* * *
Three days later, backstage at the staff inaugural ball where I was to make a speech before David Plouffe and Obama, the newly inaugurated president raised the idea of a job. “Hey man, I was thinking about our conversation. How do you feel about working with Organizing for America?” he asked, referring to the nongovernmental advocacy group being formed to keep grassroots supporters marshalled toward political action. It would have been a great way to stay involved, but not what I had applied for on change.gov. “I want to go all-in,” I said to the president. “I want to work directly for you at the White House and help fulfill all those promises we made people.”
In retrospect it was perhaps a bold thing to say. I was flattered that he’d even remembered our chat from the rope line at the inaugural concert enough to have given it any thought. Reggie passed my number along to Chris Lu, the new head of White House Cabinet Affairs, and he reached out to me a few days later. “The boss is excited about the prospect of you joining the staff. It’s good you two spoke,” he said. “In the Office of Public Engagement—OPE—on the outreach team, we’re trying to fill three jobs: We need to find someone to handle outreach to young people, outreach to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and outreach to the arts community. OPE is one of the offices senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is going to oversee. Tina Tchen is heading it up, and apparently you really impressed her at the DNC back in August, so she wants you on her team.”
I hadn’t initially planned on attending the 2008 DNC （Democratic National Convention）。 I thought my time would be better spent on the road campaigning through the summer. But when my former Iowa boss, Paul Tewes, recruited me to be something called a floor whip, I couldn’t really say no. “The campaign needs a few trusted volunteers to work the floor of the convention,” he said at the time. “One whip will oversee two delegations. Duties include standing, handing out signs with quippy slogans on them timed to convention speakers so that everything looks good on TV, and blocking journalists and other roamers from coming too close to the delegates and disrupting their work.”
The other part of the floor-whip job was to keep an eye out for anyone who might potentially hamper a smooth convention. The primary had been contentious, and the worry was that disgruntled delegates of other candidates might orchestrate some sort of takeover on the （televised） convention floor—causing a potential embarrassment to the nominee （Barack Hussein Obama）。 Each day I was given a sweet walkie-talkie with an earpiece, and a bright yellow vest to go over my clothes. I was expected to be thoughtful and engaging with the delegates, to quietly spot and report potential trouble, and to be unapologetically tough in dealing with any outliers. Overall, I gathered that floor whips were sort of like political bouncers. Tewes had assigned me to the Illinois and Hawaii delegations—Obama’s home states, and therefore sort of a big deal.
What Chris Lu was telling me now was that Tina, the president’s incoming director of Public Engagement, had been one of those Illinois delegates and that I’d impressed her with my work that week. “So, the President’s Liaison to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Young Americans, and the Arts Community,” he continued, “those are three separate jobs, but we only have the salary to pay for one staffer. Between your campaign experience, your arts background, your graduate program, and your teaching position at UPenn, you have expertise in all three areas, so we thought it might actually be perfect. How do you feel about that?”
“Three jobs?! Yes! Of course!” I didn’t miss a beat. “I’d be honored to.”
* * *
There was only one little problem: I already had a job. A publicly known job with a contract, on the TV show House （which I was enjoying）。 When I initially applied on change.gov, I hadn’t thought through what would happen if I was actually offered a White House job. So, as I provisionally accepted the offer from Chris, I knew this wasn’t going to be a straightforward process. I couldn’t just ghost on my TV gig.
Even though it was basically Spilo’s fault that I had this job offer, he suddenly had concerns. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’re on a hit television show you’ve worked your whole life to get on. Why don’t you just wait until next season in case the show gets canceled?” But I couldn’t do that. House ran through the following May; it was mid-January and the White House job started immediately. Besides, House was in its fifth season; it wasn’t going to get dropped anytime soon. I knew it and he knew it. So, I asked my manager and agent （not Barbara Cameron, she had retired） to see if they could get me out of my contract.
The answer came back fast: It was a hard no as far as the network was concerned. I asked them to check once more, and after a week of additional lobbying, I had gotten nowhere: “The network and the producers say they won’t let you off the show.”
I really didn’t want to call Chris Lu back and tell him I couldn’t take a job in the White House because my agent said I had to keep playing a fake doctor on TV, so I took matters into my own hands. Motivated by old Hollywood stories of gentlemen putting on smoking jackets and handling their disagreements one-on-one over a glass of scotch （which I finally knew how to drink thanks to John Cho）， I made an appointment to see our show creator, David Shore, at his office next door to our soundstages on the Fox lot.
David is kind and approachable, the sort of boss who makes you feel comfortable enough to speak candidly. “David,” I said, “I know my agent has reached out to you directly a few times to see if I could get out of my contract to go work at the White House. I enjoy being on House and am so grateful for this experience, but serving our country is such a unique opportunity—a once-in-a-lifetime chance to help change the world. It’s the kind of thing I think I’ll regret not doing. Under the circumstances, I thought it was right to come to you myself.”
David looked at me quizzically and said, “This is the first I’m hearing of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, no one looped me in. You actually got a job in the White House?”
I should have seen it coming. Agents make a commission off an actor’s work. No work, no commission. Either my agent never asked, or the request was squashed at the network before it ever made its way to David. “Are you unhappy on the show?” he asked.
“No, not at all. I’m very happy,” I replied, truthfully. “Honestly, I know a lot of people will think I’m crazy for doing this. I finally have a lucrative job in television, on a show I enjoy. It’s just, thirty years from now, am I going to look back and say that I didn’t serve my country when I had an opportunity? Am I just a flashy Tom Selleck, or will I be proud that I had the balls to be a Wilford Brimley? I hope,” I continued, “I’m going to be able to say that even though I lost a lot of money and momentum by pausing an acting career that I’m passionate about, I’m glad I took a chance to help make the world a better place, even if it was a crazy move.”
David took that all in. “Well, look, I don’t know if you know my story. I was a lawyer in Toronto. I always wanted to be a screenwriter, and everyone told me I was crazy. They said I had a great gig going as a partner in a law firm, and that I would be throwing it all away if I were to try to go the Hollywood route. I finally decided I was going to pack up, move to LA, and become a screenwriter anyway. So, bottom line, who am I to tell you that going to work at the White House is crazy? Happy to help you do it—I just need a couple weeks to figure out how we’re going to write your character off.”