For Immediate Release: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Essays and Lessons From 30 Years in Politics and Government

Hi, and welcome to the Sun Shine Republic. I’m really glad you’re here.

This is “For Immediate Release,” my essays and stories of politics, government, and a little bit of life in between. They span 30 years, from Little Rock, Arkansas to Washington, D.C. to St. Petersburg, Florida. I’ll be sending it out to paid subscribers here on Substack over the coming days and weeks. I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription and check it out. If you are a paid subscriber, thank you very much. I couldn’t do this without you.

As always, thanks for reading.

***

2016
St. Petersburg, Florida

Before we get to 2016, let’s look back one more time, to the cold, lonely December of 1998. 

***

I have recently changed jobs, from Staff Assistant in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to Web Designer & Database Manager at the White House Millennium Council, a department overseen by the First Lady.

There is some part of me that believes this job will bring me closer to my first wife, who works in the White House. It does nothing of the sort. 

In a matter of days, the 105th Congress of the United States will vote to pass House Resolution 611, the articles that will make Bill Clinton only the second president in history to be impeached. We’re still some distance from the Senate’s February vote to acquit him.

Emotionally, I find myself a long, long way from all of it, diving into the work of my new job and trying my best. It turns out to be a difficult job, one for which I am largely unprepared and unsuited. This has become apparent to me early and in unexpected ways, and so I find myself grappling with a toxic mix of intense personal disappointment and professional disillusionment, the first I’ve experienced since I’ve begun my adventures in Washington.

Physically, I could hardly be any closer to the White House. Christmas is approaching, and my wife has asked for my help: there are small gifts to wrap on behalf of President, and she has asked me to come by after work to help do the wrapping. And so I find myself alone in the Roosevelt Room — Tade Styka’s Rough Rider painting of Teddy, the portrait of Franklin Delano on the other wall — wrapping decks of White House playing cards, candies, and other trinkets in festive red and gold wrapping paper.

I am only steps away from Betty Currie, the President’s personal secretary, and the Oval Office itself. I know President Clinton is still there, because a silent, mostly motionless Secret Service Officer is standing just outside the door. The place is eerily quiet. Many of the rooms are decorated for Christmas, and some of the holiday parties have already begun. But given the politics of the time, it doesn’t much feel like Christmas.