Remembering Joe Shattan — and What I Learned About Him from His Office

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building. (Public domain photo)

Former Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney speechwriter Joe Shattan died this past summer. I'm late in hearing about it (it happened in early June), but I would like to share some memories I have of him.

"What? John, you know a Quayle/Cheney speechwriter?" Yes, in the summer of 1990, I had an internship in the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Of America. It was thanks to the Institute for Educational Affairs (an organization that I think continues today under a different name).

Anyway, I was assigned to work with Zelda Novak (daughter of the "Prince of Darkness" conservative columnist Robert Novak), and I spent the summer doing pretty useless work in appropriate obscurity. But on the other side of my desk (stuffed in a cubby hole) was the office of Joseph Shattan, who was often traveling with the VP and who allowed me to spend my lunch hours in his office when he wasn't there. I never got to know him well or much at all, but I did get a good sense of him during those lunch hours, and you can see why.

I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin. If you're a Green Bay person and there exists a photo of you with a Packer player, you've got it framed on your walls, and probably in a prominent place. In Washington, D.C., people are the same way about big politicians, and usually their desks and walls are covered with framed photos of them shaking hands with or at least photobombing presidents, vice presidents, senators, governors, and representatives.

But Joe Shattan? In his quiet, neat, book-filled office, he had plenty of photos, but they were of him and his family. Wife. Kids. I saw all those and didn't see the other celebrity-suck-up photos, and thought to myself, "This guy has his priorities right. Good guy."

When I stumbled across the news today that he had passed away (on June 8, 2014, at the young age of 63, felled by cancer), I found a couple things that reminded me of my fondness for this person. First, other people were writing about what a kind and genuine person he was — not something you generally associate with political people, especially conservative political functionaries who spent decades in government.

The other thing was a link to an article Shattan had written in 2009, in which he remembered how much he loved visiting the library in the Old Executive Office Building (a large old building next to the White House where the vice president has his office and staff). Shattan, a writer and clearly a book lover, really enjoyed going to the library, taking in the atmosphere of books and busy librarians and available information in that pre-internet age. Back then, I hadn't known about his joy for that library, but I had also enjoyed escaping to it when my useless tasks allowed. I can still remember that library well, with its beautiful columns and spiral staircases and awesome collections of books. I especially recall the corner where I dug through countless old copies of The New York Review of Books. It was the summer in which I had just discovered John Updike and Philip Roth, so I loved searching for old reviews of their books. The library was the one room in the Old Executive Office Building (now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) that had the same nice vibe as Joe Shattan's office.

I never knew Joe Shattan well, but I apparently knew him well enough to know that this book-loving intellectual whose politics were quite different from what mine became was a good man. I'm very sorry to hear about his passing. R.I.P.

White House Party Crashers Show the Way

A coworker was invited to attend the first state dinner thrown by the Obama White House this past Tuesday night. I was not invited. Silly me, because apparently I could have attended even though I didn't get an invitation.

You all know the story by now. Two annoying attention-seekers attended the party even though they weren't invited, getting past a security wall that must be paper-thin, and they had their picture taken with various high potentates, such as the vice president of the United States. This makes our federal government look like it has worse security than a middling night club in Chicago.

It does, however, put a new light on the National Treasure films. Remember the one where hero Nicholas Cage is able to get into the White House? Remember thinking: Only in Hollywood?

Apparently not. Apparently, it's even easier than that. Just show up.

Question:
Doesn't anyone ever get fired in Washington for doing a poor job?

I Guess Elections Aren't Bad for Newsstand Sales After All

Time to be snarky: I recently tweaked a magazine distribution data executive who blamed a whopping 22 million copy drop in single copy magazine sales on the election (among other things). I said no, an exciting election (which this definitely was) should boost newsstand sales.
And it did. Folio: reports that Time magazine's Person of the Year issue and its commemorative special edition on the election victory (both featuring a certain White House-bound Chicago White Sox fan, broke the magazine's records for single-copy sales.

So the old line about how a magazine cover can't lose if it features a dog or children? Now add President Obama. (Who, by the way, is buying a dog for his children. Whoever puts that on their cover will be a millionaire!)

29

Okay, I'll depart from my new-found devotion to writing about magazines to note that the Chicago White Sox's magic number (the combination of wins by the Sox and losses by its main opponent) is 29.

Even better, if you were looking for a reason to vote for Barack Obama, then here's this: According to the Chicago Sun-Times (and other outlets), in an ESPN interview to air later this week, Obama was asked about Chicago's baseball teams.

ESPN: "If the Cubs and the White Sox both make it to the World Series?"

Obama: "I would be going."

ESPN: "Who would you root for?"

Obama: "Oh, that's easy. White Sox. I'm not one of these fair-weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox – that's baseball. Southside."

That's great. He's a real Sox fan -- you can tell, because he not only praised the Sox but he slammed Cub fans (and accurately, too). Now THAT's the kind of insight we need in the White House!

Scott McClellan on How the Bush White House Works