went after the cucumbers. Each time something went a little awry, with the help
of Jim Adams, the National Park Service horticulturist who served as our head
gardener, and Dale Haney, the White House grounds superintendent, we made
small adjustments and carried on, savoring the overall abundance. Our dinners in
the residence now often included broccoli, carrots, and kale grown on the South
Lawn. We started donating a portion of every harvest to Miriam’s Kitchen, a
local nonprofit that served the homeless. We began, too, to pickle vegetables and
present them as gifts to visiting dignitaries, along with jars of honey from our new
beehives. Among the staff, the garden became a source of pride. Its early skeptics
had quickly become fans. For me, the garden was simple, prosperous, and healthy
—a symbol of diligence and faith. It was beautiful while also being powerful. And
it made people happy.
Over the previous few months, my East Wing staff and I had spoken with
children’s health experts and advocates to help us develop the pillars on which
our larger effort would be built. We’d give parents better information to help
them make healthy choices for their families. We’d work to create healthier
schools. We’d try to improve access to nutritious food. And we’d find more ways
for young people to be physically active. Knowing that the way we introduced
our work would matter as much as anything, I again enlisted the help of
Stephanie Cutter, who came on as a consultant to help Sam and Jocelyn Frye
shape the initiative, while my communications team was tasked with building a
fun public face for the campaign. All the while, the West Wing was apparently
fretting about my plans, worried I’d come off as a finger-wagging embodiment of
the nanny state at a time when controversial bank and car-company bailouts had
left Americans extra leery of anything that looked like government intervention.
My goal, though, was to make this about more than government. I hoped to
learn from what Hillary had shared with me about her own experiences, to leave
the politics to Barack and focus my own efforts elsewhere. When it came to
dealing with the CEOs of soft drink companies and school-lunch suppliers, I
thought it was worth making a human appeal as opposed to a regulatory one, to
collaborate rather than pick a fight. And when it came to the way families actually
lived, I wanted to speak directly to moms, dads, and especially kids.
I wasn’t interested in following the tenets of the political world or appearing
on Sunday morning news shows. Instead, I did interviews with health magazines
geared toward parents and kids. I hula-hooped on the South Lawn to show that
exercise could be fun and made a guest appearance on Sesame Street, talking about
vegetables with Elmo and Big Bird. Anytime I spoke to reporters from the White