by Pat Cunnane
Now, if you’re a communications staffer—regardless of party—you know that all problems are communications problems. And the president’s comment was not surprising (or, by the way, wrong). After all, we would never knowingly push bad policy, so if the polling was off, then people must not be getting the message. At least, that’s what every noncommunications staffer could be forgiven for thinking.
In the second term, we worked especially hard to be sure people got the message. And as I moved into writing and messaging, it was time to start looking at legacy, which brings me back to memes. As we were winding down the second term, a particular vein of memes took hold: the Obama-Biden friendship memes. The most potent memes, like the best jokes, were built on a kernel of truth and then taken to a level of absurdity. The Obama-Biden memes did that well. They were the perfect antidote to the rancor of the 2016 campaign, and as we prepared to depart the White House, they predicted the nostalgia America would soon feel.
To capitalize on the memes at the height of their popularity, I pitched that we compile the three most popular memes and film Obama and Biden acting them out, word for word. A little departing gift to America from Barack and Joe. That pitch died quickly; went nowhere. With hindsight, I’m glad it did.
Memes seem still to be in that category of media best not co-opted by candidates or presidents. Sometimes it’s just better to let the internet do its own thing. With Seinfeld though, I thought we could pull it off.
• • •
But the question loomed: Could we stomach the drive around the South Lawn so soon after the San Bernardino attack?
We had been working on it for months. To get anything out of the ordinary done around the West Wing, you need buy-in from the right folks. And putting the president behind the wheel qualified as out of the ordinary. Aside from the shortest of drives in a politically correct, American-made, environmentally friendly Chevy Volt, Obama had driven just once during his two terms: at a Secret Service training facility outside Washington, DC. I’m told he got the vehicle going pretty good, even tried a J-turn or two, and, from what I saw at the training facility—agents driving with skilled recklessness—that doesn’t surprise me.
Toward the end of the term, in 2015 and 2016, Jen Psaki made it a point to take advantage of what working at the White House had to offer; to reward the staffers who chose to stick it out to the end. That meant taking the occasional field trip—to the Secret Service training facility or Camp David, for instance. The training facility included a trip to the gun room, where we could handle every type of confiscated gun under the sun, from a bazooka, to a Beretta, to a gold-plated .50 caliber. It was an interesting dynamic, us Obama Democrats wielding these weapons. Later, they let us shoot, too. There was something unsettling about looking to my right, as the gunshots rang out, and watching the high-strung Jimmy unload a gargantuan gun over and over, blasting the target.
We looked on as titanium-toothed Secret Service dogs followed commands and took down a “threat.” Velz volunteered to get into the padded suit and get mauled by a dog, but the agents ultimately said no. I don’t think our waiver covered it.
We took in a live-action combat sequence—a practice drill for what the motorcade would do in the event of attacks from the side of the road, complete with smoke bombs.
We watched as a knife-wielding attacker lunged over the bicycle rack of the rope line at the “president” as he exited a mock Air Force One.
At first, it felt like a movie set—a carefully choreographed play—but as the armored Suburbans screamed around the corner and out of harm’s way, something more sobering set in. We were looking at the reality that the Secret Service guards against 24/7. While we staffers sometimes joke around with them, even take them for granted, their mission was always so much more important than ours. I felt stupid for worrying whether they remembered my mai tai incident.
Still, around the same time, as I sat down with an agent in the East Reception Room—a formal sitting room just off the entrance to the East Wing, filled with fine art and antiques—I worried he wouldn’t take me seriously. It was just a couple of weeks before the potential Seinfeld filming. My opening line was a bit bold: “So we want to have POTUS drive around the South Lawn.”
He smirked, gave a quick “Mhmm.”
“In a Corvette.”
“Mhmm.”
“With Jerry Seinfeld.”
“Okayyy . . .”
“So . . . can we make this safe?”
It’s the Secret Service’s job to make things work. Truth is, some of my biggest fights were with members of the Secret Service on behalf of the press’ access. But I always found that as long as I didn’t spring things on them at the last second, the agents I dealt with were extraordinarily accommodating. My Seinfeld request was not last minute. Plus, and most importantly, I had buy-in from the right folks. Anita Decker Breckenridge was the president’s former personal aide and then deputy chief of staff for operations, a powerful role that’s essentially defined as “Gets shit done.”
Anita was the right person to have in my corner. Initially intimidated by her, I found common ground with Anita around nineties nostalgia and quickly became impressed by her refreshing candor. She was on board with the White House working with Seinfeld (one of the kings of the 1990s), and with her nod to the Secret Service, so were they.
The final hurdle was determining exactly what vehicle the president would drive. The only time I’d seen him behind the wheel was on the golf course where he took real joy in operating his own golf cart, basking in a simple freedom he was so often denied. Similarly, the staff at Camp David, the ultimate gated community, told me that Obama drove a special cart that had the speed restrictor removed, allowing him to breeze about the impenetrable compound.
I was lucky to travel to Camp David three times during my time at the White House. I staffed the G-8 summit, where I got my first taste of the unique security measures while battling over press access with the navy and marine personnel who run the Camp. The restrictions for filming were tight, and the press pool’s cameras needed always to be pointed very narrowly at a precleared location. The wrong angle of a tree could potentially give up too much information on the location of the compound, which is shrouded by remarkable tree cover.
By my third visit—a memorable staff retreat organized by Psaki—things seemed looser without press or eight world leaders to worry about. The professionals stationed at Camp David are particularly protective and proud of the place, though they are not tour guides by trade. And they regaled our communications staff mainly with stories about where Beyoncé and Jay-Z had stayed a few weeks before. They did, however, relate the story of FDR, who was known to drive himself—some say quite aggressively—to Camp David, which was then known as Shangri-La, from the White House in an open-top convertible.
My ambitions for Obama’s drive weren’t so grand. Jerry wanted to pick the right car for the chief executive, and we wanted to leave it up to him—with just a few parameters. It had to be American made. And, crucially, it couldn’t be a manual transmission. Nobody wanted to ask the president if he knew how to drive stick, and, most importantly, we didn’t want to see him try to remember how while being filmed.
Jerry came through, selecting a powder-blue 1963 Corvette Stingray. According to Jerry, there is no cooler, or more confident, or more American Corvette, which is why he chose it for the commander in chief.
But would it ever see the light of day?
Anita, Liz, Psaki, and I huddled the day before the shoot. I was a wreck that morning. Jerry and his entire team were en route, and I still couldn’t confirm whether it was all for naught. After mild hemming and hawing, and a bit of convincing, we made a decision. With a belief in America’s ability to switch gears—if not the president’s literal ability to do the same—we went for it.
• • •
The fun part was keeping it a secret.
Working in the White House Communications Office requires you to keep many
secrets, which can be awkward, given that reporters are allowed to breeze in and out of your office as they please. To combat prying eyes, we haphazardly taped screen protectors to our computers, but they helped only from an angle. Get right behind your subject, and they were of no use, which allowed Velz, who sat directly behind me, to call out when I was “less than working.” So I sometimes resorted to jamming in as much nonwork as possible when Upper Press was empty.
During one early-afternoon lull, I looked back, realized everyone was gone, and quickly pulled up Amazon. I was in desperate need of new boxer briefs and wanted to seize the moment. I pulled up a promising pair and started clicking through for size and fit. They were a particularly extreme shade of orange, and as I zoomed in to get a sense for the seams, the door swung open and Denis, the chief of staff, walked in. Just as I was eyeing the bulging orange crotch.
I had no excuses ready, no cover story prepared, so I took a different tactic: unbridled honesty.
“Hey, Denis, just doing some quick online shopping. Really need new boxer briefs.” I could have just said boxers, I thought immediately. Shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“Let your freak flag fly,” he said drily before departing quickly.
That is to say, privacy doesn’t exist in the West Wing. And after six years at the White House, it’s hard to believe in conspiracy theories, at least those that involve the federal government. They’re just too hard to pull off. People talk. People write books.IV Secrets don’t stay secrets for long—like online underwear orders. Fortunately, in the communications department, our confidences rarely needed to last. Our plans and ideas were ultimately intended to be announced, plus we had to hide plans, not the president.
There were important exceptions to that rule.
Moving the president in secret was entirely different. I came to suspect when covert trips were in the offing when the right mix of personnel was acting cagey or behind closed doors. When I was new, and a more senior press wrangler, Jesse, was spotted entering the Situation Room—with no foreign trips currently on the upcoming docket—I knew something was up. And when the trip director and deputy chief of staff entered the press secretary’s office for a closed-door meeting without an apparent purpose, I thought—but never asked or wondered aloud—if the president was planning a secret trip to a war zone.
Back when lying didn’t come so easily to a White House, these trips created a bit of a conundrum in the form of the “White House Daily Guidance,” a schedule that we blast out each night detailing the president’s activities for the following day.
For a long time, I was responsible for writing and sending it out to the seven thousand journalists on the White House’s media list. The schedule noted what the president was doing, when he was doing it, and, crucially, where. This was the only instance where we had to actively mislead the press and public—for obvious reasons of national security and presidential safety.
A few years after I first knew to look for the signs and suspected such a trip was in the works, I got an odd call to visit the director of press advance in her large, elegant EEOB office. Without a word, she ushered me in and closed the door securely behind us. As I sat down, she said:
“The president’s going to Afghanistan in a couple days. Can you go?”
The correct answer was “yes,” but I hesitated, a conflicting, long-planned family trip bouncing through my mind. To add to the mix, I wouldn’t have been allowed to tell anyone—family, friends, wife—that I was leaving or why I couldn’t make the family trip. I hesitated too long, and before I could turn her down or ask more questions, she said she had another option and that she’d go with that person: a more experienced hand at secret, foreign travel and a close friend of mine at the White House.
I deeply regretted not handling that situation better. I’d just given up an important, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.V But just a few days later, with the president away, I began to regret things slightly less while sitting on the beach. Not because of the palm trees or the piña colada, but because my BlackBerry was blowing up.
The wrangler who took my place—through absolutely no fault of his own—had technically outed the CIA station chief in Afghanistan. The National Security Council inadvertently left his name on a list that the wrangler was to distribute to the pool for a very wide press distribution. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have done the exact same thing, and been subject to the same legal questions and public fallout. Suddenly, missing the trip felt a little more okay.
For the Seinfeld taping, even though we weren’t secretly shuttling the president into an active war zone, we did need to worry about him bombing—and we did need to keep the taping a secret. We wouldn’t be flying to Afghanistan, but the president would be driving, outside, in a powder-blue Corvette with Jerry Seinfeld. While we knew America would eat this up around the holidays, it remained a risk to tape so soon after the attack in San Bernardino and the president’s remarks in the Oval on terrorism. We wanted to control the rollout.
So I asked that we schedule the driving portion of the taping during the press briefing. You see, the sliding door to Lower Press, where Marie and Antoinette sat, opened onto a double door out to the Colonnade, with its view of the South Lawn. The only time that doorway was impassable to reporters was during the daily press briefing, so those sixty minutes were our best bet for pulling off the drive portion of the taping without reporters catching wind. The POTUS scheduling team came through.
The next hurdle was getting a powder-blue classic Corvette onto White House grounds without stirring up suspicion from the omnipresent press and camera-wielding tourists who begin lining up for the White House tour shortly after seven in the morning. Velz took one for the team and came in extra early to help shuttle the car through a side entrance and clear security. It was a scene: the bomb-sniffing dogs scrutinizing the Corvette, and the usually skeptical Secret Service impressed by the cool car. Velz and some of the producers stashed the vehicle in a shaded shed by the basketball court, protected from prying eyes by lush tree cover akin to that of Camp David.
That’s where I met Jerry. He hopped out of a Suburban and ambled up to me in his signature look: jeans and sneakers, which squeaked as he approached. I wanted to make a comment, get into a back-and-forth on “squeaky sneaks,” but thought it better to get down to business than try to beat Jerry Seinfeld at shtick.
“We need to talk about the ending,” he began. Oh-uh, I thought. My bosses had already killed the pitch that Jerry and his producer Tammy had sent in the day before, which called for the president to be blocked by the Secret Service as he tries to drive off campus. We planned for Jerry to quarrel with the agent (an actual agent, not an actor) when he was driving, but thought it was a bridge too far to have the president driving, acting, and arguing with an agent—who, after all, was one of the people there to protect him.
Beyond that one disagreement, my bosses provided us a great deal of latitude. Things were loose on the South Lawn as we prepared for the shoot. Brian, who knew Tammy, was uncharacteristically open to decidedly nondecorous ideas. He even came up with some great ideas of his own, like having Jerry trudge through the bushes. To the delight of Jerry and Tammy, we were willing to completely upend the norms of Oval Office behavior. We set out to plan an awkward encounter to start and then a fun, minutiae-filled interview, including, of course, a drive around the South Lawn.
Still, Jerry thought his version of the ending would kill and that it was the only way to conclude the episode. He really wanted permission to do it. I said I’d check with the “powers that be.”
A bit later, a woman approached, eyeing my ID badge. “Wait a minute, what is your name?” she asked. She looked familiar.
“Pat Cunnane,” I told her. She was stunned.
“When I was a kid, I had a crush on a guy at camp with the exact same name!” she said.
I hadn’t met anyone with my same name other than my dad, so without thinking, I responded, “Maybe it w
as my dad.”
“Just how old do you think I am?” she asked politely. In a rare stroke of common sense, I decided it was best not to guess and instead pivoted the conversation. “I’m sorry, what was your name?” I asked. “Jessica,” she answered. Just then it hit me. She was an author, a philanthropist—and Jerry’s wife.
As I worried over how badly I had offended Jessica Seinfeld, Jerry circled back. He pressed me on the ending bit, still arguing that the president should get into a pretend fight with the Secret Service. I was stuck between my childhood idol and my obligation to the White House.
It was clear: I had that sun in my eyes.
There was only one thing to do: abdicate all responsibility.
“Look, Jerry”—Oh cool, I just called him Jerry—“once you’re in the car with the president, it’s just the two of you. You know what I’m saying? You can suggest whatever you want . . .”
“Okay, I got it,” he said.
“But I didn’t tell you this. And if I get fired, you have to hire me.”
All that was left for me to do was to describe to the president the madness that we had gotten him into.
• • •
I received a note from the Outer Oval on my BlackBerry, probably with a red exclamation point. “He’s ready!” But I was down on the South Lawn. My heart leapt into my throat as I sprinted up the driveway and down the Colonnade. It had taken so much to get to this point: I couldn’t be late to the Oval Office.
Any of my Upper Press colleagues will tell you that I despise hearing about other people’s dreams. It’s the worst: “I was in my house, but it wasn’t really my house.” We get it. It was a dream. Enough. Still, this is my book, and I get to decide what’s in it. There was a dream I often had. I was running, but I wasn’t really running—making no progress. That’s how I felt. The Colonnade seemed longer, just seconds to spare, as I burst past the Uniformed Division officer stationed between Lower Press and the Oval Office and rushed to the Outer Oval doorway, where I was saved by Hillary Clinton.