Speechwriter delivers a fun, insidery ‘Thanks, Obama’
Book gives a new look at ‘Hopey, Changey’ Washington years
David Litt, a speechwriter on the staff of President Obama, thought the president had nailed it as he gave a speech at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
It was there that Obama, just hours from watching Osama bin Laden get taken out by Seal Team 6, delivered the devastating jokes that were supposed to have banished then-reality TV star and real estate developer Donald Trump, who had been badgering Obama about his birth certificate, to political oblivion.
“And from the back of the room, I watched President Obama’s monologue, the best he had ever delivered,” Litt writes in his new book. “During the section on Trump, hundreds of Democrats and Republicans joined in bipartisan, mocking laughter. As the crowd applauded the president, the humiliated billionaire turned as red and angry as a blister. Well, I remember thinking, that’s the end of Donald Trump.”
Or not.
Litt taps into the collective angst felt by the millions of Americans who supported Obama and Hillary Clinton when Trump was elected last November. This is the target audience for Litt’s Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years (Ecco, 320 pp., eeeg out of four), an account of his five years as a member of the president’s speechwriting team.
If they not too busy reading Clinton’s What Happened or setting their DVRs for Alec Baldwin’s next Trump impression, they will find friendly reading here. Litt joined Obama’s 2008 campaign while an undergraduate at Yale and then moved into the White House in 2011 as the lowest man on the speechwriting depth chart, where he wrote short speeches for the president about infrastructure and post office openings.
He eventually ascended to handling Obama’s jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the annual ritual of Washington insiderdom that normally features a speech and jokes from the president.
Litt, while obviously a fan of the former president, does more than just shower affection on Obama and gaze longingly at his Shepard Fairey poster. He delivers a thoughtful and funny account of life as a minnow surrounded by Washington’s selfimportant whales.
Litt took his job seriously, but never himself, and that makes for enjoyable reading. While his account should appeal to those of all political persuasions interested in what happens inside the White House, it’s hard to see many on the right embracing his view of the 44th president.
Still, Litt captures the grind of official Washington and how a glamorous-sounding job can turn into drudgery or kill one’s social life.
“A White House job, it must be said, was not always conducive to romance,” Litt writes. “There’s a reason Marvin Gaye never sang about getting an e-mail from his boss’s assistant and abruptly canceling dinner plans.”
Litt’s book ranks with classics from former White House speechwriters, such as Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution about the Reagan administration. It’s worth a read, even if Litt’s revolution wasn’t one you agreed with.
As for those pining for Obama’s return, that’s as unlikely as the late Gaye singing about email.