The White House Mess

by Christopher Buckley

  “Got to stay alert,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “in case of attack.”

  “In case Reigeluth tries to have me declared dead.” He shook his head. “Where is he anyway?”

  “On his way back from Manitoba, sir,” said Colonel Frye. “Air Force Two will wheels-down at Andrews half an hour from now.”

  “Well, tell him to turn around. I’m all right.”

  “Mr. President,” I said, “we can’t do that. It wouldn’t look right.”

  “Well, tell him no interviews. I don’t want him impressing everyone with how calm and in control he is in a crisis. This is my crisis, dammit, and I intend to enjoy it.”

  I went off to check with Feeley and see how the press end of things was going. He had been answering questions for an hour.

  “Half an hour,” he said. “If she’s not here in half an hour, it’s going to be a fucking disaster. That’s all they want to know. Why isn’t she at his side?”

  I told him she was on her way.

  “What? In a blimp? He was shot two hours ago. He could have had a goddam liver transplant in this time.”

  I said that, all things considered, we were lucky she was even coming.

  He said that from a women’s-vote point of view it couldn’t be worse. The President’s wife off in New York pursuing a film career, and two ERA supporters seriously perforated. “On the other hand,” he allowed, “this is going to mean a jump in the approval ratings of fifteen points.”

  I chided him for thinking of such a thing at a time like this. But Feels was pure politics.

  He went on to say we would have to “control” the medical reports. “I don’t want this thing played as a scratch. This was a close call with death.”

  “It does appear to be a flesh wound,” I said. “But those poor ERA ladies—”

  “Herb,” he said, “this is our crisis. We earned it.” He said we should talk to Dr. Lawrence Saladino, the attending physician.

  Saladino, a cheerful and highly competent ex-Navy doctor from Brooklyn, told us that, as far as he was concerned, the President could leave the next morning. The arm and chest wounds were “essentially superficial,” he said.

  “Superficial?” said Feeley.

  Dr. Saladino nodded and described how lucky the President was.

  Feeley frowned. “And you’re saying he could leave tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” said the doctor. “He’d be more comfortable there anyway.”

  Feels looked depressed and said darkly he was sure Saladino was a Republican.

  I told him we should be giving thanks to the Good Lord it wasn’t more serious. He did not respond to this line of thought.

  “The way it’s going,” he said, “ERA is going to get more out of this than we are.”

  In the elevator he said to me: “Pray for complications.”

  Feeley tried hard to persuade Major Arnold to get the President transferred to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he thought the military doctors might be less “release-happy,” as he put it. Major Arnold was all for transferring him, but the President, who had taken a liking to Dr. Saladino, refused—despite the political advantages, which Feeley made quite clear to him—and said he wanted to go home.

  The First Lady arrived a few minutes after nine. Feeley had prepositioned a White House photographer outside the President’s door, so the first moments of their reunion were recorded in the famous photograph. It is just as well, since the second moments were of a less tender nature, what with her berating the President for his historic decision to run again. But at least she was back in Washington. The late Hamchuk Hartoonian had accomplished that much, as well as the subsequent passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, of course.

  24

  STRATEGIC APPEARANCE LIMITATION TALKS

  This will be my last campaign.

  —JOURNAL, JUNE 4, 1992

  Perhaps it was indicative of the hard, uphill slogging of Campaign ’92 that Feeley kept saying the Hartoonian attack had come “too early.” While I rebuked Feels for making such macabre statements, I sympathized. Our approval rating, which had shot up so sharply in the weeks following the incident, giving us a critical lift during the New Hampshire primary, dropped back to their previous level. I might add that it is untrue, as Lleland says in his “memoir,” that I urged the President to conduct the campaign in a wheelchair.

  The possibility that the President would not be renominated by his party was, historically speaking, embarrassing and did nothing for morale in the West Wing. I have always felt that in times of distress it is best to keep busy; thus, I called 6:30 a.m. staff meetings and instituted the WSOAs, or Weekly Summary of Activities, whereby all presidential appointees below Assistant-to-the-President rank submitted 500-word descriptions of what they had done that week. Both the 6:30 staff meetings and the WSOAs proved extremely unpopular. One (anonymous) person submitted a detailed accounting of that week’s bodily functions. After two weeks I discontinued them after determining they were not significantly improving morale.

  Vice President Reigeluth, meantime, was opening his paper each morning to read the latest developments in the White House’s attempts to replace him. This was seriously disheartening for him. For several weeks he refused to go out on the campaign trail, and I was given the job of getting him back “on the reservation.”

  I found him hostile to my entreaties. Four years of Air Force Two had made him a bitter man. He complained about the goodwill trips to Mauritius and Ecuador, saying that he had been “cut out of the action” and treated like “an unwanted brother-in-law.” He said he had had three cases of amoebic dysentery in as many months on the road.

  I said he had suffered for his country, and that the President was deeply grateful. I told him that democracy came at a heavy cost, and that we must all do what we could to maintain it. At this he became more hostile and told me he was thinking of resigning the Vice Presidency. He said people were advising him that that might be best anyway for his political future.

  Though I suspected this was bluster, I realized immediately that something had to be done to calm the man down. I promised that I would speak to the President about the overseas travel. I also held out the tantalizing opportunity of his meeting with the President in the Oval Office “sometime in the very near future.” The prospect seemed to cheer him somewhat, and he said he would “seriously consider” making a campaign trip to New Jersey.

  Between the Vice President and the President’s brother, who had lately forsaken Islam for the Bhagwan Satgananda Uy—known to his followers as “Baba”—I was kept busy. I despaired of my Metrification duties.

  The only cheering note was that the First Lady was back with us—for the time being, at any rate. She and the President had made a truce following the Hartoonian incident. But she made no secret of her opinion of his running again. We feared greatly that she might give one of her interviews, but she didn’t.

  One Saturday morning I was briefing the President on the new sauna at Camp David when she breezed in and announced to her husband that she had just agreed to do Mr. Weinberg’s new film, Irregular Spaces.

  She was very excited. I also think she was a little nervous about the prospect of going back to films; she had been away from them for ten years. The President made a rum effort at greeting her news with enthusiasm, but I could see he was crestfallen. He asked how soon “principal photography” began. He seemed very up on the lingo.

  “September fifteenth,” she said.

  “I need to go check on tomorrow’s departure,” I said. I didn’t want to be around for what was about to follow.

  The President buzzed me later in the afternoon.

  “Herb,” he said, sighing heavily, “I think it’s pretty appalling what’s happened to political wives.”

  “You do?” I said.

  “Yeah. They’re not the ones running for office.”

  “Strictly speaking, I agree. However—”

  “I think it’s gotten,
well, grotesque the way political wives are dragged around.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s a team—”

  “Told to look adoringly at the candidate while he’s making some fucking speech about farm supports.”

  “Still—”

  “Put on the Phil Donahue Show and asked what their husbands like to eat for breakfast and who he’s going to appoint to the Supreme Court.”

  “And yet—”

  “It’s demeaning. Especially for women who had careers before they were married.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to do something about it.”

  “You are?” I said.

  “Yup. I’ve decided I’m going to campaign alone. Solo.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But don’t you think—”

  “Jessie agrees with me, you know. She thinks it’s an idea whose time has come.”

  “I see. Frankly, sir, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “If the people who run for office these days were half as liberated as they say they are, someone would have done it by now. Gotten up there and said, ‘My wife has better things to do than go around making me look good.’ ”

  “She is popular out there, you know.”

  “Listen, she wants to help. I told her she could do as much as she wanted or as little. ‘Either way,’ I said. ‘You decide.’ ”

  “And what,” I said fearfully, “did she decide?”

  “We decided something like half a dozen appearances would cover the major events.”

  “Six?”

  “Six is half a dozen, that’s right.”

  “That’s not very many, Mr. President.”

  “Well, I said that’d be fine.”

  “Yes,” I said, sinking into a slough of despond. “I see.”

  “You and Sig and Feeley and the others will need to get with her”—he sighed—“and work out a schedule. Oh, and she’s making a film.”

  “Yes,” I said glumly.

  “You heard?”

  “I was in the room, Mr. President, when she announced it.”

  “Oh. So you were. Well, I think the announcement should come from the White House. You better check with Aronow [Chief White House Counsel], see if there’s any conflict or whatever.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And Herb?”

  “Sir?”

  “If she changes her mind, wants to get more involved, encourage her, okay?”

  I was somewhat surprised when Mrs. Tucker did not show up at the meeting I’d arranged. Instead she sent her agent, a Mr. Liebman of International Creative Management.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I took the liberty of telling my office I could be reached here. You don’t mind? Good. Shall we begin?” Feeley took an instant dislike to him. I reserved judgment until he began calling me “Herbie,” at which point I decided I disliked him too.

  The meeting lasted almost two hours, during which he took four calls. I became quite exercised when he had the temerity to ask us to leave the room for one of them. We were in the White House, if you please, and he wanted us to leave the room. Honestly. I would have spoken to him sharply, but I didn’t want to upset him, so, nearly dragging Feeley by the collar, we waited in Mrs. Metz’s office until his call “from the coast” was finished.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said when we filed back in. “You know how it is.” I did not “know how it is,” but I let it go.

  We reached an impasse over the presidential debate in October. Our side did not consider it a campaign appearance if the First Lady merely came and watched her husband debate George Bush.

  “My client is going to be in the middle of a shoot in October,” he said. “If we’re going to come all the way to wherever this debate will be held, we’ll have to consider that an appearance. My advice, gentlemen, would be to get the President’s sister to go to the debate and to save my client for more conspicuous events, such as this Al Smith dinner you seem so anxious for her to attend.”

  It was an extremely frustrating meeting. We got our six appearances, and not so much as one drop-by or mix-and-mingle extra. We were exhausted. Sig and Feels had their jackets off and ties loosened. Mr. Liebman was cool as a dill pickle. In all my dealings in government I never met someone more difficult to bargain with than he. Frankly, I don’t understand how movies get made if that’s what you have to go through every time.

  “May I use your phone?” Mr. Liebman asked when we were finally through. I was sorely tempted to show him the way to the phone booth, but I am not a vindictive man.

  He asked the operator for the First Lady.

  “Jess?”

  Jess? Was this how he addressed the First Lady?

  “I got your six-picture deal. Pay or play. Are you kidding? They love you. They want to get into bed.”

  “What?” I thundered.

  “Figure of speech, Herbie. No, I’m here with your Mr. Wadlough. Yes, a very nice gentleman. Listen, they have restaurants in this town? I heard it’s all microwave. Yeah? Come on, I’ll buy. You gotta car?”

  I tried to shut out these abominations and concentrate on Marine One seat assignments. He left us with a valedictory “Ciao.” I, for one, was not sorry to see him go.

  BOOK FIVE

  PITFALLS

  25

  INJURY

  Miss Joan, but feel it important to be with President for last peaceful days before general election begins. Is pleasant here, despite allergies.

  —JOURNAL, AUG. 30, 1992

  As Labor Day and the official start of the general presidential campaign approached, the President was in low spirits. At my urging, he spent the last week of August at the Summer White House on Monhegan Island, refreshing himself for the grueling ordeal that lay ahead. I was anxious that this period be a pleasant one for him, free of any friction with the local inhabitants, so I quietly arranged for a Department of the Environment grant whereby each Monhegan resident received $500 for answering a quality-of-life questionnaire.

  A nearly disastrous incident was narrowly averted when I discovered that Lleland had invited the President for a two-day cruise aboard the Compassion. In a moment of weakness the President had accepted the invitation. The thought of the President being photographed aboard this floating embarrassment on the eve of the campaign was nightmarish. When I confronted Lleland, he told me the “salt air” would do the President a “world of good.” This so annoyed me that I told him I suspected he was merely trying to inflate the resale of his yacht by lending it the presidential aura. Our conversation ended abruptly and heatedly, and for several weeks he refused to acknowledge my existence, even during meetings in the Oval Office. But I was successful in persuading the President to eschew the salt air aboard the Compassion.

  By now the President had his doubts about Lleland anyway. He had been given a job of trying to convince Senator Kennedy to withdraw from the primaries and had failed rather spectacularly, when the Senator not only didn’t withdraw but publicly asked Vice President Reigeluth to be his running mate. Quel fiasco! as the French say.

  I had been instrumental in convincing the Vice President not to accept the Senator’s offer. (It is not true, as the former Vice President wrote in Jet Lag: My Four Years Aboard Air Force Two, that I suggested to him the IRS might be interested in his 1984–1987 tax returns.) At any rate, as a result of my ministrations, I was in good odor with the President.

  I wanted the President’s time to be his own during that one week of peace with his family. To that end, I accompanied him—amidst much grumbling among the other senior staff, who were not invited to go along—and stayed in one of the cottages on the fringe of the presidential compound.

  During this period I acted as a kind of “buffer” or “conduit,” and made sure that all paper flowed through me to the President. In the interests of the presidential tranquility, I attempted to keep that flow down to a trickle. This is a difficult task, inasmuch as the average daily number of document pages that flow to
the President is 204.6. I was able to reduce that to five. I took some pride in that accomplishment, though I was harshly criticized for it by the press and by certain senior members of the staff, one of whom told the New York Times I was a “constipating influence.”

  The President had asked me to supervise the digesting of news reports during that week inasmuch as he desired to catch up on his book reading. I directed the White House News Summary Office to be especially terse; working together, we managed to reduce the day’s New York Times to a concise fifty words, and the Washington Post to twenty. Actually, I felt the Times could have been tightened even further.

  I saw no point in disturbing the President’s “quality time” by keeping him advised of the hourly Republican denunciations. Given the choice between being informed of the latest reckless charge by George Bush or hunting for periwinkles among the seaweed-covered rocks with his son, I had no doubt as to which the President preferred. Yet the world pressed in on him.

  Bermuda was also much in the news on account of the August 27 dynamiting of the Mid-Ocean Golf Club and its subsequent effect on tourism. The little gray fellow from CIA who gave the President his daily briefing looked even more harried than usual when he arrived the next morning. And when Chase Manhattan raised its prime lending rate to twenty-one percent on the last day of the month, there was strong pressure for a statement from the President. Rather than trouble Charlie Manganelli, who was taking advantage of the President’s vacation to undergo another detoxification at Bethesda Naval Hospital, I drafted a statement myself and gave it to The New York Times. Frankly, I was rather pleased with it at the time, since it went straight to the heart of the problem and put the banks where they belonged—on the defensive. But, in retrospect, perhaps I overstated the case by proposing that we nationalize the banks. I had not been informed that Treasury Secretary Lindsay had come out against bank nationalization at the June 27 cabinet meeting, and that the President had concurred. The whole incident, overblown though it was, points out the need for greater coordination within government.