mock things voters eat.” But our dealers were unfamiliar with the concept of unwanted attention, and coming up with a replacement theme for the video was a nightmare. Prisoner swaps have been negotiated in less time.
Even when we did settle on a suitably inoffensive concept—“Things Everyone Does that You Do Too”—our equities proved difficult to protect. No, Kori and I explained, POTUS would not vape on camera. No, the president would not pull underwear from the crack of his ass.
“Are you sure? We really think it will break the Internet.”
Eventually, we reached an agreement: POTUS would do things that were silly without being embarrassing. Making faces in the mirror. Using a selfie stick. Shooting a pretend jump shot. Mispronouncing February as he delivered his health care plug. The day before the shoot, when BuzzFeed Motion Pictures arrived for a walk-through in the residence, I hoped that we were finally on the same page.
One look at our video’s director disabused me of this notion. I’ll call this person Manbun after his most distinguishing feature, the same way some people are called Charity or Faith. Also, I get that not everyone dresses in business attire. I really do. But wearing skinny jeans to a White House meeting? As a nation, can’t we agree that this is treason?
Perhaps I could have forgiven Manbun’s clothing if his personality hadn’t so perfectly matched it. For several minutes, he preened about the library, resembling nothing so much as a human Bo. Finally, he turned to Kori.
“I’m thinking we film the basketball shot first, then the selfie stick, then the health care plug.” He pursed his lips in a caricature of thoughtfulness. #Listening. “What do you think?”
Kori was quick to reply. “Actually, we should do the health care plug first. We need to remind POTUS why he’s doing this. Then we can do the basketball shot, then the selfie stick.”
Manbun struck another pose. #ReallyListening. He remained frozen for several seconds. Then he suddenly sprung back to life.
“Great! So we’ll do the basketball shot first, then the selfie stick, then the health care plug.”
This was not an accident. He employed this tactic repeatedly. (1) State an opinion. (2) Make a big show of asking for feedback. (3) Restate the exact same opinion word for word.
It speaks to Kori’s character that at no time did she kick Manbun enthusiastically in the testicles. She didn’t even forcibly shave his head. And that, of course, is the essence of being a staffer. You deal with nonsense gladly, smile cheerfully at people who demean you, all so that your boss can worry about more important concerns. On the day of the drug deal, POTUS had no knowledge of the thousand small headaches his team had endured. After his straight-news interview, he bounded into the library, Hope Hall shadowing behind with her camera.