He stays close to KC and the Oval Office
By early morning, Josh Earnest’s White House mailbox is fast filling up.
He’s read the morning paper, digested several blogs and websites, scanned transcripts of newscasts and political talk shows, and perused a summary of important stories compiled overnight by the White House and deposited in his BlackBerry.
While he shaves, the network morning news plays in the background.
The 37-year-old Earnest, who grew up in Kansas City, is the principal deputy White House press secretary. In several hours, his boss, White House press secretary Jay Carney, will hold his daily press briefing. The questions can cover the globe, from Syria to Silicon Valley. It’s Earnest’s role to oversee the prep sessions that make Carney ready for any grilling.
He’s “indispensable,” Carney said. “I depend on his judgment all the time.”
But before Earnest even sets foot inside the White House gates, from sidewalks thick with Washingtonians clutching their takeout coffee cups in one hand and cellphones in the other, it’s his job to know what’s been said over the past 12 hours, who said it and what the fallout has been.
“Most evenings, the first 15 minutes of the network news is composed of challenges or problems or discoveries that have been worked on by someone at the White House that day,” he said. “This unique perspective is sometimes thrilling, sometimes frustrating, but most frequently, it’s humbling.”
It’s pretty heady stuff. Politics was not part of his background. He was never schooled in his hometown’s own storied political past. As a high school kid, he didn’t pass out leaflets or put up yard signs.
“The only thing I really remember about politics growing up was my parents taking me with them when they went to vote,” Earnest said
He grew up in the Red Bridge neighborhood with two younger brothers. His mother, Jeanne, is a psychologist, and his father, Don, is the athletic director at Pembroke Hill School. Earnest attended the Barstow School, a private secondary school, on a scholarship, where he played baseball and basketball.
Adam Moore, a childhood friend and classmate at Barstow, now a lawyer and partner at Shook, Hardy Bacon, attributes some of his friend’s success to his Midwestern upbringing: “You always know where you stand with him.”
Carney agreed: “His time in politics has made him smart, but not cynical. Maybe that’s because of his KC roots.”
Now his mornings are filled with meetings with senior officials. Whether the issue of the day is the economy, national security or the president stopping for lunch at a local burger joint, they all get massaged by the White House message machine.
“You’re really driven by adrenaline,” said Mercy Schlapp, a White House media affairs official under President George W. Bush. “I think that’s how you survive mostly. You have to be ready for pretty much any question.”
Earnest is a political veteran. Careers like his are nonstop whirlwinds where life is divided into two-year campaign cycles. He’s at the high point of a 15-year arc that took him from Rice University, where he graduated in 1997 with a degree in political science but no real thoughts of a political career, to — various campaigns later — working down the hall from the president of the United States.
Earnest punched all the tickets: a big-city mayoral race in Houston right out of college, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first campaign, a stint as a congressional aide, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, a governor’s race in Florida and finally the jackpot, a successful presidential campaign.
As Carney’s main deputy, Earnest subs on occasion for his boss at the daily briefing for the White House press corps. More often, he’s one of the aides sitting off to the side, silently following the course of the questioning.
The first press-room briefing that Earnest led, was —mercifully — off camera and memorable. But not in a good way. A reporter asked when the White House, which had been criticizing Congress for not moving on free-trade bills, intended to send its proposal to Capitol Hill for reauthorization.
“Have we not sent them over?” Earnest replied.
“No,” the reporter said. “Gotcha.”
They all chuckled about his gaffe, but White House critics used it to argue that President Barack Obama was stalling on the bills. Earnest said the episode illustrated for him the “very high stakes of the daily briefing.”
White House reporters said that Earnest is affable and accessible. Lately, though, several said he’s occasionally been playing the role of the press office “bad cop.”
Earnest looks at it this way: “It depends on the day. Part of the job is ensuring that the president’s point of view is being communicated. Sometimes it’s important for that message to be delivered forcefully, but professionally.”
Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist who helped him early in his career and a former White House communications director under Obama, said that beneath his “extremely pleasant demeanor is a fiercely competitive person.”
He has a small office just outside the briefing room. “It’s cozy, but I have a door, a window and television,” plus a big dirt pile outside his window from a construction site. But he sits in a vital spot. He’s a go-to aide for background on issues of the day and reporters constantly stop by.
“That office he occupies is literally in the eye of the storm,” said Michael Feldman, who was a senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore.
Early on, Earnest said that former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry told him that “the best part of your job is that you will have an office that’s 40 feet from the Oval Office. That is an experience you should not take for granted. The second that gets old is the day you should leave.”
He has no plans to do so any time soon. Earnest has his own
on The Washington Post’s WhoRunsGov website. The newspaper also noted his engagement in its gossip column.
He narrates the White House’s online video blog, West Wing Week, which highlights presidential activities. The 100th episode earlier this year started out with the president, who says: “Hi. My name is Barack Obama and I’m Josh Earnest’s understudy. Welcome to the 100th episode of West Wing Week.”
“Not bad, Mr. President,” says Earnest. “I’ll take it from here.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "He stays close to KC and the Oval Office."