West Winging It

by Pat Cunnane

  Hands freshly washed and thoroughly dried, I opened the door and looked up. And then kept looking up. And looked up some more, craning my neck until the forceful attempt on the door made a whole lot more sense.

  It was Shaq.

  He said something, but I couldn’t make it out; his voice was too deep to register. I walked away, stunned. I was ready to recount the run-in as I returned to Upper Press but found a note waiting for me in my in-box from Jimmy. Staff Sec was asking about the NCAA memo again. I was annoyed but knew better than to reply to Jimmy with anything other than a “Thank you!”

  Moments later, Brian rushed to my desk. I thought maybe he had the same hunch I did about Shaquille O’Neal, but his visit was about something different: “You know about college basketball, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, realizing I hadn’t remotely kept up with this season and likely couldn’t even name the four top seeds.

  “The president needs to see you.”

  • • •

  “Mr. President, Pat knows what’s going on.”

  With that, I was thrust into the Oval Office—the floor creaking as I stepped in. The president was seated—head down—at the Resolute desk across the room, which felt like a mile away with no one else around and no clue what I was doing or why I was approaching the leader of the free world wholly unprepared. Pete Souza, who was always there to catch a photo, wasn’t even around. Normally, after you go into the Oval Office, you wait a few days and then sheepishly email the White House Photo Office: “Hey there, any chance Pete snagged a photo when I was in the Oval?” If there were a way over email to purposely bump into someone and then just so happen to ask for a favor, that’s what these awkward notes would amount to. Still, it would be worth it. Usually, you would receive a photograph that would make your mom cry. With Pete absent, I wondered if this Oval Office visit even counted.

  As I approached, I noticed that there was just one piece of paper on the president’s grand desk, occupying his time and energy. President Obama often recounted that if something reached his desk, then it had to be a very difficult decision, because if it were simple, somebody would have solved it long before it made its way to the Oval Office. And his desk, the Resolute Desk—a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford Hayes and used by many subsequent presidents—was worthy of the business that got done on it.

  So what was this lone sheet of paper dominating the chief executive’s attention in this moment? It was the college basketball bracket we had printed for him. I suppose some of the picks were difficult, but I suspect some of the sixteen-versus-one seeds could have been delegated to a cabinet secretary.

  He looked up at me.

  “Hey brother, so for this NCAA thing . . .”

  Oh shit, he called me “brother.” That’s cool.

  “Last year, did we run through the Sweet Sixteen or the Elite Eight on TV?”

  Oh shit, I have no clue. I barely know what you’re talking about. I could ask him a follow-up, but this seems a pretty simple either-or proposition that I was evidently brought in specifically to answer. I could tell him I’d double-check, but isn’t that what I was supposed to have done already—

  “Sixteen.”

  Oh shit, I just lied to the president.

  I said it with total confidence. A bald-faced lie to the president of the United States in his own office. I rationalized that I didn’t know I was wrong; I just didn’t know if I was right, either. And I could check and confirm the moment I got out of there. It’s not that I was purposely pushing false information; I was just leaving out that I wasn’t actually sure the answer was sixteen and that I had no real evidence for the guess in the first place. It was a lie of omission by commission—if that’s a thing. (It’s not.)

  Jesus, I thought to myself, considering I was basically baptized a Democrat, a lie to Barack Obama has to be worse than a lie to the Pope!

  The president, oblivious to my internal debate, made a decision: “Got it. Well, I just want to do eight this time—that way we can talk more about the actual teams rather than spend all that time filling the thing out on air.”

  “That makes total sense, sir,” I said, not knowing if this was a problem for ESPN in any way, shape, or form. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Pete had crept in, capturing my presidential lie for posterity. “I’m sure they’ll be all for that,” I told the president.

  As I thanked him and turned to leave, President Obama looked up from his bracket once more:

  “Thanks,” he said—I suspected with a period.

  * * *

  I. Despite aggressive lobbying by his owner, Louie did not make the cover.

  II. I know, I know. I groaned writing that line.

  III. Okay, I may not have cracked the top 40.

  IV. So named by a coworker after the snail in SpongeBob SquarePants.

  6

  * * *

  Disaster Casual

  Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human.

  —DESMOND TUTU

  Put yourself in his shoes. Imagine: you’ve just arrived in Africa, your own father’s homeland. Because this is one of your most meaningful overseas visits, you’re traveling with your mother-in-law, one of your daughters, and your wife—herself the descendant of slaves. You are touring Goree Island, the infamous, haunting marker of the transatlantic slave trade off the coast of Dakar, Senegal.

  You conclude your visit to the both literally and figuratively dark Maison des Esclaves: the “House of Slaves.” You move toward a small doorway bathed in light. You step out of this haunting memorial and are instantly at the vantage point of so many Africans who, for hundreds of years, took in that very view as they were forced to board boats embarking for the New World. Out of this “Door of No Return,” your children’s ancestors could have been forced to North America to live and die as slaves. Some of those men and women who exited the portal might even have gone on to help build your family’s current home.

  You are America’s first black president.

  If ever there was a place to consider the past, the future, and where we stand now, then this place—where humanity took root and racism took hold—is it. Out on this ledge overlooking the Atlantic, you’re eyeing the vast blue expanse and contemplating these enslaved men’s and women’s journeys. Simultaneously, the African continent—indeed, the entire world—considers your own journey. From a community organizer with a funny name to the leader of the free world (still with a funny name). You’re hope-and-change incarnate, and this place and time, this moment, captures that—for you and for your family: the First Family. The eyes of the world are upon you; you must be simultaneously feeling the triumph of this important visit for your presidential self, and a private, personal sadness about this dark history.

  And then a boat full of reporters floats into your view, snapping, clicking, gawking.

  A bunch of White House journalists get into a boat off the coast of Africa: it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. I wished it were a joke. Instead it was my job: to mind the press pool no matter where it took me, as reporters angled for a view of the president. I was mortified the minute we hopped off the dock and into the boat. It felt intrusive, like a celebrity house tour. To me, we had no business being in the president’s frame. But such is life when you’re traveling with the leader of the free world. Unfortunately, the White House press corps did not share my concern. Shameless almost by job definition, the members of the president’s press pool were adamant that they get the shot. And, of course, we in the White House Press and Communications Office—sometimes equally shameless—wanted to drum up as much positive coverage of the trip as possible. So, sick and sunburned, we piled onto our glorified pontoon boat as the Secret Service, scanning and scoping all the way, screamed by on their intimidating police crafts.

  I imagine we looked a bit out of place in our dark suits and dress shoes, the choppy water pitching and pulling us every w
hich way as we zigged and zagged toward our anchor point roughly sixty yards beyond the notorious door through which President Obama and the First Family would peer. Confident that the president was running behind and trying to stave off seasickness, I trained my eyes on the horizon and zoned out. I hoped we wouldn’t tarnish the president’s visit. As a press wrangler, I had grown accustomed to bringing the press in to take photos or shout questions at the top (beginning) or bottom (end) of a meeting, performance, visit, or otherwise notable event.

  Determining when to pull the pool was an acquired skill. It was nearly impossible to please all parties, particularly the press, who wanted to stick around forever, and the president, who usually wished that they would scoot off after just a moment or two so he could get back to business. This pool spray was entirely different. We wouldn’t have time to pull up anchor and drift away while the president continued to take it all in alone. No, we would cover his entire time at the door.

  As I worried that it was too much, a ker-plunk emanated from the other end of the boat, and I heard a kerfuffle among the press. Like the hapless mother in Home Alone, I quickly counted heads. Everybody was accounted for. No White House correspondents overboard. Thank God, because that would have been a thing. Relieved, I zoned out again until a woman, looking particularly steamed, broke my gaze.

  “My adapter went overboard,” she said in a tone that suggested she’d had nothing to do with it and, simultaneously, that there was something for me to do about it.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

  “My adapter. It fell in the ocean.”

  I understood her knee-jerk reaction to tell me, the White House staffer—and their minder—what happened. After the 2012 election, the White House press corps and I—as well as the military camera crew that traveled everywhere with us—had become close. But this was also exactly the kind of request, thinly veiled as a declarative comment, that I had a hard time stomaching. Did she think I had a Speedo on beneath my suit? That I’d slip into my flippers and dive into the Atlantic Ocean for her adapter?

  Evidently, that’s exactly what she thought, because the next thing she said was, “Can you try and get it?”

  I laughed, but only so I didn’t scream. I was already in a foul mood because our captain had dropped anchor significantly closer to the Door of No Return than I had anticipated. From here, we were certain to be a floating distraction to the president and his family.

  As we circled clockwise toward the door, the reporters flooded to the port side of the boat—dipping our dinghy to the point where it seemed we could soon capsize. I refuse to die this way, I thought. So close to my wedding. Stephanie will not be happy. Just then, the current began to circle us around the anchor, forcing the press pool to adjust and to dart from side to side. You’ve not seen panic on the high seas until you’ve witnessed a group of White House photographers, reporters, cameramen, and sound techs scrambling. It turned into a real-life roulette wheel, with reporters staking their shot, gambling with their bodies on which spot would be tops when the president finally exited the door.

  After a final spin, President Obama, in dad-khakis and a white button-down shirt with no tie, appeared. He stepped to the bottom ridge of the door.

  “Bingo!” one of the veteran photographers proclaimed. Shutters flickered and clicked, a million miles per second.

  His eldest daughter, Malia, mother-in-law, Marian, and wife, Michelle, appeared next. The press pool snapped away. I looked to the right side of the island, where I saw Marie on land. During the campaign, she had become one of my closest friends at the White House. That’s why she felt the need to warn me before we were wheels up for Africa that this would be her last foreign trip with the president; that she would soon leave the West Wing for a fast-growing tech start-up in San Francisco.I In fact, she planned to depart DC the day after my wedding, which was fast approaching.

  Stephanie wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told her I’d have to travel to Africa with the president for eight days just a few weeks before our wedding, just as the final planning kicked into high gear and as we were closing on our new home in Washington, DC. I looked forward to telling my bride-to-be about the boat and the adapter and the seasickness. I would reiterate to her that it wasn’t all fun, this whole traveling with the president thing.

  Marie was following another pack of photographers and journalists as they worked to get an additional angle from land. For bigger trips or more newsworthy events, the press sometimes requested that two press pools be assembled, allowing for greater coverage. This was the case throughout much of our Africa trip. One by one, the photographers who were following Marie skidded down a rock-strewn slope—a small cliff, really. It reminded me of our trip to Petra, Jordan, where Marie, dedicated as ever to the job, set up a line of rocks to mark where the photographers could stand. That prompted a stern talking to from a very official-looking Petra staff member for altering a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  Jesus, I thought as some of the photographers fully tumbled to the ground for the second angle, scraping their arms and knees. Marie nearly did the same. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d been injured as a wrangler. A few months before, on our trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank, Marie managed the pool during the president’s visit to the birthplace of Jesus while I hung with the charter. As President Obama quickly—and unexpectedly—rounded a corner, Marie turned to clear a path for him, yelling at the pool to run, and rose before—bang!—smacking her head on the low ceilings. Concussed at Jesus’s birthplace. The memory of that was funny to me, and I laughed as the sound of the rocks rolling down the ledge carried over the water to our boat. While the photographers with Marie neglected to protect their legs, shoulders, and heads, they cradled their cameras like children. And at the bottom of the rocky ridge, they put them to use.

  I turned back to the reporters on my boat. Each was laser focused on the First Family, shooting photos, videos, and capturing sound. The print reporters tapped out their dispatches to editors back in the United States without even looking down at their phones or laptops, which were perched perilously along the edge of the boat.

  I was wrong. None of this was shameless. They weren’t in the president’s way. The members of the press were doing their jobs. They were there to tell his story. A couple centuries ago, a person who looked like Barack Obama wouldn’t have exited that door as a free man, let alone as the leader of the free world. So this was more than a nice family moment; it was bigger than this larger-than-life American family. It was for the people of Senegal, who said that the trip signified that their small country “matters.” It was for the children who lined the streets as our motorcade twisted and turned through Dakar. And it was a moment for kids back home, too—from Detroit to Des Moines—who might be inspired by this glimpse at history to think beyond the boundaries that might have been drawn around them. This was a story worth telling. At least, that’s how I justified the awkward, floating troop of Beltway reporters I was responsible for traipsing through Africa.

  The First Family disappeared, and the reporters rushed to file their photos and footage. I looked over to Marie, giving her a weary wave and a thumbs-up. The day nearly done, I gazed over the side of the boat to the water below and caught a quick glimpse of a shimmering object on the ocean floor. Another day traveling with the president.

  • • •

  During my time at the White House, I did countless domestic trips and nearly twenty foreign visits with President Obama.

  Traveling with the president was thrilling, as he was received by folks from every walk of life and from every country you can imagine with exhilaration and delight. It was like tagging along on tour with your favorite band—except we were traveling with the world’s biggest superstar. Our front man just so happened to triple, in the view of much of the world, as a brilliant politician, trailblazing leader, and one of the marvelous minds of our time—unless you asked the talking heads on Fox News, who were usually busy blasting him f
or using Dijon mustard, playing golf, or wasting taxpayer funds on Air Force One.

  But not even Fox News could get you down when walking up the stairs to the president’s plane. As everyone knows, the commander in chief travels in style—and Air Force One does not disappoint.

  The plane underscores America’s manufacturing strength and highlights our technological prowess, but it does something more. It provides an aura. It represents our country’s greatness, American majesty on display every time the 747 labors to a landing around the world, which is no accident. The Kennedys, well versed in the importance of style, teamed up with a noted commercial designer, Raymond Loewy, to produce the legendary aesthetic down to the font that exists to this day. President and Mrs. Kennedy understood better than most the importance of branding, and on Air Force One, they succeeded. Greater than the sum of its parts, the plane is ethereal. In the correct context, with the right president aboard, the plane is the globe’s single most potent symbol of democracy.

  Well, technically, there are two planes that we identify today as Air Force One, used roughly equally often to ferry the president and his team across the country and around the world. These Boeing VC-25 aircrafts were built specifically to safely move the president through the sky. There are only two, with tail numbers 28000 and 29000—they are identical twins. So much so that it was impossible for me to tell from my normal spot—the very last seat on both planes—which was which. I looked for a thread loose on the plush leather seat or a scratch on the small desk next to me, but there were typically no discernible differences. One of the planes did have an issue with the back bathroom, the one next to my seat. The lock would get stuck somewhere between Occupied and Unoccupied—not ideal—which generated an awkward encounter or two. Other than that, the planes were the same, the layouts unchanged.