* * *
Beyond the MILF memo, my time in government included meetings with health care advocates, conversations with aviation industry representatives, and summits with climate change activists. Our portfolio areas sometimes overlapped, like when President Obama hosted Chinese president Hu Jintao. As the Asian American and Pacific Islander liaison, I was to oversee a portion of the State Arrival Ceremony on the South Lawn. As the arts liaison, I had the honor of helping facilitate the official gift that Obama would give his guest.
For the latter, Tina suggested POTUS commission a painting by Chicago-based Chinese American artists the Zhou Brothers. Each week, I’d join a series of conference calls between the State Department, artists, and the national security team. Huddled around a packed conference table in the Situation Room, my small portion of the meetings—led by my friend Ben Rhodes （then a deputy national security advisor）—was to update the entire team on the progress of the gift. “The color red is auspicious to the Chinese, so expect there to be lots of red tones,” I’d say. “Eight and six are considered lucky numbers. The artists are going to paint on a canvas that’s eighty-six inches wide and sixty-eight inches high.”
What I enjoyed most about these meetings was that they allowed me to hear what people I admired had to say. The highlight was usually Samantha Power, （then the National Security Council Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights）， who in the case of Obama’s gift coyly vented what I assumed were issues stemming from her own portfolio, “A painting eighty-six inches wide, wow. Eighty-six. Eighty-six… Eighty-six Uighurs who could be freed if we raised the issue with President Hu…”
The Zhou Brothers’ painting was being sent from Chicago and was set to arrive at the White House the same evening as the Chinese charter carrying President Hu’s gift for Obama from Beijing. （We were told this would be a bronze statue of President Lincoln, created by Chinese artist Yuan Xikun.） Ice and snow led to delays in travel. Both gifts were finally cleared into the complex around 3 a.m. Standing with Secret Service agents at a door adjaccent to the South Portico when the truck finally pulled up, the frigid air slapped my face awake.
“We’re going to take the crates to screen further. Do you want to wait until that’s done to see everything out of the boxes?” an agent asked.
“No, I’m good now that it’s all here. I know what our painting looks like, and I’ve seen statues of Lincoln before.” I hailed a cab home and went to bed.
The morning after the gift exchange, word around the office was that President Obama had prominently displayed the Lincoln statue on a pedestal outside the Oval, so that it was visible to the visiting delegation. I was looped into a quippy email chain of AAPI staffers: “Kal, have you seen the bust of Lincoln?”
I had quickly peeked at it from the back, in passing, but hadn’t gotten too close a glance yet. My friend Gary Lee wrote, “What’s with Lincoln’s eyes?” With mild concern that there may have been some damage to the statue during the unboxing that I missed, I surreptitiously walked by the Oval to get a closer look. No obvious signs that the statue had been dropped. I leaned in. Lincoln’s eyes looked… how do I say this correctly, his eyes looked… like they belonged less to President Lincoln and more to… President Hu? “Holy shit, they gave Lincoln Asian eyes.”
Power move, President Hu. Power. Move.
* * *
Aside from dealing with statues and giant magnets, there were touching issues that were brought to our attention, sometimes more discreetly. One morning I received a joint letter from forty-three members of the House and six senators, asking that—as the president’s liaison to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities—I encourage POTUS to take action on the issue of two Sikh Americans who were being denied the ability to serve in the military.
Army rules dictated that turbans and beards were prohibited, effectively preventing Sikhs from serving for decades, but when Tejdeep Singh Rattan and Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi enlisted, they were assured by their recruiters that their articles of faith would not be a hindrance to service. Both men trusted the process and completed four years of schooling, which the army paid for. When they showed up for active duty, however, they were promptly told to remove their turbans and cut their beards and hair. If they refused, they couldn’t serve and would have to pay back the army for the cost of school.
The letter urged that I raise this issue with President Obama, who should act swiftly to grant exemptions to these two men so they could proudly serve with their articles of faith intact. It seemed like a no-brainer. I took the letter next door to VJ’s deputy, Michael Strautmanis. I stood across from Straut in his ornate EEOB corner office （decked out with Chicago sports memorabilia and a portable mini-golf setup） trying to read his face as he read.
“You mean to tell me,” he said calmly as he closed his thick oak office door, “that these brothers are trying to serve our country and we’re preventing them from doing that? That’s some fucking bullshit.”
Strautmanis quickly looped in our coworker Matt Flavin, the president’s director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy. Flavin agreed, it was totally un-American to be denying these men the right to serve. The problem was that on matters like this, the army was considered an independent agency. As commander in chief, Obama did not have the authority to unilaterally grant individual exemptions to this rule. Flavin would have to raise the issue with the army in a way that made it clear the president would strongly urge them to grant the exemption, but we had to take care to avoid saying that we somehow mandated it. I was hopeful that this would just be a formality—was the US Army actually going to say no to a request from the president?
Perhaps the bigger complicating factor was the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell （DADT）， the policy that prohibited gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
More than thirty-two thousand servicemembers were discharged under DADT and its predecessor policies. In the midst of our protracted battle to repeal it through legislative action, if word got out that we were pressuring the army into granting exemptions for two Sikh captains who couldn’t serve because of their turbans （but not the tens of thousands of LGBT service members who couldn’t serve because of their orientation）， it could turn into a real problem.
The fundamental differences between the two policies were pretty clear: Sikhs were prohibited from serving because of a 1984 rule-change made by then army chief of staff John A. Wickham Jr. （not a law passed by Congress）， whereas Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a law passed by Congress （not a rule made by the army chief of staff）。 The mechanism to repeal each terrible policy was therefore fundamentally different. LGBT advocates had nevertheless already railed against Obama for refusing to pause DADT by executive order, and we knew we had to tread lightly or risk losing both gays and Sikhs in the military.
As Flavin worked the ins and outs of lobbying the army, I could offer only broad pledges of support to advocates of the Sikh community that we were “doing everything we can” to help （and we were）。 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was ultimately repealed by Congress. The army eventually granted Captains Rattan and Kalsi their exemptions, and I had the privilege of meeting them at a reception in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month that year.