Letter Writers Alliance: The Office of Presidential Correspondence Under Obama

September 03, 2018

The Office of Presidential Correspondence Under Obama

This article in The Atlantic describes how letter writing was a part of the Obama Administration and focuses on Kolbie Blume, the "director of writing for sampled correspondence." The majority of the average 10,000 letters a day received form responses, but sorting teams would select 10 letters each day for personal review by the president. Some he would respond to by hand, but others he would notate "Reply" upon; and then it was Blume's job to compose a response.

"(P)residents still approached replies in their own way: Richard Nixon refused to read anything negative, Ronald Reagan wrote replies on weekends, George W. Bush read already answered letters. Obama, however, was the first president to establish such a large OPC staff and to prioritize reading 10 constituent voices each night. (The OPC’s process under the current administration remains undisclosed.)" Somehow, I can't find myself surprised by that parenthetical.

"When crafting replies, Blume often searched Obama’s prose and was fastidious about citing sources in colored comments along the margins of her drafts, particularly when using phrases in new contexts. Sometimes, Obama would write notes on the letters (“We’re working on it”), highlight paragraphs, underline sentences, or add exclamation marks. In those cases, Blume would build an entire reply off of the president’s cues. But most of the time, on popular topics like immigration, the structure and content of Obama’s words already ran easily through Blume’s mind." The article is an interesting look at the craft and skill of writing on someone else's behalf, and, yes, does make me nostalgic for a time when civility was a frequent guest in the White House.