by Pat Cunnane
Most of the time, it was just as well. Celebrity guests generated the longest lines of all. Sometimes they meandered up the nautical hall and back down the corner toward Pete’s office.
As you slogged closer to the pickup window (about three customers out), if you glanced to your right, you would find—no more than six feet away—an understated brown door with an oval gold placard. This was the entrance to the White House Situation Room.
This was an area of great stress. Options were presented quickly. Like so many decisions at the White House, sometimes the only choices were bad or worse.
And I’m sure it wasn’t so easy in the Situation Room either.
It always made me laugh, White House staffers and guests sloshing about the mess with their coffees and Cokes, while on the other side of that door to the Situation Room (really a suite of smaller “situation” rooms), life-and-death decisions were constantly on the docket.
I remember well the morning when Jimmy, breathless, approached the new guy at the mess. “This is the third time I’ve had eggs this week, and they’re always runny, and I asked for hard eggs, and how hard is it to make hard eggs, because I don’t like runny eggs, and please just make me some new eggs.” By the end, his voice was so high that his words were hitting a register almost imperceptible to the human ear. Velz watched the debacle unfold and asked what was the matter. Jimmy repeated his concerns verbatim, only quicker and now at a pitch only dogs can hear.
“This ain’t Chuck E. Cheese’s, people,” Velz would say. “This is the White House.” His familiar refrain was a way of saying that everybody should be at the top of his or her game in the West Wing. Runny eggs simply would not do.
Truth is, the mess, and those who worked in it, helped make the West Wing work. They were a huge part of life at the White House. We shouldn’t have complained, but like any office cafeteria, it got to a point where they were an easy target—a punching bag in an extremely stressful environment where it wasn’t okay to complain about how hard our jobs were, so moaning about the mess provided momentary relief. Accordingly, Jimmy and Velz weren’t wrong. They were speaking for hundreds of staffers, giving voice to those whose frustrations would have gone unspoken. Sometimes it had to be noted that while it was the US Navy that got Osama bin Laden, the navy men and women of the mess couldn’t quite seem to get the difference between rye and wheat. Of course, they did plenty of dishes well. I was partial to the chipotle turkey melt, once ordering it five days in a row. Antoinette, keen to take matters into her own hands, joined the mess board to exert influence; I pushed her to make the melt more readily available.
The Navy Mess brought in a new rotation of folks every few weeks or months, and there was—apparently—a very steep learning curve. Toward the end of the administration, a new man started at the window. Let’s call him Gary.IV
Gary, bless him, was the embodiment of incompetence. Orders were wrong or lost. Lines grew longer and longer. The already sinewy grilled chicken became even more stringy, prompting senior staff to file complaints through their assistants. People took to calling Gary the “hot-mess mess guy,” not to be confused with the “hot mess guy,” who was tall, dark, and handsome—and making waves at the White House, especially within the gay staffer orbit.
Things came to a head, as they so often did, with Peter Velz.
It started with the premature call. The mess was famous for them. “Order ready in the mess for Velz.” We always took them at their word. If the professionals behind the counter said it was ready now, it was ready now, we thought. These guys were military, after all. Velz sprinted downstairs, excited for his lunch. He waited in a longer-than-usual line that extended about to the enclosed model of a US Navy ship. He missed emails from his bosses and calls from reporters, only to learn from Gary, standing squat, squarely in the middle of the pickup window, that “No, sorry sir, your order’s not yet ready.” Velz plodded back to Upper Press, dragging his feet a bit.
“These are the guys with the nuclear codes,” he lamented as he leapt back to his desk, answering his always-ringing phone.
It was the mess again. “Order ready in the—”
Down he went—to wait in line yet again. Hungry, Velz looked at the display as he got closer to the window. It was the special of the day: glazed chicken (the good chicken) and yummy-looking fries. The display looked even better than the description in the online menu. Just the midday pick-me-up that he needed. At the window, Gary pushed the cardboard container to Velz, who inspected the contents.
“There’s no fries here.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t come with fries,” Gary countered.
“I’m looking at the display right now, and there are fries.”
Gary remained stoic as Velz’s blood pressure skyrocketed: “Sometimes the display is inaccurate,” Gary explained.
“Well, then, it’s wrong on the online menu, too!”
“I don’t believe that to be true,” Gary said, forcing Velz to flee upstairs.
“I’ll show them . . .” he muttered to himself, falling back into his seat behind me. Ignoring the ringing phone. The thing about Velz is that he admits when he’s wrong. It’s what he taught his interns year after year. Mistakes can be corrected, but you need to own them. No lying. Now, the flip side to that very positive trait is that when Velz is accused of being wrong when he knows he’s right, well, then—he must set the record straight.
The printer kicked to life. As quick as he had come, he was gone again.
Peter stomped back down to the mess, rushing by the line. Now, Velz is a man who treats the queue with great respect, but he had been scorned. He had tunnel vision aimed at the little opening and the little man who had screwed him out of his fries.
No words were spoken. Velz didn’t even need to show the menu, hot as it was off the printer. His look said it all. Teeth clenched, veins exploding through his forehead in frustration, he was met by Gary giving him puppy-dog eyes—his tail between his legs.
Velz’s fries were there waiting for him.
The folks in line offered a redeemed Peter congratulations. Head nods, a spot of applause. Smiles and thumbs-up. They would all get fries now if they so desired. Mission accomplished.
I wondered what was going on in the Situation Room then.
• • •
The Hill’s “50 Most Beautiful” proved that Washington, DC, really is show business for ugly people, but that didn’t keep real celebrities away. And you never knew who you would run into on the way to the mess, or who was waiting for you to exit the restroom. From Drake to the Pope, from Kendrick Lamar to Bibi Netanyahu, we had no shortage of high-profile guests at the White House.
I had moved into messaging when I learned that Pope Francis was stopping by for an official visit, so unfortunately, I had no reason to be in the Oval Office during the president’s meeting with His Holiness, which was a bummer for my mom, a churchgoing Catholic all her life.
I was raised Catholic—was even lucky enough to have my beloved Uncle Wally, a priest, live with us for years while I was growing up—but I was never very religious. Praying, when I did it as a kid, was born mostly of superstition, driven by desires: to do well on a test, for instance, or in the hope that He could make Stephanie “like” me in fifth grade. Today my prayers have been reduced to resuscitations, born of superstition and limited to right before takeoffs at the airport. I never felt the need on Air Force One, but get me on a Delta or United flight, and you’d better believe I’m throwing up a Hail Mary and an Our Father as we barrel down the runway. My beliefs more closely mirror my nana’s partisan rather than sacred baptism. Still, Pope Francis was to me an important breath of fresh air for the Catholic Church, which helped shape me growing up—a crucial leader on the world’s stage. I wanted to meet him. My strategy was simple. I would exit the Upper Press door toward the restroom the moment he was walking the same route to his meeting in the Oval Office.
We did these sorts of laps all the time when somebody famous
was in the lobby—Oprah, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, everybody came through—but I didn’t just want to see the Pope, I wanted an interaction with His Holiness. But how to make that happen? It took me a few hours, but I nailed it.
I would fake a sneeze—Achoo!—thereby forcing the Pope to bless me.
I ran the plan by friends, coworkers, bosses. I thought it was fool proof. They found it foolish. Most called it absurd. And nobody thought it would work. Desiree found it particularly distasteful and gave me five red-zone points for even mentioning the idea.
The day finally came. The Pope arrived to great fanfare; the faithful flocked to Washington. There was much pomp and circumstance throughout the city and especially at the White House. I realized quickly there would be no opportunity for a run-in in the West Wing: his route would be different. My only chance would be on the South Lawn, where Pope Francis would speak alongside the president. The day was beautiful, marked by clear skies and a summer-like sun—unusual for so late into September. Cheers erupted from down the lawn, like an audible “wave” at a sports stadium, trailing the bishop of Rome as he zipped up the South Lawn in his little black Fiat. He was moving much too quickly to hear a sneeze, so I held back, kept my powder dry. He exited his popemobile and stepped to the dais. I was about fifty feet away; too far, oh well. It was foolish, after all, and, I realized, likely offensive. A sin, maybe.
I looked up at the sun, a little frustrated, but also awed by the proceedings. I had just been at my desk, plugging away at talking points, and now, on a brief break, I popped down to listen to the Pope and the president in the backyard of the White House. The sun caught my eyes again. I felt it coming immediately. Oh, no. I heaved back and threw my head forward, releasing a thunderous—very real—sneeze. The Pope didn’t notice. My bosses, seated next to me, thought I was being a jerk.
Desiree gave me a glare I hadn’t seen since she’d learned I had asked Crystal about Black-ish. “Red zone!” she hissed.
• • •
“Thanks.”
I received a number of those notes of nonthanks from the Staff Secretary’s Office, the department tasked with producing a briefing book every night for the president. The dense book is filled with dozens of tabs: memos, draft remarks, letters from the public, and briefs from offices across the White House, from the Office of Management and Administration, to the National Security Council, to the Communications Office. President Obama stayed up late into the night reading the book. Theirs was a thankless, meticulous task, and the Staff Secretary’s Office team is hyperfocused on the details: fonts, spacing, deadlines, and the like.
That’s how I knew there was nothing haphazard about the email that Ted, a well-liked, longtime member of the staff secretary’s team, had sent me early one morning from his windowless basement office. Communications was regularly late with its memos, and he wondered—and probably worried—if I was responsible for submitting the president’s NCAA March Madness memo to be delivered in the afternoon. I was, and I told him so, which meant I was beholden to Ted for the rest of the day. “Thanks.” Always ready to set a deadline, Ted lumbered through the halls with a teddy-bear-like affability and an infectious, memorable laugh. All completely at odds with his online persona. His reply to my message, “Thanks.”—more of a screw-you than a thank-you—set the tone as I walked into Upper Press.
Jimmy asked about my weekend. Velz gave his standard answer: he mowed the lawn, which was one of his favorite things in the world. Bobby called me Bashar. The usual.
I noticed Jimmy’s pencils again and realized something: we had no pencil sharpeners in the office. I wondered if that meant he was sharpening them at home and bringing them in. The pencils were a matter of pure optics, which is where Upper Press thrived. Nowhere was our mandate on more vivid display than a few weeks earlier, when we sought to remind America that the president was taking very seriously his responsibility to nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the wake of Antonin Scalia’s sudden death.
It was Denis McDonough’s idea. Not to be confused with Mitt Romney’s famous 2012 gaffe about potential female hires being presented to him in “binders full of women,” we went about building a massive binder of options. There was a lot of skepticism among senior communications staffers, who thought the whole thing was silly. Denis stopped by Upper Press as folks were grappling with the best way to move forward. Velz and Desiree gave him a bit of crap about the idea. “Really, Denis? A binder?”
Somebody piled on about how it made a whole lot more sense to download the options to the president’s iPad, which might as well have been attached to POTUS’s hip. You could find him in his rare down-time enthralled, scrolling through that thing—playing the game Words with Friends or reading the New York Times.
Denis understood that the idea was a little bit silly, and he was a good sport—taking the ribbing from staffers with a smile. We weren’t changing his mind, though. He sensed that his ploy would work. So he pushed back, asserting that we needed the biggest, most official presidential binder for POTUS. And we knew, too, that an iPad did nothing for us. There’s no picture there.
It was a “be for what’s going to happen” kind of a moment in Upper Press, which had become a West Wing aphorism for when we saw the writing on the wall. Might as well make the process as painless as possible. In this case, we knew the chief of staff had made up his mind: the binder was going to happen. And since our team’s reservations were relatively mild, it was best to execute, or at the very least, to get out of the way.
I was in the West Wing for four chiefs of staff: Bill Daley, Pete Rouse (interim), Jack Lew, and Denis McDonough. Among varying levels of effectiveness, Denis seemed most suited for the position. He ran a tight ship. A tall, thin man who looked—appropriately—like he didn’t get enough sunlight, Denis had an affable Minnesota twang and remembered everybody’s name, from senators to janitors, from Barack to Gary from the mess. He often rode his bike to work. (Crystal and I rode with him once, flanked by Secret Service.) He is an impressive man, as dedicated to the cause as anybody could be, having started with Obama in 2007 and served as chief of staff for the entire second term. To his deputies, he could be intense, and some senior staff referred to his office as the Dragon’s Den, but Denis was crucial and as good a chief of staff as a president could have. So when he pitched the binder, we knew we needed to be for what was going to happen.
Binder assembled and in the hands of the president, Velz and Desiree gathered the pool photographers, videographers, and print reporters from the Briefing Room and set them up at the door to the Colonnade (because the Colonnade means serious business). They went to Brian too, reminding him that POTUS needed to make a thing of the binder. “He’s not just going to put it in his briefcase, right? We’ll see it on camera?” they asked Brian, which was met with a healthy eye roll, given the specific question and the general context of the night.
Brian cued the president to lug his absurd binder from the Oval toward the residence—highlighting for the American people that he was thoroughly weighing his options and working after dark into the weekend. The binder, as pointless as Jimmy’s pencils, was a little on the nose—even for us—but Denis was right. The press went with it, including the photo in nearly every article on the pending Supreme Court pick. And the video accompanied every story about the deliberations. It’s how the message got made.
Nearly a month later, on this Tuesday in March, the president was still mired in that god-awful binder. He had yet to make a decision regarding the high court.
Even so, I needed him to focus on another court and a different pick: his NCAA college basketball brackets weren’t going to fill themselves out. POTUS was agonizing over the tiered, webbed printout like it was a piece of landmark legislation. I asked Brian for another update over email: “Has the president made up his mind?”
“No.”
“You know I’m talking about the basketball bracket and not the Supreme Court, right?”
He knew.
&n
bsp; I typed “Thank you” and then thought better of it.
I held down the Delete key until only a T remained. I added the y, pondered a moment, and let fly with just “Ty.”
My two-letter response was meant to create the sense of harried frenzy on my end. “Sure, I saw your note, but I’m too busy to spell out my response. I’ve got papers flying around, folders strewn about. Every letter counts to me. I’m stapling and typing, and I’ve got stuff to do.” It was, admittedly, office optics run amok.
Later, as I was about to wash my hands in the restroom across the hall—the one Brian monitored—a thud rocked the door to the bathroom. It felt like an earthquake, which we had actually dealt with years before when I was sitting in the EEOB. Apparently, and probably not surprisingly, when buildings start to shake on the White House complex, the assumption is that a bomb went off and the building is about to implode. But this I knew was different. Maybe Brian was trying to catch the culprit in the act?
No, this was just somebody who had refused the courtesy of a quick double knock before pushing on the door. You see, the politics around the single-stall bathroom on the first floor of the West Wing were fraught. There was one school of thought—which I subscribed to—that said you knock no matter what. There was a second theory that you just pushed on the door. If it was locked, then it wouldn’t open. No harm, no foul. Of course, not everyone remembered to lock the door, and I refused the potential for such awkwardness among coworkers. The dueling philosophies drove me nuts. I was so sure that one was correct, but consensus can be hard to come by in DC.
Back in the bathroom, reeling from the thrashing at the door, I felt fortunate to have remembered to lock it. This dude’s push was absurdly forceful, like he’d thrown his whole body into it. To spite whichever coworker this was, I washed my hands much longer than usual. I even used soap. This guy can wait, I thought.
