You Can’t Be Serious(65)

The soon-to-be First Lady followed behind the president-elect by a few minutes. I hadn’t yet met Mrs. Obama. She had been dividing her time between the campaign trail and Chicago, where Malia and Sasha were. When she did travel for campaign events, she was the headliner, so they certainly didn’t need a surrogate like me. “I can’t believe you haven’t met Michelle!” staffers would say. “She’s the best. When you meet her, you’ll want her to run for president next.”

Finally face-to-face there backstage, she was as gracious, impressive, and kindhearted as I’d expected. She thanked my family and my manager, and before leaving, offhandedly said to me, “You’ve been with us pretty much from the start. I hope you’ll continue to stay involved and help us out.”

It was a nice thing to say: a friendly bit of benign encouragement that I imagined she said to lots of people she hoped would volunteer at a local community center and vote in midterm elections. As I opened my mouth to say thank you and let her know that I’d surely stay involved, Spilo piped up: “Well, you know Kal applied for a job, right?”

Here’s the thing about Dan Spilo. He’s been my friend and manager for more than twenty years now. He’s phenomenally smart, extraordinarily motivated, extremely loyal, and fights like hell for his clients. He’s also sometimes the real-life version of the characters on that HBO show Entourage in the most lovable way possible.

Mrs. Obama paused, took in what my Hollywood manager said, and replied, “What do you mean?”

“Yeah, he filled out an application for a job at the White House,” Dan continued, “and nobody even called him back.”

Jesus.

Mrs. Obama’s attention shifted to me. I tried to head this disaster off at the pass by politely nodding at Dan to stop talking so I could explain myself. “Yeahhhhh, I applied for a job,” I confessed. “I figured, if I can be helpful, it’s something that I’d love to consider.”

She seemed more confused than anything else. “What do you mean? Who did you apply with?” she asked.

“Oh, I didn’t want to be the guy who bothers people about jobs, so I just put my résumé where the email said to—on change.gov.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized—for the first time—how absurd it all sounded.

Like many other jobs in the world, it turns out that while everyone had to apply for an Obama-Biden White House political appointment via change.gov, the expectation was that we’d also rely heavily on our networks to let the right people know we’d applied. Top-notch senior leadership picked out the talented staffers they worked with on the campaign—field organizers from early primary states, policy wonks who had been on their teams well before the general election, experts they’d consulted with prior to Obama even announcing his run—and found the right White House jobs for the most qualified early supporters. Those who had been with the campaign the longest—before the Iowa caucus, or especially prior to Obama’s US Senate days—were top candidates for White House positions because they already knew the president-elect’s priorities, tenor, and approach. Early supporters would be assets to a new administration that wanted to hit the ground running with the same ethics and uniformity as the campaign.

I didn’t know any of this at the time. I applied on the website just like everybody else, but nobody knew I was interested because I hadn’t taken the extra step and told anyone. I thought I was playing by the rules. They have my résumé. If they think I’m qualified to work in the White House, they’ll call.3

In hearing that I—despite having been with the campaign since before the Iowa caucuses—had anonymously uploaded my résumé to the website, without bothering to follow up in any serious way, the soon-to-be First Lady seemed almost… offended. As someone of exceptional intelligence and honesty, Mrs. Obama has a low threshold for bullshit. Her expression changed. No longer bemused or pleasantly surprised, she gave me the look you’d give someone if they dropped a piece of pizza on the ground and then picked it up and ate it in front of you.

“You did what?” (She was obviously trying to confirm if I was as naive as I looked.)

“Uh, yeah, I, uh, I didn’t want to bother anybody, so I figured I’d apply on change.gov.” At this point, having confirmed that I was actually as naive as I looked, she called her husband over. “Barack! Come here.” The president-elect waved back, signaling that he’d already chatted with my family, leading Mrs. Obama to repeat with a bit more urgency, “Barack! Come here.”

As the president-elect made his way back to where we were standing, Mrs. Obama continued, “Kal, tell him what you just told me.”

“Oh, no, I um… it’s really not…”

Mrs. Obama insisted. “Tell him. Tell him what you did.”

“Well, sir, I was just, uh, telling her that I applied for a job at the White House. You know, if there’s anything I’d be useful doing…”

“You did? Who did you apply with?” Obama asked.

God, that question again.

At this point, Mrs. Obama gave Mr. Obama a disappointed look that said, Watch what this dummy is about to say.

I didn’t even want to utter the absurd words. “I uploaded my résumé to change.gov.”