Power Forward : My Presidential Education (9781476763361)

by Love, Reggie

  I also developed an enjoyable relationship with Hillary once Obama was in the White House and she was Madam Secretary. She was usually early to her weekly meeting with the President. While she waited, she’d ask me questions about my life, traveling, my family. I always tried to ask questions in turn about what was going on internationally. A result I’m sure of having been first lady, a U.S. senator, and now secretary of state, her command of facts was astounding. She was formidable because she’d had to be.

  I met President Clinton for the first time during the campaign. He was traveling through DCA the same day we were. I was waiting in the lobby of Signature Aviation with Marvin when the former president came over with his aide Doug Band to introduce himself. He shook my hand and said, “Hey, how are you doin’?” like he’d known me all his life.

  Doug then turned to Marvin and explained to Clinton how Marvin had been the bodyman for Kerry, but Clinton seemed to know all of this already. He smiled, seemed interested and personable, then suggested in his happy Southern drawl that we pose for a photograph.

  I was torn. Should I take a picture with Bill Clinton while my candidate was running against his wife? What if the photo got leaked? How would that look? What if the whole thing was a setup?

  Then again, he was a former president, and if a former president is standing there saying, “Hey, let’s take a picture!” you can’t really shrug and say, “Nah, no thanks.”

  The whole thing was incredibly awkward, at least for me. President Clinton, it seemed, had never seen an awkward moment in his life.

  I posed for the picture.

  Knowing President Clinton a bit better now, and having seen how hard he campaigned for Obama, I know he is an amazing guy, unbelievably sharp, with a great sense of humor. He cares deeply about the country, especially about the middle class. With politicians, you often get either someone who is very smart or someone who is very down to earth. You rarely get both. Clinton and Obama happen to be both. Clinton basically wrote the book on folksy genius and connecting with every demographic. Obama is his own brand, but the DNA is similar. These are men who were forged in adversity and have not left their upbringing behind.

  Nor have they allowed their roots to define who they would become. They dreamed big, even as many of those in their hometown communities could not. They truly represent the best of both worlds.

  Being an athlete early on in life taught me not just teamwork, but the ability to be coached. Trusting a coach to know better than you teaches you to listen to other people’s advice. If nothing else, a coach prepares you for humility. And that is as valuable a lesson as any in life.

  * * *

  When I first moved to D.C., I realized very quickly how fundamentally screwed up the professional Washington bureaucratic system was. The cost of living far outpaced the average entry-level salary. So in order to work in D.C. politics or government, you needed either to be wealthy or to know the right people, and then you probably had to live in Southern Maryland or Northern Virginia. To get into the world, you already had to be in the world—a paradox that excluded a large percentage of Americans the government supposedly represents.

  I was lucky to find a way in through the back door. I had played a little football, I had some money saved, and I didn’t have any burdening undergraduate student loans (I wish I could say the same about business school). When you are just getting out of college, most people who look like me don’t have the financial flexibility to come live in D.C. on a staff assistant’s salary.

  Obama understood that. Which is one reason why when he was a junior senator he started his PAC, the Hope Fund, part of which paid for a diverse group of young people to come to D.C. and train for a political career. The Hope Fund participants worked campaigns, took seminars, met with politicos and policy wonks. A large percentage of the graduates from the program eventually ended up working on the ’08 campaign. I remember picking up some of these newbies from the airport and seeing their eyes light up as we drove into D.C. It was so rewarding to play a part in their introduction to Washington, their anticipation and eagerness much like my own when I had arrived not too long before.

  I respected Obama for his creation of that small program as much as for anything else he did. He saw something wrong with the system. He understood why it was broken. And then he created a new structure to address the imbalance and begin paving a path to success for a whole new group of people. He knew the ship could not be righted overnight, but he did something concrete to begin the process. He made an actual difference; the seeds he sowed almost immediately took root.

  It made me think of something Coach K used to tell us every practice, which was “Value the ball.” In a game where you have fifty to seventy possessions, you need to value every single one of them, because you never know which one will mean the difference in the final score.

  In ways large and small, Obama valued the ball and respected every possession. Here’s one unheralded example. Unlike past presidents, President Obama didn’t want to cancel White House tours when he came to the Oval Office on weekends. I was told by Secret Service that if George W. Bush went into the Oval on a Saturday, they would shut down the whole West Wing. But Obama felt strongly about not disrupting people’s long-held plans and schedules. Instead, he popped his head out and said hi to folks. He shook hands with friends and families who were touring the West Wing. He stayed as grounded and accessible as one can be as the leader of the free world.

  One of my tasks in the White House was to log the gifts. It was mind-boggling the amount of stuff that poured in for the Obama family. Basketballs, shoes, iPads, flowers, photographs—I would categorize them and track the thank-you notes we sent in return. I never wanted the President to run into someone who’d given him a present and had not received an acknowledgment. Good manners and character go hand in hand.

  Which brings me back to the fishbowl or, in the case of D.C., the shark tank. The President showed me via his own choices that you have to value everyone’s contribution, from the grandma sending a birthday card to the Hollywood comedian writing a million-dollar donation. And never discount what someone may someday bring to the table. Politics cannot help but be personal, sometimes even nasty. Political success, however, is not measured in personalities, but in accomplishments. Just as a team of prima donnas is a long, long shot to win a championship, an administration or, for that matter, a political party that cannot join together for the greater good of the country is doomed to come up short.

  23

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  MOTHERS KNOW BEST

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  * * *

  The most valuable gift the women in my life have given me is empathy. A newfound sensitivity that came in handy in the White House, where you have to give every individual with a grievance as much time as he or she needs to feel heard. You listen to people and you nod and you listen some more, until they know that you know the depth of their disappointment. My sensitivity training was usually at someone’s expense, sadly, after I’d messed up by being a lousy boyfriend, a bad friend, or a bratty son. So I had to be enlightened. Repeatedly. Often this was via a heated phone call I received while I sat in the back row of a Suburban with Obama, Secret Service, and anyone else traveling with us. Often those calls were at volumes loud enough for Obama (and everyone else in a five-mile radius) to overhear. Nothing quite like being dressed down by a woman scorned in front of your boss while he’s pretending not to listen.

  Over time, the candidate, then the President, met a select few of my serious girlfriends. Every interaction was fraught for me. I mean, “Let me introduce you to the President of the United States” is about the best line a guy could possibly have in his pocket. But then they would actually meet the President, and how was I ever going to top that?

  * * *

  The first lady was no less eager to dispense romantic counsel, but at least her approach was more maternal.

  “Who are you dating? Is it serious?” she
’d ask me. “Do you think she’s a good person?” She wanted me to find a nice girl and settle down. She viewed me as part of the Obama family. And as a person who maybe needed a little guidance. She always advised me to make sure the person I ended up with was self-possessed, someone whose whole world didn’t revolve around me.

  “Get a strong, smart, independent woman,” she’d say.

  When she said that, I’d think about my own mother, Lynette Love.

  Born November 24, 1952, my mother grew up in the segregated South during the Jim Crow era. Her high school, Moultrie High, was integrated just three years prior to her attending. As it was a racially polarizing time, the integration was less than smooth. Even so, my mother was never bitter about her history. Instead, she was determined. She labored to change the future, volunteering for local African-American candidates, like Harvey Gantt, the first African-American mayor of Charlotte.

  “You have to forgive,” she’d tell me, “but never forget.”

  To make sure I didn’t forget, she gave me civil rights reading assignments. The idea of wasting a warm summer day in North Carolina with my head buried in a book and not shooting hoops was the craziest thing I could imagine. I’d complain, “Why am I learning about Fredrick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois? I’m not in school. I want to play basketball.”

  And she would tell me that nothing held any value unless you knew the story behind it, and that any story of my life included those great men and I was lucky for it. So I read, and learned.

  My mother was consistently strict, but fair. She never spanked me—that was my father’s job—but make no mistake, she was intimidating, nonetheless. She held me and my brother to the highest behavioral and academic standards and never accepted any excuse for our not meeting them.

  After my lackluster performance in middle school, my mother led the charge of Operation Get Reggie Love to Private School. She knew I could rise to the challenge, even if I didn’t know it. I was unfocused and a poor test taker, but my mother saw a brighter future for me if I could just overcome those hurdles. I took remedial classes to catch up and learned strategies for improving my concentration. I wasn’t going to fail, because my mother wasn’t going to let me fail. Ironically, in 2012, thirteen years after I graduated from Providence Day, a school that hadn’t even been sure they wanted me to attend, I was asked to deliver their commencement address. I was proud, but my mother was even prouder.

  While my mom was pushing me to be a better man and high achiever, she was herself making strides. She worked in HR at Philip Morris for nearly twenty years, one of the few African-American women in their employ at the time, after which she left to start her own business in 1995. She bought a building in the heart of West Charlotte, only a mile down the road from our Friendship Baptist missionary church. She turned it into commercial real estate space, and named it the Elise Jackson Professional Building after my grandmother. She converted one of the bottom-floor units into a hair salon, which she dubbed the Classy Look Salon, a thriving business she managed herself. My mother was a workhorse, and she expected the same of her sons. It was great preparation for Duke, for the campaign, and for life.

  This is not to say we didn’t have our mother-son conflicts. One of the biggest came during the first presidential inauguration.

  My parents wanted to attend, so I called my mom and said, “Great news! I have a dozen tickets. I don’t care who you invite, or what you do with them, but here are the instructions. Just understand there are no more tickets after that.”

  And then she went and invited more than a dozen people, conveniently overlooking the dilemma of lodging. Washington is filled for any inauguration, but the historic inauguration of the country’s first African-American president meant every possible room was spoken for. I’d rented a room at a house for my parents, and I had my one-bedroom condo. But that was the extent of the crash-pad space.

  “Look, Ma, you and Dad can stay at the place that I reserved. It’s nice, it’s close to the Capitol. You can literally walk from the house to the inauguration.”

  And she was like, “Wonderful. I’m also bringing about six friends and cousins.”

  It was insane. I think she believed because I was close to the President, I could work some sort of miracle. Which I could not.

  “Relax, Reggie,” my mom said in that voice all parents use when they are trying to calm their children down. “This is a historic time. You’re just too close to it. People will be happy sleeping on the floor.”

  I felt overwhelmed. I was running around trying to figure out my new job with the president-elect and also manage my folks and their friends. I did the best I could for the hometown gang, but every time I dropped by to visit, I felt like I was somehow letting one or all of them down. I tried to explain the position I felt she was putting me into, but my mom wouldn’t hear my whining.

  * * *

  That week, Obama inquired as to how my parents were doing. I wrinkled my nose.

  “Ugh,” I said. “They’re here. I can say that.” Then I launched into my litany of complaints about how much of a pain they were being.

  The president was unsympathetic. In fact, he was annoyed.

  “Reggie, you never know how long your parents are going to be around,” he began. “So you should take every moment that you have to appreciate your parents and do the right thing for them. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish my mother was still alive.”

  His words hit me like a bucket of cold water. I had been so wrapped up in how exasperating I thought my mom was acting, I didn’t think about what this inauguration meant for her, a woman who not only had strived to help support our family, but also had been such a pioneer for black women in our community. Just as she had tried to teach me way back when I was a kid reading MLK and Malcolm X, all our stories were connected. Hers, mine, the President’s, and the stories of all the other African-Americans who had preceded us in much harsher circumstances. We were all part of the same narrative, and to rob her of joy in this moment suddenly seemed, in light of what Obama had explained to me, churlish and ungrateful.

  “Invite your mother for a visit,” he insisted.

  I demurred. I didn’t even know the process to get security clearance for a trip to the Oval. Obama side-eyed me.

  “Reggie, I am the President of the United States. Invite your parents over here because I would like to see the Love family while they are still in town.”

  Chastened, I went and found my mom and apologized. Then I took her and my dad to the Oval Office to meet the Obamas.

  The President and the first lady embraced them warmly and told my parents how I was “like a son” to them. Mrs. Obama bragged about me, told them I was “amazing.” Obama said he couldn’t imagine being at the White House without me. My mother was over the moon. To have the first family saying to my family that we were all family—it doesn’t really get any better than that.

  I remember my mom was wearing these green leather pants. She looked nuts to me, but the Obamas complimented them. When my parents left, Obama turned to me and said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  The next day my mom and I were walking past the Washington Monument when she linked her arm in mine. We talked about the inauguration, meeting the Obamas, the wonder of everything she’d just been a part of.

  “If only your grandmother could have been here to see this,” my mom said, her eyes welling with tears. “She would never believe it.” She stopped for a second, straightened my tie, and patted my chest. “You don’t realize how blessed you are.”

  As we started walking again, she took my hand. And I thought, I’m starting to, Mom. I’m starting to.

  24

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  DON’T BE AFRAID TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF

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  * * *

  Like most young men with a healthy ego, I used to take myself a bit too seriously. I was big on swallowing my feelings, putting up a front, and generally being as unt
ouchable as I could make myself. Like a lot of my teenage friends, I figured striking a pose was far better than admitting a weakness, and might even cover for one. Back then, my ability to welcome criticism was a muscle I hadn’t yet figured out how to exercise.

  This was before I learned the value of being able to laugh not only at life, but, more critically, at myself. I was helped on my road to enlightenment by the campaign team—by their gallows humor and shared propensity for making me the butt of as many jokes as they could manage.

  As for the hazing, I made it easy for them in New Hampshire.

  It was a snowy day, as usual, and I was catching a ride in one of the Secret Service armored Suburbans. Typically the agents would occupy the last row of seats, which faced out toward the road like the seats in an old station wagon from the seventies. This allowed them to more easily see behind us.

  The positioning of the seats also meant that you couldn’t enter or exit the vehicle without somebody else opening the hatch for you like a trunk, and even then, you had to scramble like you were going through an obstacle course. And so, there I was, folding all six feet, four and three-quarter inches of me into the back of the Suburban, wearing a tie, sport coat, and trusty gray pants—pants I had planned to wear a couple of times that week, mind you—when I heard the distinctive sound of fabric tearing. Shredding, more accurately. This was not a minor seam pull. This was a full-on split. My whole backside was exposed, what remained of my pants hanging loosely beside my boxers like curtains.