Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

With the Obama presidency over, it is that time when memoirs of staff members will start to come out. While we wait in anticipation of President Obama’s memoir, and those of the other heavy-hitters in the administration, we get our first taste from a speechwriter named David Litt. He started off as a minor speechwriter for the Obama administration, writing jokes, humorous asides, speeches that no one else wanted, and such things as Obama’s tribute to Betty White’s 90th birthday. Slowly over the years, Mr. Litt moved up in responsibility and access to the President and got to write more important speeches.

This book is a humorous look into his time at the White House, and those are the best bits of the book. The best part of the book is the stories, the times when things went wrong, like when Mr. Litt tried to change in a small closet on Air Force One and got caught in his underwear. Or when he had to get the President ready to be funny, or when tapings did not go as planned. It is a look at working in the White House not from a senior policy perspective but from a worker-ant one.