Gibbs confides that he’s given up his dreams of running for public office—something that at least one of his predecessors, JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger, tried unsuccessfully after Governor Pat Brown appointed him a U.S. senator from California.
“I used to think that’s what I wanted to do,” Gibbs says, “and then I decided the best way I could help would be to do a little bit of what I’m doing now. I can firmly rule out ever running for elective office?”
A Sherman-like statement?
“Completely. I am shutting the door and locking it.”
Gibbs started out two decades ago as an intern on Capitol Hill, and still seems to feel that he’s found his calling. “In many ways, I’m still wildly idealistic about what it means to be in public service and what you can accomplish in order to make people’s lives just a little bit better,” he says. “I think it’s a tremendous honor. I remember driving into the White House at the very beginning. You’re on the Ellipse south of the White House, you look back, you see the building itself, and I remember saying to myself that if I ever drove here in the morning and didn’t think to myself, ‘Wow, you’re at the White House! You’re working 50 feet away from where the president of the United States is working!’—if that ever lost its allure, if that ever lost its ability to make your heart beat a little faster, that would be the day I would go in, type a quick letter, sign it and give someone else the opportunity…. Thus far, my heart still quickens.”
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