YouSaid · the spoken record

Cody Keenan

lines on the record
83
first
2017-01-26
most recent
2017-01-26
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1
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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “You look at my team alone, Ben Rhodes, Sarah Hurwitz, Tyler Lechtenberg, all from the original campaign, all still here. Terry Zuplat joined in oh nine, still here, I mean people believe in him, and we believe in each other and we've carried each other through this.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Thank you. And you know, it's an extraordinary testament to him and to you guys is there are more staffers here who've stayed all eight years than in any other administration.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You know, it's easy to say Air Force One and Marine 1, but I'm going to miss the people here. And not just our coworkers that we've been with the whole time, but I'm going to miss the Navy mess staff who are extraordinary. I'm going to miss the uniformed Secret Service officers who are wonderful. I'm going to miss the resident staff who stay on, you know, the ushers. Because there are these extraordinary people that you get to see every day. The women who come in and take out the trash, Luanda and Dory are the nicest people ever. I will miss all of them, you know, because they stay here and we don't get to come back through these gates”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, and you know what? I've been telling people mostly to help them through these past couple months after the election, but the extraordinary things that this staff is going to go on to do, I mean, you will see and hear from us forever. And, you know, I've already got four friends running for office right now. And Rhodes and I have always joked that we're going to parachute in like a SWAT team to help people get elected. You're going to hear from Obama people for a long, long time. We're going to do a remarkable things.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Thanks, brother. But, you know, lightning won't strike twice like this. So I bade sure to be grateful for it every single day. And then, you know, fortunately I have a wonderful wife and friends around me. So I'm going to be all right. We're going to get a dog, which will help.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yes. I mean, that's the short answer. I've been worried about that for years. I mean, this will probably be the most fulfilling important thing I ever do career-wise. And I've been really worried about finding something with an equal sense of purpose to it. You know, teaching, I think, is one of those things. I think I will ultimately like to go back to college and teach young people.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I don't have any plans yet. Chris and I haven't had time to plan a vacation, but the only thing on my radar right now is spring training and the short series they're going to do in Vegas before the regular season.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I don't know. I don't know. You know, I just talked to him yesterday and he said, I want you to take the next two weeks completely off. Do whatever it takes to clear your head. I don't care what it is. That's all.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “No. And he said absolutely not. It's not going to be like chapter 13, the grand bargain. He wants to do something interesting and innovative that no other former president has done.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Maybe. You know, I've saved the speeches, obviously. We've written 3,577 in office. So surely we have some stuff to draw from. But I also told him, you know, if I do this, I don't want it to be a book that goes and then this happened. And then this happened.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “That's a great question, especially because we lose access to all of our emails in about ten hours. I don't know if he's been keeping.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Unfortunately, because of who he is, he's going to do a lot of it himself. Right. I can't wait to see what he comes up with.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, he's smart. He knows how to go right at someone's weakness, you know, so he called me into the office a few months ago and said, so I understand you're not sure what you want to do yet. And I wasn't, because how do you find something with as big a sense of purpose as this? You know, that terrified me. And he said, Well, tell you what, you know, I'm still going to have to give speeches and write a book. You want to keep the band together? I said, yeah, man. Of course I do. He said, we'll do it for a couple years, and then you can figure out what you want to do. And he was wise. He exploited my weakness and went right at it.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “His daughters have the blood of slaves running through their veins, you know, and they live in the house. It's remarkable.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yes. Yeah, I think we've seen that in our next president. But at the core of that is his eternal optimism. He is a fundamentally optimistic person. That's the whole point of the Ark of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards justice. This country gets better and better. And he's had some pretty remarkable arguments with thinkers about that, you know, like Tanahasi Coates has a more pessimistic vision of race in America than Barack Obama does, whereas the president looks at it as, you know, for all the challenges that remain, look at how far we've come, you know, and start there”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yes she is You know, I like to think I've become a little bit more like him in this sense that I try to think in a longer time horizon and not get swept up in the day-to-day, minute to minute of politics in the Twitter sphere.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “That's what makes him so challenging to write, and so exhilarating to write is to figure out that argument the best way to make it. I mean, you know, you look at his eulogies too, he's never content just to pay tribute to the victims, but rather instruct us to carry on, to take up our responsibility, to do something in their behalf, in their place because they can't do it anymore.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Always. I mean, time is the enemy in both ways, one in that there never seems to be enough of it, but if you also have a pretty good draft day before, then you have too much time, because he'll still go through as often as he can right up to the wire, you know, just tweaking, perfecting, and eventually want to say, hey, we're good here, you know, let's just load this into the prompter and take a little time off. The other thing the Nobel speech makes me think of is, you know, he will never let a speech opportunity go to waste. He could have just phoned in the Nobel speech and said, thank you for this. Instead, he decided to embrace the complexity of it, and the paradox of someone who was prosecuting two wars and drone operations receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. So he decided to give a speech defending the necessity of just war.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And I said, okay, go for it. And you could tell, I flew to Charleston with him, but he was still writing and making edits on the plane, so I stayed behind on the plane to finish up the speech and watched it on television of the plane. And you could tell before he even started speaking. I mean, this was a black church. The Oregon was playing. You know, I think a dude started playing the guitar while the president was speaking. So he's absolutely going to sing this. And there was that extra little drama where he paused and then did it. And what a moment.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “That was extraordinary. And the president said, that's what I want to talk about, the idea of grace. And he gave me some ideas, and I went and put it down. But, you know, he's also more of a theologian than people understand. I mean, that was a deeply religious speech to talk about the concept of unearned grace. That's the free and benevolent gift from God, and how we can apply that in our own lives to understanding each other, to healing racial divides, to doing something about guns. And we had the lyrics to Amazing Grace in there. That morning on the helicopter, he said, you know, if it feels right, I might sing that second one.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “It was, I mean, this was. Maybe the twentieth mass shooting we've had to react to in one way or another and I was running out of things to say. Now there's an added horrible racial component to this one. But we were sitting around in the Oval Office on the Monday who's going to give that speech. And what had changed was that all the family members of the victims forgave the killer.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I pulled two all nighters on that, and then in the span of five hours he crossed out the last two pages of the speech and rewrote them longhand in a way that I couldn't reach. And it's frustrating that you can't get there, but it's also just incredibly rewarding to see that he can.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, and one of the important things I've learned here is that I still kill myself to try to make that first draft as good as possible because you always want to do right by him. But I've learned along the way that it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to give him something he can work with, and then he can work magic in about a tenth the time that you did, you know, like Charleston, for example, I pulled two all-nighters on that.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “He is a writer. I mean, you know, he wrote his first book when I think when he's younger than I am now. Yes. It's the way he organized it. What's wrong with you? It's the way he organizes his thoughts on paper. And he takes great care with his words. He's precise with his edits. And if a speech isn't quite where it needs to be, he will get out yet that yellow legal pad and rewrite whole sections of it. In our best collaborations have been when we hand drafts back and forth and gradually make them better based off each other's stuff.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “They always are. I mean, that's the thing, you know, when you come in here as a speechwriter, leave aside the economic crisis. You have big visions of state of the union addresses and commencements and, you know, moonshots and all sorts of great speeches. It never crosses your mind that you're going to have to write a bunch for tragedy. And it happened way too often.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Unbelievable, and on each side of her photo it said, you know, I hope you help people in need. I hope you know the words to the national anthem and sing it with your hands over your heart, and I hope you jump in rain puddles. So I was reading this, and I think it was the morning of the speech. I still have the email. I emailed myself while I was getting ready in the morning just saying, you know, if there are rain puddles in heaven. Christina jumping in them today, and then added that in.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Something like that. That was critical to any great speech is research. You look for stories, statistics, anecdotes, anything to give it life. And Kyle O'Connor, who is our junior guy at the time, went and found this book called Faces of Hope, and it was this book about children who were born on 9-11, two thousand one, and photos of them and on each side of the photo it had, you know, wishes for their life. And Christina Taylor Green was born on 9-11. and then taken from us in Tucson. So he found this book. I don't know how. That's incredible.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “To get to that day and see, you know, I think he saw a lot of his brothers in President Obama. And to get to kind of see that torch getting past.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “He was always others first. I think throughout his entire adult life, I think he was acutely aware of his own mortality. Well, for good reason. Yeah, for good reason. But then when you know that you are living with something like brain cancer.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “I was so sad. It was just crushing, you know. I mean I cried the day I found out he was diagnosed with brain cancer. So we all knew that day would come at least. And so he had probably about a year for everybody to get to say their goodbyes. And I went to the Capitol Steps to join thousands of former Kennedy staffers to say goodbye to him as the funeral cortege went by. But that was really sad. But it was also, you know, we got to work in all those great stories that we were just talking about and bring smiles to people's faces.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Yeah, Favs was a lead writer on that. That's gotten misconstrued over the years, but I did get, you know, I talked to staff and family, all the Kennedy Staff family, and got all the great anecdotes and stories for it, but FAV support himself into that one too.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, my first speech is here with a quote-unquote easy ones, town halls, ceremonial stuff. You know, the first meaningful speech I was really proud of was Memorial Day, the first Memorial Day. pitching high speed rail in the recovery act of people, things like that. The first kind of speech that I knew would get a national audience was Tucson. And the only reason I got a shot at that was because Favs was working on the State of the Union address, which was a couple weeks later.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “All of it, I channeled all of it because you got to figure whoever the president's talking to has those same concerns and fears and they might have lost their job. They might be on the brink of losing their home. And you've got to connect with them rather than just rattle off a list of bullet points on some policy or program.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “With speeches explain these incredibly complicated programs for lending to get lending going again and for homeowners and whatnot. And these were also things that nobody wanted to do. The American people didn't want us to help the banks. And we didn't really want to do that either. But we had to. So we're trying to figure out how to explain all that and deal with our own personal situations. I mean, coming, my sister had been laid off along with two-thirds of her company the month before the election. You're worried about your parents' retirement. You're worried about other family members and what's going to happen to them even as you're trying to turn in speeches on time.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “This memory was from the campaign, but he was like, I think GM's going to go bankrupt tomorrow. And I was like, why? It was just one thing after another all the time. But even as we were trying to, you know.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Yeah, I remember vividly one night, Brian Deese walking around, his face white as a sheet, and I said, what's wrong with you? And he said, I think GM's going to.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “How is this happening? I remember my friends sent all sorts of nice notes the morning of and the night before and my parents and they've actually been forwarding those notes to me today on the way out. You know, I'd never been here before and you walk in and you're just like. But that fades fast when you're not only trying to find a computer but a bathroom, lunch, and fix the global economy before sundown.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Scary. I mean, yeah, and the culture changes immediately too. We were kind of fun and freewheeling in Chicago, and you get here and you're in the White House. So the first thing you do is you get”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “We knew Yeah, and the people in headquarters get too much credit. In between phases of my internship, I went to Ames, Iowa for a few weeks right before the caucus. and volunteered in that shop and did whatever they asked, and all of these offices are run by people that are even younger than me at twenty six, who would put in twenty hour days and, you know, just dominate precincts. I mean, run circles around the other campaigns and lived and breathed all their work and, you know, are still good friends to this day. I mean, it was extraordinary.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “It was extraordinary. Funny enough, it was in my dad used to work in that office building, 233 North Michigan. So he was really excited that that's where it was. But we had this massive floor on the 11th floor, wide open spaces, you know, very few offices. And you watched it grow every day. More and more people coming in, you know, and the place was electric with young people. And one of the amazing things of that campaign is that you guys trusted young people to do things that we didn't always have experience.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Yeah, and my stuff was the lowest of the low stuff. I mean, it'd be talking points or backyard barbecues. It would be emails that went out. And we had a running joke that, you know, you put out a statement just hundreds and hundreds of statements when you're running for office celebrating National Trout Fisherman Day or National Bike Accident Survivor Day, whatever. And we'd always end them all with on this day of all days, let us remember trout fishers or something. That was my job to do all those statements and videos and the shorter stuff. I didn't write a lot of big ones on the campaign. And I wasn't ready for it yet. And Favs was always a very patient mentor and would pull back on the assignments until I was ready.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “He's told me we got to get the egot. And I stayed up all night before my first day watching his speeches on YouTube to try to get it down. But I still think it probably took me two, three years to really get his voice down in a way that was more than just mimicry.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “I wasn't, but before the internship I read both of his books I drove from Boston to Chicago and listened to both of them on audio version just to get his voice down, and I stayed up all night.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I did. I was actually This was someone who was talking about politics in a way that I saw politics but hadn't been able to put into words, you know? And it helped that he was from my hometown, but I believed that, and I had gotten a little jaded working in the Senate, you know, even though we were able to do things when you see the way it really works, is this really what I want to do? And he made it seem as noble and hopeful as I hoped it was when I first came to Washington.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “It did. It did. Because I was more focused than I was in college on what I wanted to do. And the first year I focused hard on policy and quantitative Analysis and then lightning struck halfway through. Stephanie Cutter, who was also one of my mentors in Senator Kennedy's office, she was his communications director. She came up to lecture one night and I said, let's go get a beer. We went and got a beer and she asked me what I was going to do in my summer break and I told her I didn't know yet and she said well you should go right for this guy Obama I said well that's a nice thought but I've only written a few speeches and why would he hire me And she said well I know his speechwriter John Favreau I worked with him on the carry campaign.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “And I wasn't ready for that. So I went to the Kennedy School to try to get kind of a quantitative background that I hadn't gotten in college. And I told the senator I would come back when I was done if he'd have me.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Yeah, my boss Michael gave me the opportunity in 2006 to become legislative aide and actually start working on legislation. My first portfolio was mental health and disability policy, which is something I became passionate about. But I quickly realized I was in way over my head. You know, I'd sit down with legislative counsel and staffers from other offices, and they would run circles around me, and I went back to my boss and said, I'm doing the senator a disservice. You know, I appreciate it, but I was the only legislative aide without some sort of advanced degree. I mean, and I don't just mean like a law degree. We had bioethicists on staff, people with PhDs and molecular genetics. I mean, he had the best staff on the hill.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Infinite, and you heard it all around, said the Senator's Memorial Service. Because this was a guy who had endured the most public of tragedies with his brothers. And, you know, he broke his back in'64 and was out for a while with his kids. And so he had a big heart and a tenderness to him. And he was always the first to call. That was one thing I heard over and over and over. And I remember there was a letter hanging in his private study from Trent Lott. I think I can probably tell this story now. And I don't remember what the main thrust of it was, but the end of it was if the world only knew your kindness, you know, and this was somebody who was his sworn enemy across the aisle.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “It seemed like an era died in the Senate with him. Orange has said literally he got into politics to defeat Ted Kennedy. He ran against Ted Kennedy in Utah, even though Ted Kennedy is from Massachusetts and they became some of the closest to friends. And they passed the children's health insurance program together. I mean, that was a trait Kennedy had where he was willing to get half a loaf by working with Republicans and incremental change. And that's, you know, you see a lot of that in the president too in the way he works. There are just aren't as many willing Republican partners these days.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “and reading the mail, and seeing how important public service and politics were to people's lives. I mean, these are people ask where my veterans benefits. I'm crushed under student loans. I need health care. And you're like, oh my God, this is not like TV. This matters deeply to a lot of people. And Ted Kennedy was a master of constituent work. I mean, his staff in Boston handling the constituent work, it was people first to get this done. No waiting. You know, and every time we'd send a memo to Senator Kennedy, it would come back with, how many people will this help? How quickly? That's all he cared about. And that changed my entire outlook on public service and why I wanted to stick with it.”

    2017-01-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 116 - Cody Keenan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source