The first half of David Litt's terrific book about speech writing for President Obama is a litany of funny, mostly personal situations and lessons learned as he makes his way, starting just out of college, toward his imagined dream job. The book's second half when Litt is part of the President's speech writing staff during his second term has the deep pleasures of binge watching an early season of The West Wing, when Aaron Sorkin was writing at his best. Insightful, funny, audacious and terrifying all apply when someone is living at that level of purpose. The book highlights successes and failures in equal measure and is better for it.
There is an inadvertent sadness which accompanies this half. In writing about Obama, Litt shows us a man of deep intelligence, who is wickedly funny, passionately engaged in living and learning, and deeply committed to doing a extremely difficult job relentlessly while trying to make America a better place for all its inhabitants. We wish for him, or for any serious woman or man to do this job other than our current President who represents the worst America has to offer. Uninformed, boorish, uninterested in the mechanics of government, a gleeful non-reader, with a degree of self-absorption that would glaze over the eyes of Narcissus (thank you Tom Stoppard for that last thought!).
Weep for us all.
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