by Pat Cunnane
A billion bucks. A bunch of babies kissed. Repeated punch lines and perpetual rope lines. Worn slogans and endorsed messages. From West Hollywood to West Des Moines, and the Holiday Inn to the Four Seasons—across four very different seasons—2012 taught me what it actually takes to get a person elected president of the United States.
It started with a song.
“The more you see, the less you know.”
I would rush from the motorcade, through the backstage pipe and drape, and toward the event site. The press pool would be right on my tail. We inserted ourselves into the buffer, crouched between the anxious crowd—weary from waiting—and the empty stage. The photographers readied their cameras and opened their laptops, spreading them across the floor. The cameraperson hoisted his hulking television camera up and over his shoulder. That was the routine. It’s how every event kicked off.
The introducer—chosen by the campaign to make a brief statement before the president hit the stage—would end his or her brief remarks with the same phrase: “And now it’s my honor to introduce the president of the United States, Barack Obama!”
A good introducer knew to hold a beat after “And now . . .” allowing the crowd to pull in its collective breath. Murmurs would shoot through the audience like lightning, as, for just a second, the introducer was in control. But as soon as he or she said “honor,” the room would leap to its feet, letting out a raucous cheer on “introduce.” By “Barack,” the cheer would have overflowed into a deafening shriek. Only the most rhetorically gifted introducers could keep their attention long enough to even make it to “Obama!” before the floodgates opened, and the crowd had taken control of the room. All eyes would be on the corner where the pipe and drape meets the bleachers. For a moment, there would be nothing. A pregnant pause. The expectation boiling over. President Obama knew how to make an entrance.
Then it would begin.
The pluck of the electric guitar. Then the crunch of another one, building to something more. The mounting rumble of the drums. Those seated in the stands by the pipe and drape would see him first. Another cheer. The photographers would click away. To most of the crowd, he was still obscured—down on the floor level, shaking hands and waving. The expansive melody would take hold on the piano, escalating as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“The more you see, the less you know.”
U2’s “City of Blinding Lights” served as the entrance theme for just about all of the president’s campaign events, including his announcement in 2007 that he was first running for president, which took place at the foot of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where he served as a state senator; where Abraham Lincoln got his start in politics.
Rising, the song reached its crescendo in sync with the moment the president would crest the four stairs on the side of the stage. That’s when he became visible to everyone in the arena, and the cheers overtook even U2. He would hug the introducer and put his arms in the air. For those of us who watched this spectacle unfold often two or three times a day, the cheers became a part of the song. The shrieks a fitting piece of the orchestra. His waving and pointing, an instrument to accompany the drums and guitar. All of this in service of the moment and the song, everybody—for a time—blinded by the lights.
And then he’d take to the podium and hush the crowd. The quiet would be pierced by the inevitable “We love you, Ba-rack!” and his automatic “I love you back!” Some laughter. Then he’d dig in, thanking his introducer, welcoming the crowd, pandering to the school’s football team or jabbing at the city’s basketball team. “If you have a seat, sit down,” he’d say. “And if not, bend your knees. I’m gonna talk for a bit.” And then he’d dive in, and I’d sit back in the buffer, my head against the bicycle rack that kept the crowd at bay.
I listened to hundreds of these speeches. His rhythm—rising, falling, repeating, culminating in an optimistic close or an earnest now-I’m-letting-you-in-on-the-real-answer moment—had become like second nature to me. It seeped beyond work. I remember Stephanie editing a letter I wrote to our landlord; he didn’t need to read about “hope” or “change,” she said, he needed to fix our air conditioning!
Still, the speeches were always tweaked before delivery, so Marie and I would send each other the last three paragraphs of the remarks, so we knew what phrase to look out for and when to prepare the pool to move from the buffer.
During the campaign, Marie and I were on the road together constantly. We switched off: one of us minded the press pool and traveled on Air Force One; the other tended to the larger traveling press corps that followed Obama in a chartered plane and sat off to the side of the stage as the president delivered his remarks.
President Obama would inevitably turn his attention to his opponent. This would elicit boos, and the opportunity for him to deploy one of his favorite call-and-responses. “Don’t boo!” he would cry out, waiting for the crowd to reply with him: “Vote!” From the buffer, I knew he was feeling good about the event if he slapped the side of the podium. It was his tell. By the time the first phrase in the last three paragraphs came about, he was usually on fire. He wasn’t giving a speech anymore, he was delivering a sermon. Each word flowed into the next, each turn of phrase upped the ante until finally, his voice becoming hoarse and the crowd overtaking him, he would shout, “Thank you! God bless you! And God bless the United States of America!” He’d wave, and with a slap to the side of the podium, he’d be on his way to the buffer to shake some hands. As soon as Obama hit the steps, the music would return.
The familiar, driving beat of drums and then the ensemble strains of the E Street Band took hold as I led the pool up to the stage, grabbed the president’s remarks binder from his podium—and, for a flash, looked out from his previous vantage point, feeling for a fleeting moment the power of the president’s platform.
“We take care of our own. Wherever this flag’s flown. We take care of our own.”
Bruce Springsteen’s roaring chorus blared throughout the arena as a few lucky audience members joined the scrum by the buffer. They held out their babies for a lift and pawned off their books for a signature. It was hard to hear over the Boss’s anthem—Americana at its finest—but I rustled the pool with hand gestures and nods. As the chorus wound down for the final time, I’d pull the pool back beyond the drapes, through the bowels of the building, and out to the motorcade, from where we’d come. On to the next stop. Wherever our flag’s flown.
• • •
We did those events hundreds of times in service of one goal: reelecting President Obama. To do that, everybody—from the president to the press wranglers—needed to execute his and her jobs. For the president, his surrogates, and his senior campaign advisors, the job was clear: promote our policies while painting Mitt Romney as out of touch with the middle class.
Funny thing is, the Romney team had the exact same plan: to portray an aloof Obama who was hindering rather than helping middle-class Americans.
To us, Romney was a rich robot—not a bad guy, but not the right guy for Americans who don’t own car elevators. To them, Obama was a big-government elitist who didn’t understand the struggles of middle-class Americans or the burdens government imposes on them. To us, Obama had staved off a second Great Depression, saved the auto industry, and fundamentally rebuilt health care in a way that benefited tens of millions of Americans. To them, Obama was a failed president.
Those were the theses, and they were clear. Each campaign had a theory of the case about the opposing candidate. The months leading up to the election were about making the argument—over and over—until we could take a completed thesis to the electoral college in November. In the meantime, we took our case to the American people. Even by 2012, with the Obama campaign building on its success in 2008, social media would never be enough—and so the fourth estate was never out of sight or mind.
As we kicked into campaign mode, Josh took Antoinette and Marie and me aside and impressed upon each of us
how crucial our role was. We were on the front lines; the Obama staffers most in touch with the press. He told us that it could be easy to forget—to think of ourselves as simply press wranglers or assistants—but that on the road, we represented the president. Small, seemingly meaningless miscues could spiral, sending things into a tailspin. “Let’s not give anybody any reason to doubt our competency,” he said. To me, that meant getting the little things right.
It’s been said that campaigns are like start-ups on steroids. So there were a lot of little things to bear in mind. Thousands of people—staffers, volunteers, vendors—thrust together with a singular intention. The 2012 start-up was again based out of Chicago. There are strict rules bifurcating campaign staffers and White House officials, but a few people fell somewhere in between. A handful of senior aides, such as Dan, Jay, Valerie Jarrett, and others, were legally allowed to take part in the campaign in their official capacity as White House staffers.I Fewer lower-level staffers were allowed to travel with the president on the campaign. Marie and I were among the lucky few, fortunate to have been designated wranglers at the right time.
Our Secret Service hard pins, as they were called, provided universal and unfettered access to the presidential bubble. We had free rein of the place sans standard security checks. Our quarter-sized red or blue pins seemed a rather low-tech instrument for such a powerful measure of access, but off we went clapping our pins to our shirts—two cogs in the massive road-show machine that was the 2012 election.
By the time the campaign got into full swing, a dedicated press charter plane was put into effect, hauling dozens of reporters, producers, and crew wherever Obama went. Marie and I took turns. One of us would go on Air Force One with the smaller press pool, and one of us would go on the charter, which was the cushier gig. When with the pool on Air Force One, we needed to be on guard constantly—ready to relay information, parry questions, mind the reporters, or make changes on the fly. On the charter, there was less to do; the White House travel office ran the show. My biggest worry on those flights was the hands-y middle-aged stewardesses who were a tad too attentive.
On the charter, there was a clear caste system. On-air talent, big-time print reporters, and experienced producers sat at the front, in first class. Cameramen, crew, as well as more junior reporters or folks from lesser-known outlets sat toward the back. Up front, conversations among those in first class often turned to which reporter would be named in the lead of the article should the plane crash.
The plane never went down. It typically arrived at the event site hours prior to the president and the pool. For outdoor sites, we’d hurry into great white tents, where the press filed their stories and where the buffet stood ready to fill up ravenous reporters and staffers. Reggie Love, the president’s first “body man”—which is a DC term for the always-present person at the side of his or her boss ready with everything from a Tic Tac to classified documents—offered wise counsel about life on the road. “Eat on the plane or at the event,” he told me. “Not both.” I failed to heed his advice and ate my way through more states than I care to remember.
Really, it was the same nine swing states over and over again: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Plus dashes to California for fund-raising.
Sometimes we took the road less traveled. In Iowa, we embarked on a three-day bus tour across the state. Iowa held a special place in the hearts of Obama people. The prairie-filled state had propelled him toward the presidency four years prior, and those who were there, including Obama, talk about that night like folklore. Politics at its best, they liked to say. We were back four years later to try and recapture that magic.
The president’s hulking, armored black bus, complete with a presidential seal next to its impenetrable door, rumbled down narrow roads, bisecting dry cornfields and cresting rolling hills. Only at the top of those hills did it become truly clear: we were a behemoth of an organization, swooping down into Middle America, out of place and very much in the way. The giant vehicle—Bus Force One or Ground Force One, as it was known—was reduced to the size of a toy Matchbox car from my view in a vehicle toward the back of the motorcade. The president was trailed and preceded by countless police cars and motorcycles, nearly a dozen black Suburbans and numerous buses, one filled with Secret Service agents prepared to leap into action in an instant, and another stuffed with journalists ready to report. Our rolling presidential convoy kicked up a great deal of dust and dirt, drew its fair share of onlookers, and delayed locals just trying to go on about their lives.
But that’s what we were after: the locals. We wanted interactions. Meetings with Middle America. Rolling through town in a tanklike bus wasn’t the most relatable method of making connections, however, so we pandered to what unites so many Americans.
“Four more beers!”
As we crisscrossed Iowa, the chant rang out repeatedly. The public had recently learned that the White House was brewing its own beer: a honey ale and a honey porter. And the president was not above divvying out our stock, stored on Bus Force One, to local Iowans. Crowds particularly loved it when Obama was willing to have a drink at the bar with patrons. It was easy positive publicity for totally normal behavior. Polls in Iowa mirrored the national ones—a tight race—but Obama held the edge. We felt good. And the beer didn’t hurt.
• • •
Even as the world obsessed over the election, I was fixated on something even more important. By 2012, Stephanie and I had been grade school, high school, and—thanks to the wise counsel of Dr. Phil and Larry King—college sweethearts. In all, we had been together for twelve years, half our lives. People were starting to ask about our “plans,” which was code for “It’s time to step up, dude!”
Marie and Antoinette were no different. They had been needling me for a couple of weeks to no avail about if and when I was going to pop the question. The first part was easy: yes, of course, I was going to ask Stephanie to marry me. The second part, the specifics of it all, was a bit blurrier.
Things came into focus the night of the state dinner in honor of David Cameron and the United Kingdom. Technically, because state dinners are reserved for heads of state (the Queen) rather than simply heads of government (the prime minister), this was actually an “official dinner.” But it was grander than any state dinner the Obama White House had ever thrown. The White House set up a colossal white tent on the South Lawn, hidden beneath the limbs of massive trees and concealed from the outside by bushes and the South Lawn fence. It was rather like an elegant backyard wedding—if your backyard wedding was filled with celebrities and CEOs, dignitaries and diplomats. There was an old-timey trolley shuttling guests from the entrance reception by the East Wing to the main event a few hundred yards away. Everybody was dressed to the nines. Even we wranglers needed to dress up. I wore a dark suit that I pretended was a tux, while Marie and Antoinette wore floor-length gowns, which concealed their sneakers. (High heels are not efficient wrangling footwear.)
We ushered the press pool into the tent at the appropriate time—to hear toasts from President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron, as well as the first song or two from that night’s entertainment, and Marie’s favorite band, London’s Mumford & Sons. I had never heard of them and therefore offered to depart with the first wave. I met up with Marie and Antoinette by the mess, but not the mess pickup window like usual. Because we were staffing the dinner, we were allowed to crash the fancier side of the White House Navy Mess: the exclusive wood-paneled room just behind the pickup window. Antoinette, who is nothing short of direct, asked what the latest was. “When are you going to pop the question?”
Maybe it was the formal wear and the dancing, the toasts and swanky tables. It could have been David Cameron’sII charm or singer John Legend’s very public displays of affection for his date, model Chrissy Teigen, just beyond the view of the press pool. Whatever it was, I was in the mood for a wedding of my own, and I decided to quit obfuscating in
front of my friends. I was going to do it, I told them, which elicited quick, frenzied feedback: How, when, where?
“I want to do it here.”
I had discussed with my parents as well as Stephanie’s sister, Victoria, where to do it and landed on the White House. It was such a big part of my life and an increasingly important place to Stephanie, who was becoming more interested in politics and impressed by the president than even I was. Initially I worried that the Rose Garden was “cliché,” but my parents told me to snap out of it; that I was nuts to even say such a thing. The Rose Garden it would be.
It’s not that the rest of the White House community wasn’t as supportive as Marie and Antoinette. Instead, some of my bosses and colleagues, as well as a reporter or two, simply had a different perspective, and they weren’t afraid to share it. As the agreed-upon proposal date got closer, and the planning among Antoinette, Marie, and me picked up steam, Schultz would ask, “Don’t you need a letter from your parents or something?” Matt and Bobby wondered whether “interns” were allowed to get engaged at the White House. Another boss called me “a child bride.” We had to keep the plans hidden entirely from Brian, who would not have taken kindly to somebody putting the White House grounds—especially the Rose Garden—to use for personal, nonpresidential pursuits. If he came sniffing around, I planned to tell him that the West Wing pooper was now wreaking havoc in the EEOB. Maybe he should go check into it.
We laid the groundwork weeks in advance. Stephanie was still living in Philly, where she worked for Fuji Bikes. So we switched on and off taking Amtrak or making the drive along I-95. I told Stephanie that the communications shop was hosting a spring party at the White House on Friday, April 6, so she would need to be in DC that weekend. I suggested she wear something nice—that she look good, which she didn’t take as well as I’d hoped. I looped her on an email with Marie to talk through what each was planning to wear to the party. It was a long con. The most consequential trick I had previously played on Stephanie was in college, when my roommate Chris and I said we would cook dinner. Instead, we bought Taco Bell, repackaged it nicely on gourmet plates, poured the Mountain Dew Baja Blast into an elegant pitcher, and sat down to eat. An unwitting Stephanie was then forced to admit that she did not, in fact, hate Taco Bell as she so often claimed.