“Write the note President Bush will leave in the desk for President Obama. You can either play it for laughs and try to write in his voice, or you play it more sincerely with things 43 has to convey to 44.”

Start time: 9:41 PM
End time : 11:27 PM




Mr. President:

First off, congratulations. This is The Letter, and this is The Desk in The Office. While your candidacy and election has always been fraught with historical significance, even someone that every acquaintance said was a regular guy and probably understood the inside of the office better than anyone in nearly 200 years has been awed by the power of the history here. I know I kept saying “history will decide,” but a lot of that’s in your hands, right?

In many respects I’m lucky to write this letter at all. In the history of this office, of the 44 men who have held it, think about what PJ O’Rourke wrote: “In our brief national history, we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached [two] and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.” There was no letter to LBJ. President Clinton didn’t only leave me a note, he also left me my dad’s note to him. I can’t explain how much that meant.

We’ve met several times since your election, and I want you to take a look at this picture:




Every one of the men in it except one has something in common. Every one was vilified as uncaring and out of touch. Every one had to appear every day in some newspaper as a cartoon with wildly exaggerated features (Dad’s chin, my ears, Bill’s nose and face, and Carter’s teeth, and I think your ears are next). Every one of us gets to be called “Mr. President” for the rest of our lives. Hell, if I sign enough copies of this picture I could probably buy another baseball team.

History may look back on all of us kindly, but the present never does. Somewhere in America right now there is something wrong that is your fault. Right now in America people think that damned near everything is my fault. There are mothers without sons sent to kill people who would kill us first. There are families without grandparents who died in attics in Louisiana. There are prisoners in Iraqi jails who never walked out. And those ghosts haunt me, every hour of every day.

Carter? The Iranian hostage rescue mission. Dad? 24 dead soldiers during the invasion of Panama. Bill? Somalia. Me? Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, 9/11.

9/11.

Where were you? How did you feel? Where were your kids? Were you possibly a target as it all unfolded? What were you absolutely certain of in that moment? Could you be afraid?

You may think you know what my answers are, but the view from behind this desk is a little different. I sat there reading that book in front of those kids, knowing everyone I knew in New York, thinking of casualty figures like Antietam - tens of thousands of bodies, realizing that something awful was happening. You were a state senator and I’m sure everybody in Springfield went apeshit, the same way they did in Topeka, in Cheyenne, in Las Vegas, in Chicago. But when billions of eyes looked to the top of the pyramid, what do you think they wanted to see?

However you reacted, they didn’t make a movie about it. Shit, two movies.

Even the ones that hate you call you Mr. President. Your motorcade doesn’t see traffic. I haven’t spoken to a crowd that wasn’t soldiers or prescreened Republicans in years. Your car can withstand a mortar round and go 200 miles an hour with a diesel truck engine in it. Your plane has anti-missile defense on board. They tell the protesters to stand a mile away where I’ll never see them, and I can go days at a time without talking to anyone except relatives and employees. The bubble is deep, the bubble is tight, the bubble is all-encompassing. Try to stay out of it.

The expectations are nothing you’ll ever be able to meet. You think the CEO of Bridgestone can change a tire? You think one MBA can shape the destiny of 300 million people? I’ve seen how you can move people, how you can inspire them. I didn’t appear in public with John McCain after March. I am alternately the dumbest man to ever inhabit the office or a political genius who stymied Congress and led an unchecked expansion of Executive Branch power. Eight years in office and I don’t think more than a handful of people have the faintest idea who I really am and what I really believe.

I guarantee, though, that the other men in that picture do – and so will you. Protect your family, your girls. They’ll be here for you on the other side of this. May God bless you and everyone who matters to you. The job is a God’s burden to bear; your faith can make the work light.

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