The central challenge for the twentysomethings is converting campaign skills into the realm of government. On the trail, "we got accustomed to marching orders: 'You're going to Iowa, you're going to South Carolina, you're going to New Hampshire,'" says the former agency staffer. "And in the real career world, you're supposed to navigate this on your own." For some of the wunderkind campaigners, who coordinated overseas trips, managed hundreds of volunteers, or oversaw multimillion-dollar budgets at Chicago headquarters, setting up the East Room for a bill signing, conducting West Wing tours or getting coffee for bull sessions in the Executive Office Building was a frustrating letdown. "We wanted change and we got it," says Orrin Evans, who began working for Obama at the age of 21. "But we're now hit with a new set of challenges."
Of course, this White House is hardly the first to draft young and idealistic staffers, only to burn them out. "You become an adrenaline junkie and you don't even know it," says Heather Hurlburt, a White House and State Department speechwriter in her 20s during Bill Clinton's administration. "People talk about first year Clinton as being a soccer team of preschoolers, where people just run for the ball—and there was a lot of fatigue and burnout and exhaustion as a result."
Still, there is something poignant about the exodus among the "Yes, We Can" crowd. Key senior staffers such as Daniel Meltzer, Neera Tanden, Linda Douglass, and Sarah Feinberg have all left the White House in recent weeks, expressing a desire for a new direction—or relief from the punishing pace of the Executive Branch. The full-throttle Obama campaign—and the administration's ambitious agenda since taking office—have clearly taken a toll. "We worked a 22-month campaign where you had to be perfect every single day… and now the stakes are even higher," says the former agency staffer. "We all celebrated the inauguration, but the next day a lot of us went into work."
Leaving Obamaland yields minor perks—Google's popular email service is blocked at the White House—but also significant opportunities for advancement. The 24-year-old Abraham, for example, is suddenly helping to run the biggest grassroots mobilization effort in American politics to date.
Then there is the liberating impact of fleeing the bureaucracy. Just after the 2008 election, 26-year-old Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes explained his choice not to join the administration: "There was never any particular position or set of responsibilities that really excited me," he said. "There's a challenge in prioritization, there's a challenge in working within constraints of the law, any political constraints that are there, to actually get good work done."
"You can't flip a switch and change the country," adds Evans, now at the USDA. "We're like a big, slow tanker—and I think a lot of folks are frustrated with that."
There is also an achievement gap between more experienced staffers and those with only a BA to their name. Thirty-year-old Alejandra Campoverdi, also profiled in the Times, has a master's degree from Harvard's Kennedy School and now serves as an aide to deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen. Joshua Dubois, the 27-year-old director of the White House faith office, graduated from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs. Jason Green, a 29-year-old associate in the Office of Legal Counsel, balanced previous campaign experience with a degree from Yale Law. But there is a ceiling for the younger staff.
"There is only one Dan Pfeiffer in all of Washington," said one junior press aide contemplating law school, referring to the 35-year-old White House communications director. Some feel that to break into the power class, it's important for them to catch up.
"A lot of folks have identified that [they] should actually know what [they're] talking about," says Evans, "not just advocate what's in my heart, but what works."
So this summer, you're just as likely to see Obama aides cruising GMAT or LSAT preparation classes as to find them playing on the STOTUS (Softball Team of the United States), shooting hoops at the Department of the Interior, or celebrating on the roof of Tabaq—a popular destination for birthday parties.
The restlessness may be the natural way of Washington, but stings more because of the campaign trail togetherness so many young staffers remember. The experience "was like the best preview in the world, the movie you want to see so badly," says Boswell. "And then you see the movie and it's mediocre."
Dayo Olopade is a political reporter for The Daily Beast and a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.
Get a head start with the Morning Scoop email. It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web. Get it.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment