Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 123

on political books
Ten Days
of Grace
A former White House speechwriter
remembers a critical period that
shaped the Obama presidency.
By Terry Edmonds
P
resident John F. Kennedy once remarked at a White House dinner for Nobel
Prize winners, " I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of
human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House-with the possible
exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. " It took a lot of chutzpah
to pull off that joke. Five decades later, another supremely confident politician,
Barack Obama, quipped, " I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. "
While not disputing his boss, in his new memoir, former Obama chief
speechwriter Cody Keenan describes the daunting task of putting words in the
mouth of the man some called " the smartest person in the room " : America's first
Black president.
With an equal measure of wit, humility, and heart, Keenan takes us on a private
tour of presidential speechmaking during 10 legacy-defining days of the Obama
administration-from the successful fight to save Obamacare to the victory for
marriage equality to a soul-stirring eulogy following the murder of nine Black parishioners
at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Along the
way, Keenan paints a picture of an exceptionally collegial, scandal-free, and committed
White House staff stocked with people he would come to view as one of the
most extraordinary collections of talent, human knowledge, and humanity ever
assembled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Though Keenan's story is not solely about race, he is fully aware of the ironic
challenge of capturing the voice of the first leader of the free world who dared to
drop the mic and break the centuries-old Oval Office color barrier. How could a
35-year-old white kid from the North Side of Chicago possibly be equipped to write
speeches for the first Black president-a man who spoke the language of both the
South and North Sides of the Windy City and who found his muse in the music of
Miles, Coltrane, and Ray Charles?
Keenan tells us his parents met at a New York City advertising agency. His dad
was " a surfer jock " from Southern California, his mom " a farm girl from central Indiana. "
He describes them both as having " good Midwestern sensibilities. " Keenan
candidly admits that, unlike Obama, " I did not inhabit two worlds; I inhabited
one ... Everything I knew of other people's hardships came from books I checked
out of the library. " This is not altogether true. For his first three years after college,
as a staffer in the office of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, Keenan,
as he puts it, " got to bask in the inspiration of that very Kennedy-esque idea that
America is not the project of any one person; that anybody can make a difference,
and everybody should try to. " Keenan's evolving social conscience was reenergized
Washington Monthly
123
Grace: President Obama and
Ten Days in the Battle for America
by Cody Keenan
Mariner Books, 320 pp.

Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2022