Pod Save America - BONUS POD: "He has a lot of edits."

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

Cody Keenan, President Obama's chief speechwriter in the second term, joins Jon and Jon to talk about speechwriting, working for Obama, and lessons learned over eight years in the White House.

Welcome to a special bonus episode of Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. And with us today, we have former chief speechwriter for President Obama, not me, but Cody Keenan. Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod! I don't know about that, not me, Cody. How'd you feel about it? Well, it was a weird thing to say. Cody, we got you right as you left the White House.

I know Axe got you, like, on your last day. Yeah, but that's like a life story. On the Axe file. It's like, I was born, I lived, you know? We're going to get into it. So we were all in the White House together, the three of us, from 2009 to when I left. Oh, no, when did you leave, Levitt?

End of 11, like the first term, basically. Okay, so the first couple years. End of the first term, sort of. Three years. I did the first three years. And Cody and I worked together for a long time. Slogged it out. Cody, do you want to first tell us how you got the job with Obama?

Tell the origin story. Well, you hired me, which was a nice gesture on your part. You're welcome. The origin story was we had a mutual friend, Stephanie Cutter. Yes. Who I worked with in Ted Kennedy's office back in the old days. And she first approached me saying, you know, you should consider writing for Barack Obama. And I was like, well, that's a nice pipe dream. How on earth is that going to work out? And she said, well, I know his chief speechwriter from the Kerry campaign days. So I can't remember exactly how we got put in touch, but I remember you called me one day. I was at Legal Seafoods in Boston. Classes had just ended at, I was in graduate school at Harvard and we were all sitting outside having a couple of beers and you called. Wait, where? Sorry,

go on. Sorry, I'm not allowed to mention corporate sponsorship. No, no, no. I'm at the Harvard part. Legal Seafoods is great. Great time to chat. School in Boston. Love Legal Seafoods. Yeah, where are you guys? I'm going to direct message you guys. This isn't free. I was drinking a delicious lining kugel. Yeah, that's right. Which is amazing because I never return emails or phone calls.

I always say when people are like, how'd you get this job? It was a mix of luck and desperation. Luck on my part, desperation on yours. I needed help. It was just me and Adam Frankel in the speech writing office at the beginning of that campaign in 2007, writing everything. When people ask me how I became a speech writer at the White House, I say, because I was the most talented. Yeah. Anyway, Cody. So, but I remember I tweeted a joke about

a missed connection with you the other day. I remember on that phone call, you said, you know, what have you written before? And the truth is, I'd only written like five speeches for Ted Kennedy, and he usually ignored most of them anyway and did his own thing. But there was a speech for the RFK Human Rights Awards in 2005. And I wrote Senator Kennedy's speech for that, and you wrote Senator Obama's speech for that. And we connected about that over the phone, that you and I were both standing in the back of the room, both nervous, watching our bosses give those speeches. Just a couple of liberal kids with Kennedy's as icons looking at... I can see, Levitt's not rolling his eyes yet, but I can feel that it's there.

Dreaming big dreams. Dreaming big dreams. No, I remember... I'm just thinking where I was, which was just like slogging it out in the Hillary Clinton Senate office, just trying to avoid eye contact so I wouldn't be fired. slogging it out in the Hillary Clinton Senate office, just trying to avoid eye contact so I wouldn't be fired. But I do remember needing help really badly and Cutter saying, I have an intern, and I think I was most impressed by the Kennedy background because I'm also from Massachusetts. And I thought, oh, a writer for Ted Kennedy. Absolutely. Let's do it. So you came on, you were the speech writing office intern for a little while, And then you left us to go get your degree or whatever.

That was one of the hardest choices I ever made because I was just your intern for the summer of 07. Right. And I remember, you know, talking to you being like, what should I do? Should I skip this? Should I stay? And you and Pfeiffer both told me, you're like, here's the deal. We're putting all of our money into the field as it should be. Right.

You know, we got to go out and win Iowa and whatnot. And you said, if you stay, you know, you'll be my first hire once we win the primaries so i thought about it ultimately i decided not to and go back and finish school and i just happened to get lucky that the primary stretched all the way out till june god damn and then i remember you called me again in uh it was like the day after hillary conceded and you're like let's do this and i was out there in two days ready to go there's a's a lot of bio stuff, and also I wasn't there, so I don't really feel a part of this. Let's relive the glory days of the campaign, which Lovett was working for Hillary Clinton at the time and lost. No, yeah, and then you came on, and we had our little speech writing team.

By that point, Rhodes had joined the crew. Rhodes was there. I sat like five feet from Tommy. I mean, it was a great time, Lovett. You would have really enjoyed it. Yeah. I was probably at the gym by then because Hillary had lost and I was working in the Senate office and there were no speeches to write. I got fit, but I was very sad.

So then we all got to the White House and we made one more hire and that was John Lovett. Hello. And we had our team. And then I was no longer the junior guy because we had Kyle O'Connor. That's right. Kyle took over as intern on the campaign in 2008, and then we all got to the White House. And then Lovett was the newest guy, actually. Yeah, watch what you say after that, most.

I didn't say most junior. I don't want to hear that junior word next to my name. Cody and I shared an office. That's right. How was sharing an office? It was good for the first few hours of the day because Lovett wasn't there. He'd usually come in on his electric scooter around 1130. In a t-shirt and shorts.

This is not a joke. He'd finally put a suit on whenever he had to go to the bathroom. Right. Well, basically, I'd wear the t-shirt and shorts. I'd bike in, but during the summer months, I'd switch to the electric scooter so I wouldn't sweat through all my clothes. And then I'd stay in the t-shirt and shorts and work until I had to leave the office again, at which point I put on my suit and I have to alert people like, don't come out. I'm putting on my suit. I ran a tight ship people. Um, so here's a question. Cause I've

thought about this too. Do you remember which speech finally made you stop feeling like I'm just a fraud? How did I get this job? I don't know if any did. Come on. Oh, I don't believe that. No, you eventually get more comfortable with it. But I think, you know, I don't know if it's a thing about writers, but I think I will always feel like a fraud, not worthy of writing for him. But I ultimately got more comfortable with it.

I mean, not to blow smoke, but you were an incredible mentor who taught me how to do this. That's why we invited you on this program today. So I could blow smoke. Was there like a mentorship program you applied for? I didn't get any of that. The results are clear. I don't know the answer to that.

I'd have to think about it. What was the first big speech you remember writing for Obama? Tucson. Tucson, right. Yeah. That was the first big one. And normally you would have done that, but you were working on the State of the Union Address, which was only about two weeks away. And then you had to rewrite the opening of the State of the Union Address because, you know,

Congresswoman Giffords was shot in that attack. And I should say, this is the thing about speech rating, and we all know this, is the anxiety and the workload of speech rating is directly related to how many people you have doing the job. I know that sounds simple, but the worst time of my professional career was when it was just Adam and I on the campaign and no one else was helping us. And I remember when that happened in Tucson, and I was sitting there working on the State of the Union, and now he has to go deliver, go to a speech at a memorial service immediately, but also we have to finish the State of the Union.

I did not have a lot of stress then because I was like, well, if Cody's going to handle it, Cody can handle it. And I don't have to worry about that. You know, like it's just having the team and having people with different skills on the team. Like a correspondence center comes up and that could take a whole year and Lovett's going to handle it. So that's fine. We're good. take a whole year and I'll, and I'll love it's going to handle it. So that's fine. We're good. The, um, it's a strange thing just in general, right? Cause speech writing is this artistic long form time consuming week or multi-week process grafted on top of politics,

which is very technocratic and very much rooted in 30 minute meetings all day. And so it's like, you know, people always say like, you know, Oh, you know, you know, you work in the white house. Uh, what's the day like? And actually for a speech writer every day is kind of different. Like if you're a communications person in the white house, if you're a policy work in the White House, what's the day like? And actually, for a speechwriter, every day is kind of different. Like, if you're a communications person in the White House, if you're a policy person in the White House, you get in at 730, you do your morning call, you do these responses, you respond to these emails, you figure out what's the next day's about, you write the memo. But for speeches, it's this cycle of work. And it's this strange thing. And so it does really depend on having people around who can like kind of slot in right to each of these different big speeches

coming down the pike yeah and so talk about the process for tucson a little bit since that was such a i think first of all i went into your office and said what the hell am i going to do here right and then you know i went up and talked to him and pluff uh about what we were going to say and another thing about like two things the first is that we should say off the top that you know barack obama was actively involved in every single speech, often rewrote big sections of them. It's not like we just, it's not just as disclaimer that we had to sign some agreement to say it's real. It's a very real thing. And I think people have seen enough of Pete's photos to know that's true. Yeah. But what also goes into a speech is what's actually happening around it,

you know, in the real world. And pretty quickly after, you know, even during the events of Tucson, you saw people start pointing fingers and getting angry and blaming one another. And that's kind of what became the context for that speech. I remember that. I remember, and I remember in that meeting too, he said, I want to speak like I'm going to, you know, like a friend passed away or a family member passed away and I'm going to the memorial service and giving a eulogy sort of about that person that I knew. And so I want it very human and personal and I don't want it too political at that point. Yeah. With every eulogy we've done and we've had to do far too many, you know, the first part will always be paying tribute

to the victims, telling their stories. And then the second part will usually be what is our responsibility now that they're gone? And that changed over time. You know, Tucson, he didn't get political. Newtown, he did. Right. Because you had to at that point. Dallas, Charleston, all had political components to them because we have responsibilities to prevent that from happening again, to live up to, you know, the people that we lost. You know, Tucson, the end of it was, I want this democracy to live up to this little girl's expectations. This little girl, Christina Taylor Greene, who died in the shooting,

who had just become active, who went to see her congresswoman, which is a patriotic thing to do, who ran for student council and was gunned down in a supermarket. Yeah. You know? It's such a strange thing that

it's the hallmark of this administration that time and time again, he went and did these memorial services for a bunch of dead people who were killed in a mass shooting over and over and time and time again, he went and did these memorial services for a bunch of dead people who were killed in a mass shooting over and over and over and over again. And you don't think about that going in. I remember when we went to the White House, we were all excited. We were like, we get to write about moonshots and State of the Union addresses and commencements and big things. And you never think that every couple of months, you're gonna have to give a eulogy for something or other. Yeah, that was, it just never ended either. So I left the White House in March of 2013. I think about a year before that,

you moved into, we started sharing an office together. That was my favorite year. It was. It was a fun year. And we, and partly it was. That my feelings are hurt now. I love it was gone. I left, things really brightened up. And, And partly it was, I mean, you were deputy director of speech writing at the time, but sort of wanted to make sure that when I left, you know, you'd be ready. What was the transition like for you on your side and becoming chief speech writer for the president? Like, what did you go through there? It was, well, I went through spasms of panic and fear.

But what helped was spending all that time with you for a year, watching your interactions with him, getting to spend more time with him. I remember you came back from a trip with him. I think you guys were out here in L.A. for a fundraiser or whatnot. And the way you told me was you wanted to talk to him on Air Force One and said, look, I'm thinking about leaving in the next year or so. I remember what happened is we had just been out to LA and we saw Lovett. And he was like, how's Lovett doing? And I told him about the cult classic, 1600

Pen. And I got all excited. He's like, that sounds like, you sound really excited about that. You might want to go to LA and do that. I'm like, I do, I do. He's like, a couple years from now, after the administration's over, and I was like, eh, maybe a little sooner than that. He's like, what? You want to leave? And yeah.

And then I told him not to fear. Yeah, I remember the way you told it. He said, what are you thinking about a replacement? And you said, I think Cody. And he said, I think that's right. He did. And he wanted to get to know you even more. I mean, I think one thing about speechwriting that everyone should know is I do not think

you can be a speechwriter for someone successfully without talking to that person. And I think this is true of politics and government. I've said this to a million different companies and organizations that we've written speeches for. There's a lot of times where communications people are like, okay, you can just go through me and I'll tell you what the principal wants to say, and then you can write it. And I was like, it is impossible to write for someone unless you know that person. And you see this over and over again, there's this vicious circle for speechwriters who don't have a good relationship with the principal they're writing for, which is they try their

hardest to be innovative and try to be creative and write a great speech, but they don't know the voice of the person they're writing for. It goes up the chain. It gets rejected. The principal is losing confidence in the person they've hired. And so then that person starts sanding down the corners, trying to be safe. And then the speeches get more and more boring. And the senator or the congressman or whoever gets more and more tired of this person. And this person who could have been a great speechwriter never had a chance to do a good job. And you see this in a lot of campaigns. You see a lot of, say, failed presidential campaigns. Yep. And so I always made sure everyone on our team got to spend time with the president in the

Oval. If you had a speech that was out of town, you got to travel with him. You know, it's the only way it works. Yeah. And I remember telling Samantha power, she came in and asked for advice on hiring a speechwriter when she became a UN ambassador. And because like our boss, she's an extraordinary writer in her own right. Want to Pulitzer. Then I told her, you know, whoever you hire, you have to spend time with that person, take him with you, take her with you, you know, and ended up being a friend of mine, Nick Steinberg, who's a brilliant writer for, and I said, you have to spend time with this person take him with you take her with you you know and ended up being a friend of mine nick steinberg who's a brilliant writer for and i said you have to spend time with this guy like every single day every it's funny it's it's the it's easily the most important piece of advice about a speech writer like it doesn't you know you don't need to be the world's best

writer you don't need to have the best political judgment you don't need to be the hardest worker personal plug uh uh but you have to do all those things and you have to have access to the person you're running for because it's about that relationship and your ability to harness their voice that's the thing people always ask how long did it take you to get his voice and it took a few years and i would say my first couple years especially on the campaign were more mimicry than anything else because i hadn't met him yet because everything was going through you getting edited and it's really kind of mimicry until you actually meet that person, work with that person, get inside their head. And we didn't spend a lot of time with him during the campaign because he was traveling all the time.

I never met him on the campaign. I went on the road once in a while, but we were mainly based in Chicago. So it was actually a lot better during the White House because we had we ended up like with a weekly meeting with him to talk about the speeches for the week. We had to meet with Axelrod every day because you could sort of gain through osmosis through Axelrod about what the president... Hello, yeah. All of us would go see Axelrod every day, every speechwriter, and we'd sit in his office and he'd walk in, usually like rumpled and late from something and just say, hello...

Have a donut in his pocket. Yeah, and on a shirt. And he would say, hello, wordsmiths, and that's how we'd start the speechwriting meeting. Yeah, and there's shirt. And he would say, hello, wordsmiths. And that's how we'd start the speech writing meeting. Yeah, and there's also just the edits. Like, you know, you try as hard as you can to get a person's voice. And then, like, you know, you'd write the speech and you think you've captured it. And then, like, President Obama would, like, cross something out and then write a paragraph beneath it. And it's like, oh, that's how he sounds.

Missed it. Cody, what was the hardest speech you've ever written not like emotionally difficult like a but i've been staying up for weeks and i can't figure this out and state of the union addresses are always like that but only because you're trying to cram so much stuff into it and getting the structure right is the hardest part once you get that right the rest is easy i still want to call those the hardest. They're probably the most time consuming and annoying. Yeah. Charleston might've been the hardest. Oh yeah. Because, you know, we can, we can do our best, but, and I'm sure you went through this with the race speech in a way it's, we haven't lived the experience of a black man, you know, so that's a difficult

thing to try to empathize. And no matter how many people you talk to, he will eventually have to take control of that speech, the president and take it to a place where we can't reach. Also, because you imagine one of us thinking like, oh yeah, the real meat of this speech should be the concept of unearned grace. Yeah, right. I was like, well, you know, in my theological background. Where did that come from? Because I mean, this is obviously the speech where the president decided to sing Amazing Grace at the end of the speech, one of, I think, the best moments in his eight years in the White House. How did that start? This was, again, a speech where, you know, circumstances outside the White House kind of dictated the way it would go. We were sitting in the Oval on Monday, I think, of that week, that incredible, crazy week where

the Confederate flag came down, Obamacare was upheld, marriage equality was upheld, and the Charleston speech happened. And we were trying to figure out what to say. And I confess, I was kind of mentally and emotionally exhausted from all the times we'd had to go give speeches after mass shootings. I was like, I got nothing left. I think he was too. I remember I saw him at a fundraiser earlier that week in LA, right after the shooting had happened. And I remember hearing him speak. And I was like, man, he sounds down. Yeah. And you know, one of the, I saw him, I've seen him angry twice ever. The first was the day he was told that healthcare.gov was a catastrophic failure, which by the way, works great now. Check it out. Yeah. And the second was the day that the Senate

failed on background checks. Right. And I remember in his anger right afterwards, he's like, you know, what do I say the next time this happens in a eulogy when our Congress has made it clear they're not going to do anything about this. So that was kind of the context for a discussion around Charleston. But then something incredible happened, which was the families of the victims all forgave the killer in court. None of us saw coming. And he was like, that's it. That's grace. That's what I want to talk about. And, you know, so I agonized for a few days over draft, gave it to him. And in the span of five hours, he'd crossed out the last three pages and handwritten them himself all about this concept of unearned grace. It's a free and benevolent gift of God. And I was like, well, okay, thanks, Obama. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. Coming your way.

I always thought the best part of our job was waking up in the morning, going into the White House, and hearing that he has a lot of edits. Yeah, it was the best. Which you wouldn't think, you'd think like a speech writer would be like, oh no, he rewrote all my shit and now he doesn't like it. But when he had real edits'd you'd get these yellow pages back and you'd read them and you'd just be like ah yes right like that was it i missed it it makes sense now and it's better you don't want if it came back with nothing it could mean anything well sometimes it did come back and it was like i want to see you and talk about it that's the worst yes right but but if it comes back with nothing it can mean he didn't engage with it or thought it was fine but if it comes back with a bunch of edits, a bunch of line notes and things, that means you gave him what he needed to do his job.

Yeah. And that was true of the Correspondence Center speeches, too. Yeah. Should we talk about how the first Correspondence Center that we ever did, Cody, you ended up as a pirate? I think you guys forced me to do that. I think we did, too. Poor Cody. He becomes the chief speechwriter for the President of the United States.

And when you Google your name, the picture that still comes up is you dressed as a pirate next to the president. Let's talk about how that came to be. That was the first correspondence in a right, and it was this insane period where he's dealing with the financial crisis, he's dealing with all these different things. That was like the era of, okay, we're giving a speech on science, but there's a topper on pirates, the bird flu, and the Volcker Rule. So that was the year of, that was like, you know it captain phillips phillips i'm the captain i'm

the captain now but uh that was it was when it was a real event and we dressed you up like a captain hook pirate yeah because we said the joke was like the president has also promised to meet with leaders he doesn't necessarily agree with which is a promise he made during the campaign there was like a washington kerfuffle because i think hug think Hugo Chavez gave him a book at the Summit of the Americas or something. That's right, someone handed him a book. And he was like, what am I supposed to do? Throw it in his face or something? Yeah, they were mad he took the book. God, the things that

used to be fucking scandals before Trump was president, holy shit! Yeah. He took a book! Like, oh, he took a selfie at Nelson Mandela's funeral. It's like a Morning Joe topic for two weeks, you know know unbelievable so the the joke was that he had said during the campaign that he would meet with foreign leaders without precondition and he was like look here's a photo of me you know taking a book from hugo chavez here's a photo of me meeting with the leader of the pirate rebellion

and that was me and you were just dressed as an old school pirate did we get a parrot on your shoulder i can't remember we got i tried i still got it you have the parrot oh yeah that's awesome i drove around from costume shop to costume shop to get that done for you. And you handed him Peter Pan. I want to talk about, I think one of my all-time favorite speeches that Barack Obama has ever delivered. And I can say this since I had zero part in writing it, the Selma speech, the speech he gave at the anniversary of Selma. It's my favorite. It's my favorite. I don't know that we've ever talked about sort of how that came to be, what his thinking was. From the outside, what I remember is

he was scheduled to speak there for like a month or so. It was coming up. And then a couple weeks before the speech, that's when Rudy Giuliani, still causing trouble today, said, you know, I don't think Barack Obama loves his country. Something like that. He started out by saying, I know this is a horrible thing to say,

which is your first clue that you should just stop talking. Yeah, that's not good. Also, I'm not a racist, but is also a bad sign about what's about to come out of someone's mouth. But it was along the lines of he wasn't raised like we were. I don't think he loves the country like we do. And it's the same kind of dog whistle bullshit we put up with for eight years, you know, like Barack Obama is some creepy other, you know. Yeah. But I figured when he said that, I was like, boom, this whole speech now, not a direct response to Giulating what happened at Selma. Easy thing to do. Yeah. Just say, you know, God bless America and go home. We went into the Oval and I was like,

hey, you know, you heard about this, right? He goes, yeah. And I was like, well, let's, you know, talk about that. Let's address it indirectly. And he started, the wheels started turning. He was like, yeah, let's talk about the idea of America, what it means to love this country, what it means to be a patriot, who defines what an American is. And, you know, it gave us all sorts of incredible ideas for this speech that were true to his vision of America going back to the 04 speech in Boston. Yes. You know, which is that people who love their country can change it. You know, this is a country founded on the idea that we are imperfect. You know, it even says to form a more perfect union.

And we have the tools with a system of self-government to do that. And people have done it at great risk to themselves throughout history. Let's tell that story and plant Selma firmly in it. It's also, it happened before Trump, but I think it's maybe the best response to Trumpism from the president that I've ever heard. And everyone should go read it because it's still, it is the best distillation of Obama's view of patriotism in American history. What makes America exceptional. Yes. It's patriotism for adults is what it is. Well, but I've always thought that the 2004 convention speech was notable because what he tried to do was redefine the concept of patriotism as not just flag-waving, mindless sort of...

We're the best. Right. Or as he said in Selma, not stock photos or airbrushed history. Or feeble attempts to paint some of us as more American than others. Okay, guys, guys, people are listening to this. I can't have that. I can't have us quoting the speeches at each other. Look, just because you don't remember a great quote from an Obama speech.

Well, that's some of the great stuff he can do. I remember tons of stuff. I'm here to lighten it up, Cody. That's some of the great stuff that Barack Obama does with his edits, though. I thought I had written a good draft. It was true to what he wanted to do. And then when you start getting edits back, and we got lucky that week because we had a snow day, too. So the government shut down. I think it was either the day before the speech or two days before. So all of his meetings were pulled down and we could just hand drafts back and forth all day. And he'll come back with a couple of different kinds of edits. You know, one that just ties

together everything you're trying to say in a way that you couldn't reach. And then others that just make things, just make your language better. You know, the first example was he added in the line about, you know, not stock photos or airbrush history or feeble attempts to paint some of us as more creative than others. That is just a shiv, you know, rhetorical shiv right there. There are other ones where I probably had some pedestrian line like, you know,

they endured beatings and he turned it into, you know, the billy club and the chastening rod, the tear gas and the trampling hoof, the gush of blood

and splintered bone and I was like, okay. He's an author. He's just, sometimes he just proves that he can dunk on you. Yeah,

he enjoys doing that. I know, there's probably a lot of, Lovett's taking the place of a lot of people who are going to be like, oh, God, these Obama people and the Kool-Aid. I have a role to play. I drank the Kool-Aid.

Yeah, you took it down. I drank it later than everybody else. I have to tell you, the Kool-Aid for me has hit slowly over many years. Man. What did you love about Barackack obama what did i love about him no i was gonna say it's a silly question but it's also like about his speeches

and his style and like what what made you think this guy has it i remember in the 2008 primary i always found him really compelling and i'll be like i really liked him and i'm not just saying that in hindsight like i did really like him. Even from the Hillary side of things. The last sort of hook I had to hang my hat on was, let's not pretend it's not a risk. So the way I was thinking about it in 2008 is that we just couldn't elect John McCain. We did these eight years of Bush. The country was in shambles. We needed to elect someone, and I, fool me once, but I genuinely had adopted the position that, look, I know Hillary Clinton can beat John McCain.

I believe Barack Obama can beat John McCain, but I'm just not sure. And so that was enough to scare me. And also, and I also think that a lot of the attacks on Hillary have been unfair over the years. But I remember, I think it maybe was around the race speech or was just maybe it was even around the Iowa JJ. I'd see him give these speeches and I turned to somebody and be like, Hey, do you remember who lost to Kennedy? Neither do I. And I think that Barack Obama ran on this platform of optimism and change. But ultimately, that's not what was called for from him in the first two years of his presidency, which I think are the two years that in many ways will define his legacy, what was called from him is maturity, responsibility, being circumspect, being an adult,

treating people like adults, making hard decisions. You know, it turned out that, you know, he ran on this platform of change and he did bring a great deal of change. But the qualities that were actually background, you know, and actually probably really just undergirded what made it possible for him to win, even if they weren't the part of his platform. His humility, his decency as a human being are ultimately what I think made him an extraordinary president. And I am not like, you know, there are people I think who talk about politics and they're like, I'm just looking for someone who inspires me. And it's like, well, no, I understand saying that inspiration is a tool. But if you're saying you need to be inspired, you need to grow up because that's not what politics is about. Politics isn't a TV show. It's about actual problems in people's lives. Like, I am glad Barack Obama is inspirational, but I don't need it. I need a politician who can do things. And so to me, like, that's always been my tension with with the people that are like, you know, why isn't Hillary inspiring? Is that for you or is it because you believe it's useful to win elections?

Well, I think part of what Obama's inspiration, though, is it is a challenge to get your ass in gear and go do something. Right. I mean, it was always like the we versus the I of Trump, I think, is one of the biggest contrasts there. Right. And it sort of got lost because it was like Barack Obama. He's a celebrity. He's walking on water, all this kind of stuff. But every single speech, it was always like, don't believe in my ability to bring about change. Believe in yours, which which can very easily sound cheesy and trite and cliche. But there is something underlying that that's real, which is what the responsibilities are of citizens in a democracy. And just one more one more thing also that I had to learn over time, which is, I don't know, I'm a cynic about certain things.

And I believe anybody who wants to be president is insane. And that usually that these are people with a hole in their hearts that no power or privilege or attention could fill. That's been true of many of our presidents. They have a chip on their shoulder. They have something in their history that makes them search for this thing to make them feel better, to make them forget their fear of death, what have you. And I remember feeling like, I don't understand, like, is Barack Obama a cipher? Where is this flaw? Like, where is this flaw?

And I do believe, you know, you see that over the course of administration, you see the consequences of aloofness, of arrogance, what have you. But his fundamental flaw is simply believing he was the right person to do this job. But I do believe in over eight years, that was true. So in the end, I think my fear was actually that he wasn't as good of a person as people said he was. But I really, you know, look, we sat down with him for that last interview, which Cody, you helped make possible.

And I was just over, you know, you talked about it. He never got cynical, but he was just unshakably decent as well. He really is a decent man. Well, that takes discipline, I think, too. Because it's pretty easy to pop off, as you see from all of us. I get asked a lot, you know, why did you leave? And I usually say, because I was really fucking tired.

Why did you stay? You stayed for a long time. You shut the lights off, man. 2,922 days. Well, it's funny you say that, because I remember grabbing you, Favs, for a drink back in 08. We were still in Chicago. We were in Tavern on the park.

And I asked you if I was going to come to the White House. And you were like, yeah. And I told you that night that if you took me to the White House, I would turn the lights off. Yeah. And I meant it. That's not the full reason I stayed. It's because I couldn't imagine leaving. And you'd put in enough time.

You'd been there since 2005. I mean, that's a lifetime, especially going through that first campaign. Yeah. I go to my twenties and you know, there were, that's why I got every living them now. That's true. 2013 and 2014 were brutal, just slogs. I, we, so helping out the Obama foundation, which, you know, we've been doing for a little bit for last year, and they were asking to help put together a narrative of everything that happened from birth through the end of the administration. And I remember, and Tommy and I were going through it all, and when we got to 2013 and 2014, we tried to pick out the events from that year, and I just looked back and I was like, those were bad years. All the events were bad things. It was awful, man. ISIL, Ebola, Ferguson.

God, what am I forgetting? Which is also just an obstinate and despicable Congress. Healthcare.gov. Ted Cruz. Doing his thing. Who weren't willing to lift a finger to help ever. I mean, that's one of the paradoxes of Barack Obama's presidency, getting back to this whole we thing, is that this was a guy who, and it's not like he came up with the idea that, you know, we have to do things together in democracy. It's a thread that runs throughout our history. It was the whole point of the Selma speech. But once he got there,

a lot of America just placed their faith in him to get it done, you know, go force these things through as long as you have 60 votes in the first couple of years, and then you have an intransigent opposition. And the wonderful kind of backlash to that is what we're seeing now. You know, the past 10 days have not made me more optimistic because I still was, but watching people do all these protests and now taking on this democracy because you have to carry on without Barack Obama, you know, do this without him. This is like the Selma speech come to life. Yeah, I mean, it's true, but it's also, you know,

there's a lot of people that supported and were enthusiastic about Barack Obama who disappeared. They just disappeared and we did not, we didn't get them out in the midterms. No, I mean, 2014. I mean, that didn't turn out to take the House back, take the Senate back. I mean, the obstinance of Mitch McConnell, it worked. I mean, it did work. Yeah. What was it like in the White House when Trump won? Because, I mean, we asked F. POTUS this question during the interview,

which was, like, what was sort of the principle behind the restraint you've shown during the transition? And he'll always be POTUS to us. Yeah, right. That's true. And he never broke, right? Like, even in, I can say even in private, he's never said like, oh fuck, I can't believe, you know, like he's just, there is something bigger than just sort of the public persona there and why he's acted like this. But talk about like the day after when you guys all went back into the White House. Rhodes and Pfeiffer were actually in my apartment watching Returns that night, and POTUS called, I think, around 2 in the morning saying, you know, we got to write something a little different than we were expecting. And the short-term thing of it, you know, a lot of people are asking me, too, why is he being so deferential here? Why is he insistent on a peaceful transfer of power for someone that wants to tear up everything you've done?

And my response has always been, you know, in a year or two where almost every democratic norm has been shredded, the one that the president has sole responsibility to maintain is the peaceful transfer of power. And he's going to do it because he reveres the office. He believes in this democracy. Like it sounds quaint and naive, but he actually really does. And he remembered how George W. Bush did all that for him in the beginning too. But it was brutal. And it's, there are a lot of, you know, I've lost campaigns before. So I knew it was like, but there are a lot of young people still working in the White House for whom this was their first job. So they've never lost anything. And there are people in tears and you to tell them like, look, I still believe this is going to be an aberration in our history. You know, it's there's gonna be a lot of damage over the next few years and it's going to be pretty brutal on a lot of people.

But this people will look back on this. They will read Selma, for example, as one of the first speeches about the future and be like, what were you guys thinking for four years? Yeah. I mean, I do think of it like there's an America that's dying and it's going out with like a supernova. You know, some stars, some stars just die and fade away, but others explode brightly before they disappear. And I think Trump is a supernova of a kind of politics we're saying goodbye to. The future is still on our side. Let's make it so. One last thing. President always, this has been reported a couple of places, President has referred to you as Hemingway.

We think that's just like, that didn't really come from Ernest Hemingway. No. There is nothing Hemingway-esque about political speeches. So how did that come about? Give us the real story here on Pod Save America. This is the first time this has ever been told. Nice. Making news. It has nothing to time this has ever been told. Nice.

It has nothing to do with writing or beards. I thought it was the beard. It was not the beard. I think the beard probably helped. But it was 2014. We were on a European trip. We were flying back from Poland to Paris. And then we were going to go up to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

So I'd written the D-Day speech. I was really excited about it. I worked my grandfather's unit into it, even though he didn't fight in D-Day. So I'd written the D-Day speech. I was really excited about it. You know, I worked my grandfather's unit into it, even though he didn't fight in D-Day, but in other beach landings. And gave it to the president on the plane, hoping he would look at it so that, you know, if he liked it, I could get a little work done

and maybe we could go have dinner in Paris or something. So he comes back on the flight and goes, this is great. I have no edits. I'm really happy with this. And we're like, excellent. So finalized the speech. About 12 of us went out for dinner together, like all staff, just having fun. Because we're like, excellent. So finalize the speech. About 12 of us

went out for dinner together, like all staff, just having fun. Cause you know, it's one of the great things about foreign trips is you're working constantly, but you also get to spend an hour or two at night seeing a new city. So that hour turned into Ben Rhodes and Terry Zuplatt and Ben Holzer. And I just decided to spend the night going out in Paris. And then we decided to watch the sunrise over Notre Dame and walk back to the hotel just as everybody was loading the motorcade. And so somebody dimed us out to the president as we were getting on the plane in the morning.

He comes up, he's like, whoa, movable feast is back. And that was it. They were a lost generation. I'm leaving out parts of the story. No, I think that's probably wise. Cody, thank you for doing this with us Thanks for having me this was fun And thank you both also for making the speech writing team

As immensely talented As it was Thanks for hiring me You two were a huge part of that It redounded to my benefit It'll be interesting to watch how Trump's speech writing operation fills out I mean Stephen Miller's already off to a great start.

If you thought OMB's edits to the State of the Union address were bad, wait till you see Vladimir Putin. And with that, we will see you later, guys. Thanks, Cody. Thank you. Bye. you