Today, we’re talking about one of the great questions of our time: “Why didn’t he
write me back?”
The answer is often simple: “he’s just not that into you,” or the far more common
“he forgot.”
But if the “he” in question is President Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, it’s a bit
more complicated.
Because surprisingly, he most likely will write you back… once your message passes
through an intricate, weeks-long vetting, coding, sorting, and response process.
And if the “he” in question is me… uh… same deal.
In ye olden days, George Washington got about five letters a day, and would just reply himself.
But presidential mail volume, like sea levels, is way higher than it was in 1789.
Millard Fillmore averaged a hundred letters a day, Hoover: 800, Eisenhower: over 1,200.
Obama: over 20,000, though most of those were probably Joe Biden making sure they were still
going to the movies on Friday.
Overwhelmed by the mail, William McKinley tapped one of his advisors to cover it, creating
what has since grown into the Office of Presidential Correspondence.
Today, the OPC reads every letter and email that reaches the White House, and every president
has his own unique relationship with the mail.
And for some of them, that relationship goes back to before his presidential era.
Obama used the mail to approximate the connection he’d felt with everyday Americans on the
campaign trail, and a 24-year-old Abraham Lincoln was actually the postmaster of New
Salem, Illinois—a gig that came with free postage and one free newspaper subscription,
which is also how I pay my writers.
Harry Truman was technically the postmaster of Grandview, Missouri, but he never did the
job.
Instead, he let a local widow do it for him and collect his pay under the title “assistant
postmaster.”
This, too, is how I pay my writers.
Once in office, the president designs his own mail diet.
Kennedy’s staff aggregated public opinion on key issues from the mail then sent him
summaries.
Nixon would only read friendly letters, both because he was a baby and because he mined
the mail for good speech anecdotes.
And when a kid wrote offering to mow the White House lawn, Trump brought him over for this
very weird photo op.
These days, most letters get some kind of response written by the staff at the OPC and
bearing the president’s signature.
But how does a staff of about 45 employees, 35 interns, and hundreds of rotating volunteers
answer thousands of letters, emails, and calls a day?
Say it with me: complex logistics!
If you go to the White House website, they give you letter-writing instructions—including
to please write on paper… which seems like a strange request until you learn that they’ve
gotten messages on paper towels, baseball bats, and mannequin legs.
So naturally, I had HAI’s outside correspondent Amy grab some 8.5 by 11, head to the post
office, and try to get us something back.
Knowing OPC staff would be replying under their boss’ name, Amy thought it only fair
to write under mine, which I did not sign off on but one thousand percent approve of.
When you send a letter to the White House, it’ll pass through USPS’ Government Mails
Annex in DC, right between the National Arboretum and a Panda Express.
Here—or possibly in a secret location that doesn’t show up in tracking—the Secret
Service will screen your letter to make sure it’s not trying to assassinate anybody.
I’m not sure exactly where this happens, so shoutout to the Secret Service for living
up to their name.
Assuming your letter wasn’t ticking, its next stop is the OPC in the Eisenhower Executive
Office Building, which is right by the White House and nowhere near a Panda Express…
though only nine mins from the Cheesecake Factory.
Every letter that reaches the OPC gets read and coded with a “disposition” in the
top-right corner.
There are hundreds of them, aligned with issues people write about: Ukraine.
Taxes.
Bees.
Or in my case: Amtrak and junk fees.
There are other codes as well: “sensitive” means the letter gets handed off to a staffer
specializing in presidential condolences, while a red dot means the writer is an imminent
danger to themself or others, and their letter goes to someone in crisis response.
Some messages go to separate teams: for example, there’s the kid team, which sadly isn’t
a misfit pack of juice-fueled eleven-year-olds that pen thoughtful missives from a White
House sub-basement…
it’s just people who read mail from kids.
The casework team covers letter writers that need specialized attention from a particular
department, like a federal prisoner who’s not getting their medication.
There’s also the greetings team, which covers requests for birthday cards and the like;
and the gifts team, which handles stuff like the countless jelly beans people used to send
Ronald Reagan—either because he loved them or, better, in hopes that he would choke.
Any letter not passed elsewhere is sorted into a bin based on its disposition.
A team of OPC writers keeps different form letters up-to-date to send out for every single
disposition, so everyone in the “bees” bin gets the newest “bees” letter, and
so on.
Like Obama before him, Joe Biden reads ten letters a day, handpicked by the OPC staff.
Readers nominate letters for this honor by writing “SAMPLE” in the corner, then the
higher-ups narrow down those hundreds to the ten the president will read—a mixture of
hopeful and desperate, grateful and furious, tragic and “drawing of dog by child.”
They erase the codes, scan the letters, and send them around the White House before they
go into a purple folder for the big guy.
The President eventually returns the letters to the OPC with notes for their response in
his name or, on rare occasions, a hand-written response of his own.
Which brings us back to that big question: Why didn’t he write me back?
Because he didn’t.
Not to my mean letter, or my nice one.
But it’s probably more a matter of time than beef.
It took eleven days just for my letters to get there, and Secret Service vetting apparently
creates a two-week lag of its own before you get to the careful, painstaking process the
OPC staff takes with every letter they get.
So I might have to wait a little longer before Diamond Joe hits me back about my two letters,
but at least I know the fine, hardworking people of the OPC—the ears and heart of
the White House—have gotten our third one.
Now, when Joe Biden wants healthy, home-cooked meals, he can hit up the White House kitchen.
But most of us don’t live in a mansion with a private chef paid for by the US taxpayer,
so if we want a healthy home-cooked meal we have to plan out recipes, go to the grocery
store, prep, cook, clean, then deal with all sorts of extra supplies that’ll inevitably
go in the garbage.
That is unless, of course, you use this video's sponsor, Hello Fresh.
They take all the hassle out of cooking by delivering fresh, pre-portioned and partially
prepped ingredients so you have everything you need to make the recipes they provide—with
no food waste left over.
I’ve been using Hello Fresh for three years as a genuine customer—seriously, I signed
up before they started sponsoring—and I’m a huge fan.
It’s cheaper than grocery store shopping, and WAY cheaper than takeout, plus it helps
me fit cooking into even my busiest weeks with the “Fast & Fresh” options that are
ready in just fifteen minutes or less.
So if you want to find out why I find them the best way to make dinner, go to hellofresh.com
and use code HAI16 for sixteen free meals, plus free shipping, plus you’ll be supporting
this channel while you’re at it.