While I wasn’t the caliber writer or senior staffer who had the President’s ear that Latimer claims to have been (I learned on about day three of my White House tenure that there are about six people on the President’s staff who actually matter, and I wasn’t one of them), I was on the team. And being on the team meant understanding a key responsibility – you serve at the pleasure of the President.
What does that mean? Quite simply, you are there to help him, to advance his efforts, and to protect him. It also means that if you have a problem, become disenchanted, or are just too conflicted with the evil and misguided way things are being done, you leave. Pretty straight-forward, except to folks like Matt Latimer. His brand of White House staffer sees the opportunity to better the President as secondary to the opportunity to better himself.
And like Scott “Benedict” McClellan before him, that opportunity comes in the smarmiest form of all – trying to make a quick buck by selling a book no one of consequence will read. Now, as the few minor ‘a-ha’ salacious nuggets cycle out of the 24-news rotation after generating such incredible headlines as “Bush Mocked Other Pols While President” (how shocking), his tome will become little more than a footnote, but a costly one at that. After alienating all of his former colleagues, I suppose Latimer has no interest in working in politics again. Then again I wonder who would trust him to sit in a closed-door strategy session in any professional endeavor? Not me anyway.
It’s ironic too that in his book, Latimer suggests disappointment that the real west wing didn’t live up to Aaron’s Sorkin’s fictional portrayal. As a fan of that show, I can say that Sorkin went to great lengths to highlight one major theme throughout the series above all others – loyalty. It’s too bad this is one real-life tenet that Latimer failed to grasp.