West Winging It Read online

  I lunged for Bo the instant I saw him getting too close to the Freedom, determined not to be the staffer responsible for killing America’s First Dog. Schultz popped in as Bo was leaving, sans chocolate. “How come I can’t bring Louie into the West Wing?”

  “Because you were never elected president of the United States, Schultz,” Bobby reminded him.

  I liked when Schultz bore the brunt of the office’s sharp sarcasm and acerbic wit. Usually, I was the primary and, most would say, easiest target, but Schultz’s misadventures were often a nice distraction for my office mates.

  “Your boss still isn’t back?”

  “I’m sorry, Schultz,” Howli said. “Jay’s still in the Sit Room. He’s getting briefed on Syria, but I’m sure your problem is just as important.”

  I was ready to lay into Schultz—to ask specifically what he needed and make fun of him. Surely, it couldn’t be as important as Syria, and, more likely, it was a ridiculous request or pet project. But before I could, Jay walked in, back from the Situation Room. Matt followed behind him from Lower Press.

  “Hey, you guys ever notice who Pat looks like?” Jay asked.

  What movies are out right now? I wondered to myself. Maybe he had seen a movie star the night before who reminded him of me. Who would it be? I was kind of excited to find out.

  “Bashar al-Assad.”

  That didn’t sound right.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa—wait a minute,” I said.

  Bobby pulled up a photo of the Syrian dictator. Jay, Matt, and Josh gathered around.

  “Holy shit, you’re right,” said Matt, delighted at yet another opportunity to mock me.

  When a problematic story hits the press, there’s an immediate decision to be made in Upper and Lower Press: respond, let it be, or wait and see. If you think the story is a blip, that it will wash away within the next news cycle, it’s best not to give it extra oxygen and more life. Better to leave it alone, to die out in the crowded news environment all by itself. Now, if you think the story has “legs,” that its impact will be more meaningful and destructive, it’s best to respond quickly.

  I knew immediately that Jay’s joke was a problematic narrative. And I could tell by the response of my Upper Press colleagues that it wasn’t burning itself out anytime soon. It had legs, so to speak. I took the first approach. I responded immediately. A flat-out denial.

  “No way!” I declared. “I am far better-looking than he is. This is a joke, right?”

  “I can kind of see it,” Howli added sheepishly. That’s when I knew this would truly stick, and that I was in trouble. Howli was usually protective of me, quick to give me the benefit of the doubt and play good cop.

  “You’re like the handsome version,” she added, trying to make me feel better.

  “Much more handsome,” I insisted.

  “You know he’s also a brutal dictator,” Bobby said.

  “Okay, can we at least say I’m the handsome, nondictator version of Assad?” I pleaded, just hoping for a correction at this point.

  “Nope. Sorry, Bashar,” Jay said, laughing all the way into his office.

  Bo scampered back to my desk as Jay closed the door, but somebody shooed him away. “The First Dog shouldn’t be associated with a ruthless dictator.”

  • • •

  My Uncle Bob knew all about the power of presidential pets.

  In the mid-1990s, he volunteered every Wednesday in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he read, sorted, and coded mail for President Bill Clinton. There was one permanent staffer in the group, and the rest, like my Uncle Bob, were volunteers—teachers, police officers, veterans—just hoping to help out. After a few hours of reading and cataloguing, the volunteers would grab a bite to eat at a local bar. Then my Uncle Bob would drive back up to Philadelphia, arriving home around two in the morning. The trip was worth it to him. He loved the idea of playing a part, however small, at the White House.

  Still, he sometimes needed a reminder about what he was really doing there, so he approached the permanent staffer and asked him if he ever got to see the president.

  “I saw President Carter once,” the man said with a smile. Oh, brother, Uncle Bob thought. This did not portend much of a chance for his next ask, but he plowed ahead anyway.

  “Well, it’s really cool here, and I love it, but do you think President Clinton might ever come up here, say hello? I think it might mean a lot to the group.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” the staffer replied.

  And just like that, Bob went back to work. Worth the shot, he thought as he continued chipping away at the pile of mail in front of him. By the end of the next Wednesday’s session, my uncle had largely forgotten his request and was just happy to be involved, when the staffer asked for everyone’s attention. “Excuse me, everybody.” Before heading out the door to their usual spot for late-night food and a story or two, the group turned back intently.

  “I have some exciting news.”

  Now he really had Uncle Bob’s attention.

  “And I know Bob’s going to be particularly happy about this. We have a very special guest coming next week . . .”

  The other volunteers looked at Bob, sharing smiles. He was practically bursting at the seams. My uncle adjusted his tie, ready to make a quick statement of his own after the staffer completed his announcement. My request got to the president, he thought, astounded.

  “Socks the cat will be stopping by!”

  You would think they might have been disappointed, but you would be wrong. The group of volunteers cheered, a high five or two slapped out, and they departed for the evening—excited for what the next week would bring. Everybody dressed a little bit better than usual the following Wednesday. Uncle Bob wore his newest tie. Everybody brought a camera. They were distracted reading letters that night, shifting anxiously in their seats. Finally, the door creaked open, and a young female staffer from the West Wing entered with a crate. It was the same kind of crate Uncle Bob used to drag his cat to the shore in the back of his sedan.

  The young woman popped open the cage, and the critter crawled out—black and white with green eyes, just like they had seen on TV. The woman sat on a chair with Socks on her lap, like Santa Claus. The volunteers assembled into an orderly line, ready to crouch down and get their photograph taken with the famous feline. It was ridiculous, but the team was hypnotized. Socks was something, anything—a tangible piece of history. He was the president’s cat!

  The room was buzzing even after Socks had long departed. But as the afterglow burned off, Uncle Bob realized the whole thing was absurd. That didn’t stop him from recounting the story repeatedly. In fact, I remember as a little kid on the way to first or second grade hearing my mom excitedly retell Uncle Bob’s close encounter with the First Cat. I used to brag about Uncle Bob’s Socks visit at recess, probably to Stephanie back in grade school.

  Now I was chasing Bo out of my trash can, passing him on the Colonnade, and staging “BOTRs”—first dog drop-bys for special guests or volunteers, not unlike the Socks the cat fiasco. Another reminder, albeit a furrier, less imposing one than Obama himself, that I wasn’t in any old office—and that despite the remarkably familiar nature of our interoffice dynamics, we weren’t pushing paper at Dunder Mifflin in Scranton.

  “Could you imagine if the press knew that Syria’s dictator was sitting thirty feet from the president?” Bobby asked me with a glint behind those glasses.

  No matter how embarrassed I felt as I continued to get labeled as the doppelgänger for one of the world’s most evil men, I knew that I was someplace special.

  * * *

  I. Similarly, writing “Friends, colleagues, Pat” became a frequent way to start an email. And saying it became a traditional method of entering a room.

  3

  * * *

  Lower Press

  Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  Peter Velz was
stationed temporarily in Lower Press. We needed him on the front lines fending off the deluge of requests rushing in from reporters. They were coming in fast, sliding quickly through the blue door from the Briefing Room. One journalist seemed more agitated than the next. Everybody wanted a word. An explanation. It was a time of great stress in the West Wing.

  It was time for our annual holiday party.

  Returning from the brief Thanksgiving break at the end of November always proved one of those I-can’t-believe-I-work-here moments. Year after year, as I would walk into the West Wing lobby, fresh from home in Philadelphia, the fragrance of the newly cut Christmas trees and looping garland would hit me: Christmas at the White House. It was hard not to get into the spirit. Volunteers from across the country, mostly moms in aprons and holiday sweaters, scurried from room to room decorating the People’s House.

  Like Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center in December, anticipation was in the air—a keenness to mark the year’s end. Thanksgiving was an appetizer. A real break was in sight. Soon the president would be wheels up for Hawaii. But first we had to get through the three-week slog. Washington would struggle to finish its business, and the White House would host two parties every day—for press, representatives, celebrities, staff, or stakeholders (a DC term for a bunch of people of differing degrees of bearing)—each afternoon and evening.

  We in the Press Office and the communications shop were responsible for two of those parties: one primarily for print reporters and the other mostly for broadcast television reporters.

  As was the case every previous year, space for our receptions was tight; we couldn’t accommodate everyone. Still, every member of the press wanted an invite. They were entitled to it, they thought, and never ceased to be shocked that there might not be space. It didn’t matter that some of them hadn’t been on the White House’s eighteen-acre campus since the previous December, when they’d done the same bidding they were now doing with Velz, pleading for an invite and excoriating the powers that dared restrict their holiday spirit.

  Schultz was situated comfortably behind his sliding door in Lower Press, but still within earshot of the constant conversations between Velz and the press; the wheeling and dealing for a spot—Pretty please!—to the White House holiday party. Schultz, like the rest of us, was just glad he wasn’t the one dealing directly with the invites.

  Velz was the man for the job. He had a process. He had three interns helping, sorting photo cards on the floor, alphabetizing invites. He created a sense of order in handling the dependably pesky press, who had a knack for posing questions others might have been too embarrassed to ask. The debacle was predictable and some of the meltdowns memorable:

  “Am I not important enough to get an invite?”

  “My job depends on going! Can you please add me?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  And the thing that really separated reporters from the rest of us: they always remembered to follow up.

  Like a skilled fencer, Velz swatted down most requests adroitly, quickly consulting his behemoth color-coded Excel spreadsheet: Invited. Not invited. Wait-listed. Next!

  One notable last-minute guest who had been wait-listed and then approved, a card-carrying member of Old Washington’s elite, tried to push his luck. He had been approved as a special case, invited on the agreed-upon precondition that he not receive a picture with the president. That’s because POTUS and FLOTUS stood for more than three hundred photos nearly every night in December as the parade of holiday parties wore on. We refused to add further to the president’s pain by tacking on any more photos at the eleventh hour. But this guest decided to sneak past three interns and into the photo line, where Velz stopped him.

  “Just one quick picture, please,” the man pleaded, his date by his side.

  Where I would have broken, Velz didn’t even bend.

  “You were invited by Eric Schultz on the condition you wouldn’t receive a photo. He told you this, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Velz sternly cut the man off again. “No, unfortunately I can’t allow it. You’re free to enjoy the party upstairs, but we won’t be able to provide a photo.” Velz turned away, on to more business. Additional fires to put out.

  I was impressed. Velz thrived in this environment; his natural ability to gatekeep was part of what made him a good press wrangler. Schultz, known for cutting last-minute deals, wasn’t as adept at turning away people. He scooted up to Velz. “That was a DC-VIP you just dismissed—there goes my invite to his legendary brunch!”

  Velz didn’t bat an eye. He’d been dealing with requests from important people (usually self-proclaimed) for two months. Reporters sometimes tried to play the race card. Or the favorites card. But Velz stood firm. He would say, “I can offer you a White House Christmas card.”

  Truth is, we weren’t responsible for the bulk of the invites to our parties. We let the newspapers and networks decide who they wanted included on the invite lists, precisely so we wouldn’t be perceived as playing favorites or for rewarding positive coverage. All we had was a number, dictated to us by the Social Office. We told NBC how many people it could invite, and the network gave us a list of names. So too for Fox News, the Washington Post, and the rest. Somehow that never seemed to sink in for the reporters who flocked to Lower Press in the lead-up to the receptions each year. That’s because they knew we did cut “drug deals” on the side, adding a few friendly faces and longtime reporters or crew members— the lower-level folks with whom we actually worked but who were left off of their bosses’ lists in lieu of media executives from New York and Los Angeles.

  They hoped that they might be the recipients of one of those side deals, too. We were all dependent on one another, after all.

  Depending on the story of the day—or moment, for that matter—the press corps can be your ally or your adversary. There are the usual suspects: the TV anchor who thinks he’s a budding hotshot; the breathless TV reporter always desperate for “just two seconds” of your time; the grizzled still photographer who knows more about the place than anybody else. They wanted the scoop, and we wanted to shape the message, which fused a relationship that could be mutually beneficial or detrimental—but always dependent.

  The White House holiday receptions served as a kind of culmination of that year’s mutual dependence. A night to let loose, imbibe the boozy eggnog, marvel at the tree in the Blue Room, or talk in the East Room about things other than pool sprays, embargoes, and background quotes.I It wasn’t all fun, though; the Social Office required that members of the communications team staff portions of our parties. Velz typically tasked me with the photo card table for an hour or two. That’s where reporters and their dates picked up name cards just before heading into the Diplomatic Reception Room (Dip Room) for their photo with the president and First Lady.

  Most of the riffraff had been snuffed out by the time people reached our table in the basement Cross Hall of the main mansion, marked by its long, piercing red carpet and arched marble walls. One photographer did come close, though. She sneaked a second guest into the party: her newborn child. Now, she didn’t smuggle the infant in through the metal detector unnoticed, but no staffer to this point was willing to stand up to the mini party crasher.

  Velz didn’t blink: he made her choose between her stowaway baby and her appropriately RSVP’d adult guest. (She chose her husband; I don’t know who she left her baby with.) Mercifully, Velz handled her before she made it to me at the card table.

  So my only concern was remembering names—or bullshitting my way through interactions until the reporter’s name popped into my mind, and I reached for the appropriate card. There were plenty of instances when I knew I just wasn’t going to remember no matter how much small talk we did, so I’d put my head down, pretend not to see who was next in line, and shout, “Last name!” The reporter would say his or her name, and I’d look up with a smile. “Oh, hey, man, didn’t see you there!” I’d say, handing over the card. “En
joy your photo!”

  I was gearing up for my turn at the table—the party had just begun; photos would start soon with the president and First Lady—when I saw one of my newest coworkers, a charming, smart woman named Crystal, in the Cross Hall. Crystal was the rarest of White House assistants: she never got rattled and rarely showed frustration. She was savvy in the best way. I headed to her as I scarfed down one of the White House’s chocolate cookies baked to look like Bo, which was sort of ironic, I think, given that Bo could have died eating one. There was always a line for those in the State Dining Room, and I knew to snag them early. And I needed one tonight.

  Our receptions were on weekday nights. And this weekday had been particularly difficult. As usual, Washington was still struggling to get its business done. Congress was breaking toward another week of brinksmanship, threatening to shut down the government once again. It wasn’t a banner day in the West Wing. We had cracked into the aforementioned Russian reporter’s vodka and were sustaining ourselves largely on Doug’s famous chocolate pretzels. Nobody was in the mood for a party.

  I tried to lighten things as I reached Crystal.

  “Hey, don’t take this in any kind of a way,” I prefaced, already provoking her unease. I should have stopped right there. Sentences that start this way don’t end well. But I continued: “Do you watch Black-ish on ABC?”

  At that very moment, our nation’s first African American president strode in, exhausted. We made eye contact, and he shook his head. He couldn’t have heard me, I thought. Even if he had, there was nothing wrong with my question, right? It was totally normal banter between colleagues. I loved the show and wanted to see what Crystal, a young black woman, thought. Oh, who was I kidding? I looked like an ass.