My job as an associate director of the Office of Public Engagement was to serve as President Obama’s point person to the three communities Chris Lu had outlined in our first phone call: （1） the Arts Community, （2） Asian American and Pacific Islander （AAPI） Communities, and （3） Young Americans. Those were huge portfolios: hundreds of arts organizations spanning multiple disciplines, more than thirty-five different AAPI subgroups,2 and young people in all fifty states and the territories.
* * *
I hit the ground running on day one. My boss, Tina Tchen, handed me a large binder and explained that one of my first duties was to oversee an executive order （EO） the president wanted to create and sign, reestablishing and updating the Clinton-era White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders （WHIAAPI）， henceforth to be known as “Whappy” cuz that sounds a little more fun. Among its other functions, the Whappy EO would help address health and economic disparities unique to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
“Read this tonight,” Tina said about the binder. “You have a 10 a.m. conference call tomorrow with reps from twenty-four of the federal agencies. A decision needs to be made about whether the Department of Hot Dogs （DHD） should be part of the EO or whether POTUS would find it wasteful.”
[There is obviously no Department of Hot Dogs—or is there? （There isn’t.） Out of respect to a confidential intragovernmental review process, instead of naming the actual federal agency in question, I’m calling it the Department of Hot Dogs, or DHD, for fun because everyone knows hot dogs are delicious. If OPE was actually involved in deliberations about hot dogs, there would first be an office-wide meeting to discuss the various groups we represented and which type of hot dog would be most inclusive given our specific goals—definitely no pork since that would exclude the Muslim and Jewish communities. Devout Hindus don’t eat beef. By the time you’re down to chicken or turkey dogs you might as well just get the soy ones, but at that point nobody wants them anymore and that’s why there’s no such thing as the Department of Hot Dogs in real life.]
I read Tina’s binder overnight and dialed in to the call the next morning, ready to take vigorous notes to share with my new boss. By 10:15, my fingers got tired of writing in my notepad. By 10:20, I thought my hand was going to fall off. By 10:22, I realized I was an idiot and started typing the notes on my computer instead. By 10:40, the conversation was so deep into the weeds of policy nerdom that my notes wouldn’t have made much sense outside of a think tank; it made me feel good that I （a government employee） being paid by you （the taxpayer） did in fact understand everything that was happening.
By 10:50, the call started to wrap up.
A voice said, “Good talk, everyone. So, is DHD going to be included in the EO? What’s the decision?”
I hit the Return button on my computer, typed Decision: and waited.
A couple of seconds went by. Another voice on the call said, “Come on folks. I have to leave for an eleven o’clock meeting. What’s the decision?”
My cursor blinked. A few more seconds of silence. Man, these people were making it so juicy! What would they decide?!
A third voice spoke up, this one more authoritative and intimidating.
AUTHORITATIVE AND INTIMIDATING PERSON: Well, who’s on from the White House?
I took myself off mute.
“This is Kal.”
AUTHORITATIVE AND INTIMIDATING PERSON: Okay, Kal. So, what’s the decision?
The world stood still.
I thought to myself, Surely there’s an actual adult from the White House on the phone to make this decision about whether an entire federal agency should be included in President Obama’s executive order, right?
Without missing a beat, what I said instead came out confidently. “The president would find it wasteful to include DHD in the process, so we’ll eliminate them from the EO. Thanks for the great conversation. Looking forward to next week’s call, everyone.”
Twenty-four voices immediately said thanks amid a cacophony of loud dings as they each hopped off the conference line.
I had made my first decision on behalf of the president of the United States, and I had done it on genuine instinct. Was it the right one? I sprinted out of my office, down the first-floor hallway of the EEOB, across the little footpath on West Executive Avenue, and up three flights of stairs, taking two steps at a time to the top floor of the West Wing where Tina’s office was located. Her door was open, and her assistant waved me in.
Tina was at her desk typing something very fast. “I just—” I said, panting and out of breath. “I just hhhhhh got off that conference call and hhhhhhhhh I said DHD can’t be part of the president’s executive order HHHHHH.” Consummate multitasker that she was, Tina never stopped typing and never broke eye contact with her computer screen. “Great,” she threw out casually. “That’s why we hired you.”
I guess I was probably expecting either （worst case） a stern reprimand for making the wrong decision or （best case） an emphatic pat on the back for being a genius. I got neither—and as I recognized in the moment, that’s obviously how it should have happened. Making a weighty decision like that was just my job. I knew what I was doing and was trusted for it. “You know,” Tina smirked, finally looking at me, “next time instead of running here, you can just send me an email.”
* * *
Having shaken off my rookie insecurities, I spent four more months spearheading a dedicated team of staffers across the Executive Branch—from lawyers to senior advisors to junior staffers—to get the EO through the interagency review process. By October we had worked out all the details. The document was ready for President Obama’s signature. In a stroke of good timing for an AAPI Executive Order, the date of the signing ceremony happened to coincide with Diwali—the Hindu festival of lights celebrating the triumph of good over evil.
Diwali is celebrated by a billion people spread out around the world. When I was growing up, we’d celebrate Diwali with bright diyas, delicious food, family, friends, rangoli, and lights. Boxes of sweets were exchanged. My parents would huddle over the telephone for hours, going through a thick notebook full of pencil-written phone numbers, wishing others well. Our phone rang for at least two weeks with greetings of Sal Mubarak!—Happy New Year.
Previous administrations had hosted Diwali events, but never in the White House residence, and never with the president himself in attendance. This year would change all that—during the signing ceremony, President Obama would personally observe Diwali by lighting a diya in the East Room. It was going to be a big deal.
Since the event had gone from being something important to something truly historic, I felt some extra pressure to make sure it all came together well. The press had taken so much interest in my leaving House for a job in DC, I could already see their headline if something went wrong: Without Harold, Kumar Screws Up White House Signing Ceremony and Diwali Event.
I couldn’t risk it. While I didn’t have a Harold, I did have my talented intern, James.
On the Saturday before the event, James and I worked our asses off and triple-checked everything we had spent the last several months doing. We pored over the list of invited guests and their vetting reports to make sure there were no weird glitches. （I mean, you wouldn’t want the Salahis to get turned away at the door.） We went over the last draft of the president’s speech with the exacting speechwriting team to ensure that the boss’s remarks would lay the groundwork to achieve the goals OPE and Whappy were going to be executing.