A Conversation with Jen Psaki
COURTESY IMAGE // THE WHITE HOUSE, THE COLONIAL ECHO
It was a chilly 38ºF on the afternoon of February 8th in D.C., the day after Tom Brady and the Buccaneers beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary and a graduate of the College of William and Mary’s Class of 2000, who at 42 is a full year younger than the star quarterback, had given the daily press briefing at noon. In it she discussed the nascent stimulus bill that had begun its long journey through the halls of Congress, and which still contained the provision mandating a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage. The spotlight of the day remained the impending impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, the finalized rules of which congressional leaders would announce later in the day. It was 3:30 when I rushed up the stairs in Tucker Hall to find an empty third-floor classroom. The room on the west side was unoccupied, so I went in, set down my backpack, put my phone and my notes on the table in front of me, and waited for the phone to ring. After exchanging emails with Ms Psaki’s chief of staff, I had given her my number, and it was agreed that she would call me for a 15-minute interview. Eight minutes later, the phone rang with a 202 number; I answered, and Ms Psaki was on the other end, calling from the West Wing of the White House. We exchanged greetings; she asked how school was going, an inquiry which every student from three to twenty-three is almost certain to receive upon meeting someone older than they are. I delivered a typically unsatisfactory answer; in returning the pleasantry, I didn’t have the same sort of ready-made question, so I had to take the more general tack of asking her how her day had been.
“Good,” she said. “Busy,” she added, laughing, “but good.”
The clock was already ticking on the 15 minutes I had been allotted, and I shifted over into interview mode as quickly as I could.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
WK: Just sort of to start off, what is your favourite memory from freshman year at William and Mary?
JP: Oh, boy. You know, I always fondly remember the beginning of the school year, and the traditions that every freshman takes part in. I remember very specifically the welcome by President Sullivan outside of the Wren Building. I have a lot of great memories of being a swimmer on the swim team there. I have great memories of late nights in my freshman hall — I lived in DuPont, which was a great dorm back then, still is, I’m sure.
WK: What was a class or a professor that you really loved?
JP: I was an English major, and I really loved a lot of different English classes I took. I remember taking some classes maybe my junior or senior year on African-American authors that I remember especially enjoying. They took place at the time, I don’t know where they take place today, in the upper floors of Tucker, so they were in these cozy rooms, and we would just discuss these incredible books that had been written in history, so I remember that fondly. I remember, I think it was Professor Kate Slevin, who was one of my sociology professors — I remember those classes fondly. I was a sociology double-major, so I also remember those classes as being really interesting and learning quite a bit about movements and societies, and I just really thought that was interesting. Before I knew it, I had a sociology double-major because I enjoyed those classes so much.
WK: Moving on a little bit, when did you know you wanted to go into political communications as a career, and what experiences at W&M steered you towards that?
JP: Well, I wouldn’t say I knew what career path I wanted to follow then until I was a couple of years out of college, so this is I guess a lesson to anyone who’s reading that you don’t have to know what you want to do for the rest of your life the moment you graduate — at least that wasn’t the case for me. I always loved writing and always loved books and discussion and debate, so for me that was a good basis for different career paths I explored moving forward. I interned between my junior and senior years on Capitol Hill, and so that was probably a formative experience for me, but I didn’t decide to go into politics until a couple of years later. So I would say, I didn’t know what I wanted to do the day I graduated — I didn’t really know what I wanted to do a year after I graduated. It took me a couple of years to figure it out. For people who are seniors now, my unsolicited advice would be to figure out what your passions are, and try to follow them, but it may not be the first job that is the job that you’re going to do forever. It took me a little bit of time to get there.
COURTESY IMAGE // THE WHITE HOUSE, THE COLONIAL ECHO
WK: How did you come to join John Kerry’s 2004 campaign?
JP: So, I actually worked for the Iowa Democratic Party in 2002, and I had worked for the state party when there were two competitive — or at least we thought they’d be competitive — elections happening, one for the gubernatorial race, where then-Governor Tom Vilsack was up for re-election, and the second was the re-election of then-Senator Tom Harkin, and I was just bitten by the political bug. I was doing everything from door-knocking and making phone calls to putting together creative protests at events, and I knew that I wanted to stay engaged in politics. The Iowa caucuses were getting started just a couple of months after the 2002 campaign, and so I interviewed with a couple of different campaigns, but ultimately John Kerry was the best candidate. I was most excited about working for him, and I was fortunate that there was an opportunity for me to work on the Iowa campaign for him that kicked off just a couple months after the 2002 campaign cycle ended.
WK: And then, when did you first meet President Obama and what was that like?
JP: Well, it’s funny, because [when] I got a job on his campaign — probably in January of 2007 — I was one of the earlier campaign hires for his press office, but I didn’t move there the week he announced his intent to run because my dad got remarried that same day. So I’ll always remember his anniversary.
I didn’t actually meet him until several months later, when I travelled with him to an event in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the same day I met him for the first time was the first time I met my future in-laws — it was quite a day, in October — who were also from Cincinnati. So the first time I met him, I was sitting in his car because I was going to staff him for this series of events, and he opened the door and I said, “You may be wondering who I am, and why I’m in your car.” So, I’ll always remember that, but then I of course went on to work for him for almost 10 years after that, in a variety of different roles.
WK: So skipping almost to the present now, when and how did you find out that you’d be the Biden administration’s press secretary?
JP: I had joined the transition in October, because I wanted to play any role I could in helping out in what I hoped would be a transition to a Democratic president. I had worked quite a bit in the past with [senior White House advisors] Jeff Zients and Anita Dunn and others who were co-chairs of the transition, so they brought me on to help with the confirmation process for the confirmation of nominees to serve in the president’s cabinet. I was in that role and I was happy to be serving in that role for a couple of months, and then I figured I would go back to my life — and I have two preschool-age kids and also just doing a variety of the different roles with a bunch of clients, and I was a contributor to CNN, etc.
And then at some point in November I was asked if I’d be open to talking with then-President-Elect Biden about this role, which of course was an honor to be asked to have that conversation with him. I went to Delaware right before Thanksgiving for an event and had a conversation with him and Dr. Biden about the role, and what he was looking for, and how we could work together. Then it happened very quickly and an announcement was made maybe a week or two after that, so that was the timeline of how it all went down.
WK: And in what time you’ve had in your job so far, what strikes you about the atmosphere in this administration, and in what ways does it differ from the Obama administration?
JP: You know, I think every presidential administration is different, because you’re serving at different moments in history, and because we are all here following up on an administration, the Trump administration. A primary part of my job is to rebuild trust with the American people because trust has been really frayed within the public with institutions, and the media, and there’s really a lack of trust of what people can rely on, and what information they can rely on. That’s always the role of the press secretary, but it’s even more the role now because of the administration we’re following.
There are some different steps we’ve taken, and there are different aspects of the environment, including the fact that we all wear masks around the White House every day, and we all get tested for COVID every morning when we arrive here, so there are certainly protocols that were not in place when I worked for President Obama. So there were fewer people in the West Wing than there were at that period of time — that will change over time — but we try to do everything that’s COVID-safe, of course.
And I also think there’s more of a reliance now on trying to lift up policy experts — I mean, there was then too, but in a more public way. You know, how cabinet members and people who were playing lead policy roles are the face of administration policies, and that wasn’t something that we did as well early on in the Obama administration, and I think it’s something I think we’re trying to do a better job of now.
WK: What is your favourite part of your job?
JP: I actually have a great deal of respect for the role of the media, and the role they play in communicating with the public, and on most days — and I’ve only been doing it for less than three weeks — most days the White House Press Briefing is fun. You’re communicating on behalf of the president of the United States and the White House on what the president’s thinking, the policies of the White House, and you are kind of showcasing what democracy should look like. And that could be engagement with people who disagree with you, who are pushing you hard, that’s kind of the role of the press. So I enjoy that, but I also enjoy, you know, I have a great team around me of really talented, hard-working people, and I really enjoy the opportunity to work with them, but also to look for moments for them to grow and shine as well, because I’m certainly not going to be here forever. Being back in the White House again is an opportunity to help lift up the next group of people who will have my current job, and a range of other jobs in this White House, in the years ahead, and in future White Houses.
WK: When your time as press secretary is over, what do you hope will characterise it when people look back on it?
JP: You know, I hope that people will see this period of time as one that restored transparency and honesty and truth to the briefing room. And hopefully, I made policy cool again, or made some progress doing that. And that I also helped lift up a bunch of new faces and voices that were not household names previously, whether that’s members of the Cabinet or policy experts, or even members of my own team.
COURTESY IMAGE // THE WHITE HOUSE, THE COLONIAL ECHO
WK: What is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned over the course of your political career?
JP: That there are days when you are going to wish you handled things differently, you said something differently, you said it more clearly, you articulated it in a different way. And that, just like most careers, it’s not about how you handle your best days, it’s how you handle your worst, right? And do you get it the next day, and keep plugging along? And there’s not a lot that fazes me at this point — I’ve been through almost an entire eight-year administration, and then a lot of different jobs in government and in different agencies. But that’s one of the lessons that’s held with me, and I think coming back to work here for a second time — actually this is my third time back, I guess, because I came back during the Obama administration after leaving — is that I appreciate things even more. I’m just trying to value the moments in the front seat you have to history and, you know, writing things down just for your own memories and things that I can tell my kids and grandkids one day about funny things that happened or things I experienced, or amazing moments that I was able to witness. I didn’t do enough of that the first and second time around.
WK: And also, who have been your political role models?
JP: I’ve had a lot — I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of people who have had this current job I’m in in the past. So, I took their advice, and they’ve had some common things to say, some different things to say. I’ve been fortunate and had a number of people in my career who have been advocates of mine, [Obama-era Communications Advisor] Linda Douglass, Anita Dunn, who works here now as a senior advisor, [former Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs, [Obama campaign Chief Strategist] David Axelrod. There are many more beyond that, but those are some of the people who have been mentors at moments, and people to bounce things off of in other moments, and been supporters of mine, and people that I’ve continued to stay in touch with and touch base with as things come up.
WK: One more thing is — and I think you touched on this a little bit before — having gone from William and Mary grad to White House press secretary and everything else, what would you say to current W&M seniors who think they might want to go into a political field?
JP: That there are many paths forward, but I will never ever regret going and trying out a political campaign, and that is the fastest way to know if this world is for you. Most of them are just a couple of months long — you’ll learn a lot and get lots of different experiences. And you know what, I’ll never regret trying something new or taking the opportunity to try something new, and that’s certainly led me to a career that I’ve really enjoyed, and learned a great deal, had incredible experiences in, but I would say my best advice would be, go try a campaign, go try to get a job on the Hill, don’t worry about your title, just work your tail off — it’s not more complicated than that — and D.C. and political campaigns are great places to be, at any point in time, but certainly when you’re young.
We had already passed the 15-minute mark, but as an avid watcher of the West Wing, there was one last crucial question that I had to get off my chest.
“This question could be hit or miss,” I said after hearing that she hadn’t watched the show in a long time, “but can you do The Jackal?”
(For the uninitiated, The Jackal is the song that fictitious Press Secretary CJ Cregg famously lip-syncs in Season 1, Episode 18)
Psaki laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried it. That’s a good question though. I would say on the best day, working in the White House is like the West Wing, and on most days it’s like in an episode of Veep.”
Having set my conscience at ease by asking that final question — and knowing that I’d deprived the country of one of its senior officials for nearly three full minutes more than anticipated — I had to let her go on with her day.
Standing up and looking around the now-empty room in Tucker which could well have held one of the classes that Ms. Psaki had just spoken of; I could not help but wonder who else would pass through the classrooms of the College and go on to reach such heights — I certainly do not think that Ms. Psaki will be the last to make the trek from the Wren Yard to the upper echelons of the White House.
COURTESY IMAGE // THE WHITE HOUSE, THE COLONIAL ECHO