the last book I ever read (The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim, excerpt six)

from The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics by Barton Swaim:

On the way to the first event, the governor read the Wall Street Journal. When he was done, he folded it up and threw it into the backseat – that is, at me. I had heard that if you sat in the backseat when he was in the front, the governor would throw things at you. Not at you, exactly, just into the backseat. But he wasn’t trying not to throw things at you, either. When he was working, staffers existed – physically, literally – only insofar as they could aid him. In one sense it was impossible not to admire the man’s ability to fix his attention so exclusively on whatever he was doing. Still, it was unnerving to realize that, to him, at that moment, you were a nonentity; you weren’t.