Obama Staffers Reveal How to Plan a Presidential Trip | Let’s Break It Down

we were just like who are you talking to he's like streisand we're like okay goodbye you know you're mindful of all these landmines that have other people have stepped in and you don't want to repeat them welcome to let's break it down where we go behind the scenes at the white house to reveal how presidential events are planned choreographed and executed to prevent things from going terribly wrong i'm alyssa mastromonico former white house deputy chief of staff for barack obama joining me today is david plouffe former campaign manager and white house senior advisor for barack obama this week we are going to break down domestic travel why do it who cares right now you know covid is still a huge problem but joe biden's getting out a little bit and my first question for you pluff is what is even the point of taking the president on the road i mean to me there's very little that's as important as that first of all you get national attention wherever you're going so you get the national overlay assuming you have something compelling to say but also in a compelling location something you and i spent a great amount of time on what would be the most compelling place to deliver a message or draw a contrast and of course then the visuals it's not the white house uh east room with the awful you know yellow drapes you know you're in front of machinery or people or on a farm or with nurses and so you know as you know uh you've got to think visual first if you're trying to impart any kind of message or information and you only get that i think from being out in the country uh and so it's i think you and i spent as much time about that what's the shot what's the backdrop as we did where we went because that's so so you know that picture that video that somebody may see or share on social media is so important when you're traveling domestically it's considered a conus trip contiguous states it includes the lower 48 and when you're outside it's oconus outside the continental u.s um so most of what we're talking about are our conus trips what many people don't know is there is not some massive budget for the president to travel the state department pays when the president travels uh internationally but when you're in america it is a bit of a weird bidding situation where you have to establish the trip you want to take and say we are talking about transportation and you have to go to the the transportation secretary's office pitch your trip which should be approved because the president's asking and say will you pay for this trip so for everybody watching that is how trips get paid for i had one person in my office whose job it was to get the trips paid for and spend time talking to all the agencies working magic but and you know unlike the prior occupant of the white house we actually believed in paying bills to local vendors in local law enforcement right and so we took that deeply responsibly you know for you and i we know that domestic travel doesn't just uh doesn't exist to just sell legislation you know my favorite domestic trips were the summer national parks tours where we would go remind americans that national parks were for everybody uh my favorite one being acadia national park in maine where we happened to go i don't know who planned it during wild blueberry season so that was a joy did you and did you ever go on any of the parks trips i didn't but those were tremendous i think the obama family loved them i do think that it helped spike interest and probably attendance at national parks um so you're right i mean that's a great example of that's not a trip to sell a piece of legislation right um but it's a trip that i do think has political benefit because you're just being a normal american out there enjoying something almost all americans can access but it's a really important way to use the bully pulpit uh not for your own benefit but to lift up these parks and the visuals coming out of that were tremendous well one of the things that you missed was on the first trip that we where we went i think we were at yellowstone i was actually with crooked media co-founder john lovett who i can say this because he's not here dressed like a mountie for his trip um did he really he questions my memory but my memory is strong looking back now do you have a trip that we did that you were like that was like the smartest thing they could have done well listen i mean i think when we went to oswatomi to talk about economic inequality you know a historic place that i believe roosevelt had given an important speech out that was a smart thing that's a good example where the words he said were important but like we went to osawatomie and so there was a lot of media coverage about why that was the president will be speaking about the economy in osawatomie on tuesday jake peterson spent the day in a town that's usually not friendly territory for a democrat but i also thought the uh the crazy flyer around the country thing that we did um was really important because it showed him hustling out there in a close election hungry and he actually he wasn't thrilled about the idea if i recall when you and i talked to him about it but i actually think he enjoyed it by the end and thought it was a good thing to do so the iowa state fair uh i thought that otr we did during 12 where the four more beer uh chant i'll tell you what and then afterwards if you recall obama went back to the hotel and a bunch of us stayed and remember axelrod had a like a fried turkey leg like from the flintstones yes he did he had a beer and another and he had his phone cradled uh you know right here talking to barbra streisand i'll never forget that i was gonna walking down the middleware state fair he's like you know trying not to spill his beer and you know it was epic and we were just like who are you talking to he's like streisand we're like okay goodbye well yeah we're gonna send her a picture of exactly what you look like i'm like get off the phone that's but you know what's funny in demystifying things for people is that people think you have to know the playbook or be a genius to come up with some of the stuff we did but like the 48-hour tour you and i came up with on air force one on a trip and you were like we have to do something that breaks through and i was like what if we took off and just didn't come back and you were like whoa let's do a 48 hour and the way that we came up with all the stops it's like okay clearly we start near washington dc then in theory you want to make your way out west and then make your way back and we were going through and then we were like oh wait hold on we can early vote in chicago we can show people how to early vote and then we could go to iowa or wherever our second stop was and i was like wait a minute we might be able to get to l.a in time for jay leno i was like like the thing i always think about what you and i did is that there was like i mean you were the boss and there was no bad ideas you know you were just like just keep throwing them out but sometimes there are bad ideas can you think of any truly disastrous domestic trips taken by a president well sure i mean i hate to uh to dump on on 43 and their team but you know mission accomplished um the flyover of katrina uh was bad um you know i think trump's little walter reed drive around and coming back to the white house is some kind of conquering hero where he took the mask off that was bad um so yeah i mean you can misfire i don't think we as i'm sure we did i don't recall any big misfires in our i mean we had some in the campaign like the otr where he went bowling in 2008. um you know maybe he looked human bowling at 37 but he looked like that was not good um those would be the most memorable ones obviously george h.w bush when he's at the supermarket with a scanner oh right it may not be the trip but it's what happens in the preparation so when john kerry went to the cheesesteak stand in philly and asked for swiss cheese sorry to bring that up but like even the best ideas not properly executed can be like setbacks so um uh and i think we are listen you and i talked about those things historically they become rich no mission accomplished no cherry cheese steaks with all love john kerry both of us do you're for more boss but like these things echo through history and you don't want to repeat them the dukakis tank you know you're mindful of all these landmines that have other people have stepped in well you know what's interesting about the katrina flyover is that i remember being in my apartment back in washington dc watching that happen when president bush was president and it's only until you get in the white house and i will say to the bush team's credit they addressed this one with me head on when i got there and they're like look it could have happened to anybody and i was like um i don't think so we're very smart and they explained to me what their choices were right their choice was to not do anything because you can't land in the middle of a place that is utterly flooded where all of the real resources need to be harnessed to help the people and not support a president's trip and if they hadn't done anything you know it would have been like bad too so they thought he needed to see what was happening and the truth is now i understand that but at the time to me i think that the lesson they taught me was like you always got to explain it to death to the press right and i think that that's something that we tried to do because there were times it's like some things you have to go and you do want to help heal the community but you really can't get where you should where you want to go and see because you have to put the people first and so the katrina flyover we remember as a disaster but truly they didn't have great options and if they had maybe just explained better to the press it would have been covered differently right no the national disaster is what you think should just be a straightforward i'm here to you know help the community heal sir i can help i remember bobby jindal the governor of louisiana being a real pain when we wanted to go down there obviously somewhat legendarily chris christie and barack obama i think did the right thing by working together during sandy um the trip to joplin i actually have in my basement a copy of that amazing photo where he's shaking hands remember guy must have been in his 70s or 80s with the american flag with the old blue american pickup truck with the devastation yes it's an amazing moment um but uh but they're important because obviously after school shootings and other tragedies um you know you have to try and heal but national disasters you know you're also like there to like what are we not doing and you were obviously deeply involved in all those yeah you know from a recovery standpoint and making the right decisions your work during sandy was just heroic alyssa uh to make sure we were getting equipment where it needed to get to so it was um those were actually some of the more challenging trips because you had to be focused on the visuals and then there was actually real work to be done uh and often obama would hear things on the ground that maybe he hadn't heard about uh i mean that's the most important part like that's the real you know seeing people domestic troops to me are just showing people you're listening and you kind of give it yes you've got you can't go in a community without knowing what's happening in that community um stories like that because it just shows that that the president united states the most powerful person in the world is kind of dialed in it's important so it's not just going in there giving some speech about tax cuts you know educating policy you're also there to like commune with people so now also you and i went on domestic trips that can only be described as catastrophic and heartbreaking you and i went to newtown connecticut together with potus two days after the mass shooting do you remember the trip and what do you think the point of presidents making trips like that one is i mean i'll never forget it that whole 48 hours from the friday morning i was in the oval i believe with cody keenan [Music] speechwriter uh working on the inaugural address and then john brennan comes in we had all seen alerts that there was a school shooting but he obviously had more detailed information and and his president obama's remarks friday night where he understandably got highly emotional to sunday so a president's job and trump obviously either didn't do this or actually exacerbated divisions is to try and heal um and um you know that was the toughest moment i think president obama had he had over his eight years sadly so many times where he tried to heal the nation and and find words of comfort from charleston to colorado but this was um you know as you remember the thing that was striking because the family members who had lost their children or had lost their spouses you know some of the teachers tragically killed you know he'd meet with groups of them where their memorial service was before the speech and this was in december mid-december and if i recall pretty much every family brought their holiday card you know and just showed this is my son or this is my daughter and i don't know how he got out of those rooms much less gave a speech because it's one of the most heartbreaking things i've ever witnessed in my life potus said make sure i have the name of every single child and teacher it is the least i can do and then he listed all the victims by name in the speech god has called them all home for those of us who remain let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory but that's important it's the healing that you do privately with families and with people but then the words and and i think that um over time i remember when he gave the speech in charleston i talked to him around he's like i'm not sure i have anything else less to say yeah i've just had to do this so often and that was the amazing amazing grace moment amazing grace how sweet the sound i don't think people understand a how important that is for a president to be able to do that well and actually i think president obama certainly i think this is true for most prior presidents yeah they had to give a speech if it was a major moment to try and give context and understanding and and help people move forward it was the time they spent privately with victims that was so important and that's obviously what's so draining i mean if i remember alice i think he spent two two and a half hours he did he met with every single family and you and i and valerie jarrett all stood outside because like what else can you do it was and and pete souza's memory i heard him talk about it i remember at the time but i heard him talk about it saying it was the only time he ever saw secret service agents cry yeah you know and that's like when you hear that though and you see what the country has missed the last four years of having someone who regardless of party can you know exercise true empathy and sympathy and compassion it's you know joe biden i feel like he this is this is something that he unfortunately especially based on the last couple of weeks you know he excels at it and unfortunately it will be a handy skill i think with mass shooting pretty much every week in the past couple now we have president biden potus 46. he was doing the help is here tour prior to the uh 1.9 trillion dollar american rescue plan and now he's hitting the road uh with the cabinet to sell the infrastructure plan with the quote build back better and quote win the future trips when the future that sounds familiar i know we had a little win the future period if i recall look and you know wtf if there is one it totally was okay so i was going to see if you remembered that because all i remember that was like didn't we we did that out of a state of the union i can't remember what year right these steps we've taken over the last two years may have broken the back of this recession but to win the future we'll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making win the future win the future do you think so far their travel is effective and who do you think is the best messenger when it comes to folks who maybe didn't vote for biden here's the thing first of all the circumstances could not be more different from this very important standpoint for all of 09 all of 10 hell you even remember in 2012. um you know the economy was still in tough shape obama got re-elected with the highest unemployment rate any incumbent president has ever been reelected with uh and so uh the recovery was gradual um and so to go out there and say hey we've passed the recovery act everything's gonna be okay just flew in the face of what people are experiencing i think in this situation knock on wood most economists believe the economy is going to recover really quickly really strongly so i think biden and his administration have an easier job really saying helps on the way and it's going to be here very soon but he's the best messenger um because i think he appeals to people i think he's clearly one of his strengths in the election and post-election as he just seems like a guy doing his job with no spin on the ball uh uh so for him to be out there i think both talking about what he's already done highlighting the accomplishments just as importantly talking about the work left to do i think is incredibly important and i hope over time they will go to some places that aren't home games that are tough areas that that voted for trump maybe even decisively um and that's right up biden's mo to say hey we're not gonna agree with everything you're probably not gonna vote for me but i'm here fighting for you and let me tell you what i'm trying to do the other thing is he should be talking about the rescue plan not just this april but next april probably the april of of 2023 because the storytelling coming out of it's going to be amazing plus we just broke it down thank you so much for coming on this week well of course and that was one of my great joys of both the campaign and the white house time was you know being in a laboratory with you and your amazing team you know trying to figure out a way to animate what we're trying to do you know you guys just really were tremendous at being creative about high wire execution investors ever been in my opinion thank you plov thanks for coming on thanks for joining us and please let us know which white house events you're interested in learning more about in the comments below you

Channel: Pod Save America

Views: 73,769

Keywords: Biden visits Philadelphia, Biden in Philadelphia, Biden tour, presidential trips, presidential travel, Obama Sandy Hook, Obama Charleston, Obama gun control, domestic trips, David Plouffe, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Let's break it down, obama staffers explain, Obama, Barack Obama, Joe Biden

Id: 0-oCMRX550c

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021