Obama’s Chief Speechwriter Cody Keenan on Biden’s New Rhetoric and How Democrats Can Beat Trump in 2024
Cody Keenan, who served as chief speechwriter for President Barack Obama during his second term in office, joined me on this week’s episode of The Interview to discuss his new book: Grace: President Obama And Ten Days In The Battle For America.
The memoir recounts a 10-day stretch towards the end of Obama’s presidency, a shocking period of tragedy and progress that started with the horrific mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina and ended with the Supreme Court upholding marriage equality and much of the Affordable Care Act.
The shooting, carried out by a white supremacist, resulted in one of the most remarkable speeches of Obama’s presidency, in which he sang “Amazing Grace” at a eulogy for the nine worshippers killed at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Obama was by that point sick of delivering eulogies for for the victims of mass shootings. “There was a real question as to whether or not he was going to say anything,” Keenan recalled.
But after the families of the Charleston victims stood before the shooter in court just days after the massacre and forgave him, Obama started to consider speaking.
“The president said, I do want to go to Charleston and hug those families. I still don’t know if I want to speak, but if I do, I want to talk about grace.”
Keenan drafted a eulogy either way, with a heavy assist from the president himself.
“He took the pen to it pretty heavy the night before and added the lyrics to Amazing Grace,” Keenan recalled. “And that morning, the final morning, right after the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality, we were on the helicopter to head to Andrews, to head down to Charleston. And he said, you know, if it feels right, I might sing it.”
Obama did end up singing, making for a moment at the center of Keenan’s book reflecting on his administration, including what it was able to accomplish and what even the best speeches cannot get done in Washington.
In Keenan’s epilogue he addresses what came after Obama and his administration left the White House: Donald Trump, who represented the very antithesis of his predecessor and who worked to reverse much of what Obama got done over two terms in office.
Obama’s vice president Joe Biden ousted Trump from the White House, and has recently taken on a new strategy of aggressively confronting Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” most notably in a Pennsylvania speech decrying extremism in the GOP.
“I think it was a smart tactic because we know that it works to paint MAGA politicians as extremists,” Keenan said. “It’s also not a stretch.”
Keenan doesn’t think Democrats should worry about the criticism that they are being “uncivil” or not “unifying” by criticizing Trump and his supporters.
“After the Biden speech, rather than think about the content, it’s just massive pearl clutching. Like, Oh my God, how uncivil. There’s a five alarm fire at Cafe Milano in D.C. where everybody goes and has dinner with the Saudis,” Keenan joked.
“Things are different now,” Keenan said. “You had a political party and a president in the White House who actively orchestrated, or at minimum cheered on an insurrection where people stormed the Capitol building. You’ve now got Republicans running in offices across the country who are already election deniers and they’re promising to overturn the next election.
“This is pretty serious stuff,” he added. “And if you’re not willing to call it out for what it is, then you’re not leading.”
That said, Keenan said it’s vital leaders avoid painting Americans with a broad brush — a misstep Hillary Clinton infamously made when she called some Trump supporters deplorable during the 2016 election campaign, a comment that still gets brought up on Fox News to this day.
“It was a big unforced error on Hillary Clinton’s part, because once you tell… a whole swathe of voters that they are irredeemable, deplorables, racist or whatever, why are they ever going to listen to you again? Why would they ever consider giving you their vote? They’re just going to retreat further to their corners,” Keenan said. “I would caution Biden to refer specifically to the politicians.”
That said, Keenan thinks “pearl-clutching” over comments like Clinton’s are done in bad faith. In particular, Keenan sees Fox News as even more powerful than it was during his time in the White House.
“If there is a difference, it’s that they’re less a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and now they kind of lead it,” he said. “They’re basically the message strategists of the Republican Party. Republicans now basically follow Fox News rather than Fox News amplifying what’s coming out of the Republican Party. I think the roles have switched.”
Finally, I wanted to get Keenan’s perspective on how Democrats can most effectively combat Trump — particularly should he run for president again in 2024. He told me:
Actually with humor. I’d go right back to the 2011 Correspondents Dinner. The best way to take down Trump is by mocking him. We had a lot of fun on the campaign trail in 2020. Obama would basically do standup routines about Trump on the trail and people loved it and it drove Trump insane. The single best way to get under his skin is to do that. I’m sure someone on Ron Desantis’s team is trying to work on some, quote unquote zingers, but I just don’t think that guy has the charisma to pull it off. But if somebody else did, that would be fun to watch in in kind of a cringing in a car crash type way.
We also discussed what he considers to be Obama’s best speech, the process of writing a speech for the 44th president, and whether he’s optimistic about the future of American democracy. Download the full episode here, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
