A Comic Look at the White House
Last night, I finished book #53 on the year, #150 in my personal library of presidential history. Turns out, “Thanks, Obama” is the Rated R version of the Obama Administration. Just think Bachelor Party meets A Few Good Men meets Indecent Proposal meets Napoleon Dynamite. Imagine a book that’s ridiculously funny, reflectively inspiring, and selectively heartbreaking.
Bearing a title as sincere as it is sarcastic, as serious as it is facetious, David Litt has given presidential historians a most irreverent, self-deprecating, and comical insider’s guide to White House life, combined with a tinge of millennial attitude. In another life, along a different parallel universe, I would have and still do imagine myself living in the shoes of a White House speechwriter, surrounded by the ideals of gifted linguists, by men and women who can change five forgettable words into three more worthy of an epitaph. Litt, who joined the White House staff at the age of 24, is disarming in his humor, quick to concede his own flaws and those of the commander-in-chief he served, leaving critics of his account very little room to mock. He takes care of that all on his own.
“I guess I thought walking through the White House gates instantly makes you better, stronger, and more capable than before. It doesn’t… my unchanged abilities were pitted against drastically heightened expectations… It’s the feeling you get when you go through airport security and a tiny part of you wonders if you packed a bomb.” (52, 50)
