by Pat Cunnane
“Should you really be the one to write about Aretha Franklin?” Desiree asked.
“You could say that about everything they send me,” I retorted.
Still, she was right. I struggled with it more than most assignments; probably wasn’t the best person to opine on the Queen of Soul. (I’ve always had trouble describing music.) I got it into decent shape before a senior speechwriter with a background in music and a wonderful, lyrical way with words took a pass and improved it immensely. I thought it couldn’t get better. But then we received the president’s version. I expected he would barely glance at the draft, given the far more important items on his never-ending to-do list, but Obama, the writer, couldn’t resist. He took what we thought was a polished “statement from the president” and turned it into a potent declaration on the power of music—he made it sing.
“Aretha’s one of a handful of artists I believe are truly essential to the American story,” he wrote. “American history wells up when Aretha sings. That’s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings ‘A Natural Woman,’ she can move me to tears—the same way that Ray Charles’s version of ‘America the Beautiful’ will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed—because it captures the fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top, the good and the bad, and the possibility of synthesis, reconciliation, transcendence.”
All in all, I wrote hundreds of pages in his voice. It was the honor of my life.
Sometimes, as with the Aretha statement, I felt little ownership over the words. Other times, I received no edits, and I’d bask in my own small glory: my words had become his, etched somewhere in the far corner of history, just behind that speech nobody remembered or the death statement everyone forgot. Still, it was there. And it could not have meant more to me.
Obama excelled in each of the four categories that my mom theorized combined to create great writing. He mastered the mechanics and the rhetoric. He had the humanity. He lived the experiences. And he had the knowledge. In fact, his understanding of history provided him the ability to contextualize our generation’s current state; a fleeting chapter in America’s long, snaking saga. It’s why he rarely felt the need to lash out at the media, and why he seldom seemed flustered when heckled or when things went wrong in the Briefing Room. That’s not to say he wasn’t tested. And, sometimes, it was kind of my fault.
• • •
Desiree burst out laughing, turning to Velz. A mild-mannered, somewhat new reporter named Phil had just called from the Briefing Room. “The room is pretty crowded today,” he’d told her. He thought the president should know. For whatever reason, this struck Desiree, Velz, and me as a bizarre, hilarious report. Of course the Briefing Room was crowded. The president was about to speak.
I had finished his presser memo, the last of 2016, the night before. The process had been relatively smooth. We anticipated that the news would be largely about the election and Russia’s interference. We also prepared for questions regarding the tragedy unfolding in Syria, centered on the president’s response—or lack thereof, according to his critics. He was ready for those questions; the folks in the Staff Secretary’s Office barely had to bug me to get the thing in on time.
The day was off to a quiet, decent start, so we couldn’t help having a little fun. Desiree and Velz asked me to prank call Phil. I hadn’t been a wrangler since he’d started coming around full-time, and he likely wouldn’t recognize my voice.
“Hello, sir. This is the White House fire chief,” I intoned, having no clue if there even was such a position. “I hear you’re concerned with the number of folks in the Briefing Room.”
“Oh, no, I, uh . . .” he waffled.
“Sir, could you please count the number of people in the Briefing Room?”
“Uh, I’m not sure how many—”
“I’m going to need an exact number,” I said, stifling a laugh.
“I’ll have to get back to you,” Phil said, hanging up. Immediately, he emailed Desiree, freaked out. I started to get nervous. Though countless pranks had been pulled on me, I always worried about trying my hand at one. My mind went instantly to the worst possible scenario. For example, remember Sean’s trick on me years earlier? Had our positions been reversed, I would have been too afraid to pretend to pick up a prostitute. What if the cab driver was an undercover cop?
Fortunately, with this simple joke, I couldn’t see any dire consequences a step or two down the road, and we were in the clear as the president took to the podium.
“Good afternoon,” he started. “This is the most wonderful press conference of the year. I’ve got a list of who’s been naughty and nice to call on.” He got a laugh out of them; the briefing was off and running. After Obama parried questions about Russia and the election, Mike Dorning of Bloomberg asked the president a two-part question on Syria, including: “Do you, as president of the United States, leader of the free world, feel any personal moral responsibility now at the end of your presidency for the carnage that we’re all watching in Aleppo, which I’m sure disturbs you—which you said disturbs you?”
“Mike, I always feel responsible,” he started, continuing with a thoughtful, thorough accounting of the process by which the US government assessed options for Syria. Suddenly a commotion took hold in the back of the Briefing Room.
“I’m sorry, what’s going on?” the president asked, concerned.
The room was indeed crowded, and hot. Somebody had passed out. What followed was two minutes and twenty seconds of dead air. The president—live on television—was standing behind the podium waiting, calling for somebody to help, repeatedly asking that we grab the White House doctor and then offering directions to the doctor’s office as the sick woman exited the Briefing Room doors. “Just go through the Palm doors; it’s right next to the Map Room.” It was the waiting, though, that was excruciating. Two minutes and twenty seconds feels like an eternity on live television. He was left hanging. This scenario was definitely not covered in my memo.
As reporters and pundits on TV and Twitter rushed to coin stretched, snarky metaphors, drawing parallels between the president’s supposed failure to help those in Syria with his inaction from behind the podium as he called on others to help the reporter in need, I knew we should have taken Phil’s weird note more seriously. The room was, in fact, too crowded, and somebody passed out. I was dumbstruck—or maybe just dumb—wondering how the one time I try to pull a prank—the only time I didn’t overanalyze the potential ramifications and failed to consider a worst possible scenario—it came to pass. On live TV. At the expense of the president. I realized a couple of things then. First, maybe my next memo to POTUS should be about the need for a White House fire chief. (He would need a mustache.) Second, I knew pranks weren’t one of my skills. I would never live up to Sean’s example. Better to stick with what I knew.
• • •
I knew real people. And I knew we had something in Sharon, whom we pulled directly from one of my preferred categories: grandma. Sharon Belkofer is a sweet and spunky grandma, great-grandma, and Gold Star mother. I didn’t have to ask Liz about ARP checks; Sharon had already come within an arm’s reach of the president. In fact, she had hugged him—more than once—proud moments she liked to retell.
We were looking for a special introducer. This would be the most high-profile introduction of the president in his eight years in office. There were no introducers for State of the Union addresses, just the sergeant at arms who shouts the president’s entrance to the floor. No real people cuing the president before his somber addresses to the nation, just a silent nod from the wrangler in the corner signifying it’s time. But for his speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, supporting Hillary Clinton, we had to find someone with spark.
Fortunately, Desiree had an idea. She called over to Joe, one of the president’s close aides and common golf buddies, to stop by from the Outer Oval and tell us about his “pen pal.
” Turns out, he’d become friends over the Obama years with a woman who’d had a series of quiet moments with the president. The minute he started telling us about this woman named Sharon, it clicked. We had to get her on the phone right away. Sharon’s voice was pitch-perfect, earnest, and excited—she had the spark—so we made the ask, and she gladly accepted.
I got word from the lawyers that Sharon’s speech would be classified as political, meaning that, as a White House staffer, I couldn’t legally work on Sharon’s speech. Now, the lawyers could be overly cautious, but that’s because they took their responsibilities so seriously—and they kept us out of trouble. So if I wanted to help with the speech, I’d need to take a day off from the White House and work from home, which I did. Sharon and I had a series of warm, endearing conversations batting around language that I will always remember. It was clear to me why Joe had become pen pals with this woman who could be his grandmother.
I remember watching Sharon, in her shimmering black outfit, walk out onto stage in front of the world. I was terrified for her. Anxious at the boisterous Philly room. Would they calm down and listen to her story? My nerves calmed the moment she stepped to the podium. She didn’t seem nervous. She basked in it all, and as she started in, she called out her home state of Ohio. A little crowd work from a little old lady went a long way.
The arena quieted as she began: “I know President Obama has meant so much to millions of Americans across the country. I’d like to tell you what he means to me,” she said. Sharon told her story through the lens of a series of presidential hugs. One of her three boys—all of whom served their country—made the ultimate sacrifice six years before. Tom, a lieutenant colonel, was killed in Afghanistan. That tragedy prompted hug one. An embrace of support and consolation. “I cried all over his suit,” she said. “Tom would have been so embarrassed.”
Next, a couple of years later, she crowded toward a rope line at an Obama event in Ohio, just hoping to get a picture signed. Then she heard from an aide that the president wanted to see her. “And I got my second presidential hug!” she said. This time she didn’t cry so much; instead, something ignited inside of her. “I was inspired,” she said. “Maybe this sweet old lady could still make a difference.”
This was why we chose Sharon. As the Obama presidency drew closer to its conclusion, we wanted to lift up what it all meant. What this president meant to America. Sharon Belkofer summed it up: “Some people in this world make big differences. My son Tom made big differences. The president continues to make big differences—and smaller ones, too, like the inspiration he poured into me so that I might make a difference of my own.”
Sharon knew that her community’s schools needed more resources—and at the age of seventy-three, she decided to do something about it. She ran for her local school board, knocking on doors in the cold, bad back and all.
And before her speech in Philadelphia, she told Obama, “I won big!” That’s when Sharon got her third presidential hug.
President Obama has always had a unique ability to speak to what America stands for, to tell our nation’s story. And for eight years, he helped write it. Yet as the Obama chapters closed, we found that real people were better equipped to write the real legacy of the Obama presidency—to tell his story as it became our own.
* * *
I. The shirtless horse photo is in the PRA many times over.
8
* * *
Interviews About Nothing
Just tell him you’re the president.
—JERRY SEINFELD TO BARACK OBAMA
President Obama’s joyride around the South Lawn of the White House in a classic Corvette almost never happened.
I called my youngest brother as soon as it looked like it was on. Alex is a huge car nut and Seinfeld buff. I told him the news and swore him to secrecy. He asked a series of questions.
“So he’s going on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee?”
“Yeah, can you believe it?” I said.
“No, because Obama’s not really a comedian, is he?”
“No,” I said.
“Does he drive?”
“Not really.”
“Does he drink coffee?”
“He’s more of a tea guy.”
“What could go wrong?” he asked.
On December 6, 2015, just two days before our scheduled shoot with Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the president delivered an address to the nation—our most formal, serious, and rare form of speech—to reassure America that we would defeat ISIS, and to comfort a country on edge, reeling from yet another terror attack, in San Bernardino. The massacre at a party took the lives of fourteen of our neighbors, friends, and family as they came together to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season.
“My fellow Americans, these are the steps we can take to defeat terrorism,” he stated somberly from his podium in front of the Resolute desk.
Needless to say, the American media and political environment weren’t exactly ripe for comedy, and my bosses were rightly worried that the United States might not be ready to watch their president be funny with Jerry while the nation’s flags flew at half-staff. It seemed very likely that months of work, and my chance to collaborate with a hero of mine, were stalled.
• • •
When it comes to politics, comedy doesn’t get enough credit. Similarly, Sinbad gets short shrift when it comes to his role helping to elect the first black president of the United States.
It started when Obama’s chief rival in the fierce 2008 primary, Hillary Clinton, recounted a story: she said that when she was First Lady on a goodwill mission, she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire. Fortunately, Sinbad, who played Secret Service Agent Sam Simms in the 1996 blockbuster First Kid, was also on board and set the record straight years later as the claim came under scrutiny. “I think the only ‘red phone’ moment was ‘Do we eat here or at the next place?’ ” Sinbad said shortly after Hillary’s mischaracterization, prompting a great deal of blowback against Hillary and propelling Obama to the presidency. (Okay, it’s possible there was more to his history-making election than that.) Clearly, the role of comedy in politics is no laughing matter.
But seriously, silly stuff counts. Comedy can do two things in politics: it can help you or it can hurt you. Consider that there are talented people paid big money to mock the president every night. It’s no different than a school cafeteria: better to be in on the joke.
That’s why the president was always the first to make fun of his graying hair, comment on his perceived aloofness, crack wise about his days getting high, or even joke around about the birther nonsense. Because he knew what many of us learn in grade school.
There’s no quicker way to disarm an antagonist than with a little self-deprecation and a lot of laughter.
• • •
The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee idea had first come about years before in a “blue sky” creative meeting where staffers were encouraged to throw out imaginative ways to use the president’s time. I believe the first person to mention Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee—Seinfeld’s burgeoning online series in which he drives about in classic cars, stops for coffee, and talks with comic friends about anything, everything, and nothing—was advisor Brian Deese, who, incidentally, was also the man largely credited with putting together the measures that saved the American auto industry. The pitch didn’t quite go anywhere then, but I thought the idea had merit.
A couple of years later, I repitched the concept, tethering it to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), DC’s annual “nerd prom,” where politicians, White House staffers, journalists, and celebrities pack themselves into the cavernous basement of the Washington Hilton to gawk and guffaw, and—most importantly—to hear POTUS do a little stand-up. Along with the White House Christmas parties, the WHCD is the hottest invite in the city. And every spring, the holiday party dynamic I described in chapter 3 was flipped. The reporters, in charge of the dinner; invitat
ions up to them. White House staffers left scrambling for tickets and favors from the press.
In a transactional town, tickets were worth a great deal more than face value, and bartering for them could leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. In fact, to a lot of people in DC and across the country, the whole weekend represents what’s wrong with Washington: glad-handing, backslapping, celebrity gazing. Preparty brunches. Preparties. After-parties. After-party brunches.
The truth is, it’s also a lot of fun. And in its own small way, I think the dinner is important, too. The Correspondents’ Association recognizes the year’s best reporters and rewards young aspiring journalists with scholarships to hone their craft. It’s also an opportunity for the most important person on Earth to let off some steam, get roasted by the headliner, and—more to the point—poke fun at himself. If the president didn’t attend these dinners, it would be a sign that he was no longer willing to laugh at himself. Of course, not attending was inconceivable to President Obama.
One of my earliest goals at the White House was to write a joke for the president’s speech, but I was too timid at first to try my hand at submitting any one-liners. The speech was primarily written by speechwriters Jon Lovett and, later, David Litt, with input from other top speechwriters, senior staffers, and some of Hollywood’s funniest folks, from David Letterman to, yes, Larry David. Prior to the 2014 dinner, I re-upped the Seinfeld pitch. We should have Jerry come by the Oval Office and give POTUS pointers for the big night, I suggested. A joke coach. Then Jerry would drive a nervous Obama to the Hilton, providing more tips along the way. It would play as a video introduction for Obama’s speech. The key, as I saw it, was that Obama needed to be eager but terrible in the video, with a stilted delivery and unrelatable content, like lamentations about the food on Air Force One. He needed to bomb for it to be funny. Unfortunately, the only thing that bombed was my pitch, which went nowhere—but it kept the notion alive and Jerry on “the list.”