Chapter 149: Springtime

Most of the spring was spent, by me at least, with the legislation I was pushing and with trying to tone down the idiots on both sides who were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I was still being damned by Dick Cheney, but he was looking increasingly nervous. The Indians were circling the wagon train and getting closer and closer. It made his vitriol even more excessive, but it was taking on a very bitter and self-defensive tone. Regardless, I had my hands filled with this through the spring, that and campaigning for my fellow Republicans.

Marilyn and the girls, on the other hand, were driving me nuts with their antics. The twins weren’t all that bad, in that you kind of expected a pair of seventeen-year-old girls to be nutty. They were graduating high school this semester, and between that, getting ready for the prom, planning to move to Washington for the summer, and then off to college in the fall, they were driving Marilyn and me crazy. Still, one morning at the beginning of April got extra nutty. It was spring break and Marilyn and the twins were staying at the White House. Monday morning, I was in a 10:00 AM meeting with Paul O’Neill from Treasury and Mitch Daniels of the OMB, along with a few aides, when we were interrupted by the intercom. “Mister President, your daughters are here and would like to see you.”

I glanced at the phone, and then at the others. I shrugged my shoulders and hit the speaker button. “We’re kind of busy right now.”

Molly squawked over the phone. “Daddy! It’s important!”

“What?”

“Daddy!”

I rolled my eyes and muttered, “All right,” and then stood to go to the door. Instead, the guard at the door must have heard that as an assent because the door opened before I could get to it, and Stormy barreled into the room. “What in the...?”

The twins followed her in, their eyes popping to see it wasn’t just me. Molly nervously waved, and Holly said, “Daddy, you have to take care of Stormy. We’re going out.”

“Excuse me?” I couldn’t quite believe this!

“Daddy, we have to go out with Mom! We have to shop for dresses, for the prom! We told you that,” she pressed on.

I looked over at Stormy, now sitting on the couch next to Paul, who was scratching her neck. “So? What does that have to do with the dog? Leave her upstairs!”

“She didn’t want to stay. She gets lonely,” answered Molly.

I stared at the pair for a second. “This is the Oval Office! This is the White House! I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! THIS IS NOT BRING YOUR DOG TO WORK DAY!” I roared.

Behind me I heard a snicker. And a ‘Woof!’

Holly simply whined, “Daddy you have to do it!”

Molly settled it by going, “Bye, Stormy. You behave for Daddy!” Then she kissed my cheek and zoomed out, followed by her sister. They closed the door behind them, leaving me stranded with the dog.

I turned to find Paul and Mitch trying to hold in the laughter. Some of the assistants had their mouths hidden by their hands. “The first guy who laughs gets a direct ticket to the unemployment line! I haven’t fired anybody lately, and I’m due!” I warned them. The room simply exploded at that.

I sat down on the couch, next to my dog, and suddenly I heard a click and saw a flash. I glanced over and saw Eric Draper, the Chief White House Photographer, taking a picture. Most of the time you forget these guys are around. They keep their mouths shut and are constantly taking pictures, and they flit in and out of surprisingly sensitive meetings. He must have snuck in behind the girls, and now he got several shots of Stormy sitting on the couch between me and the Secretary of the Treasury. I gave him a droll look and he smiled and took off.

I never really thought about it. After a couple of minutes, I pointed to the corner, and Stormy jumped down and curled up to take a nap. At lunch I walked her and then took her upstairs and put her in the Residence. What I hadn’t expected was that Ari Fleischer, in his role of humanizing The Most Powerful Man in the Free World, gave that photo the green light in the weekly dump of White House photos to the press corps. It was a cute shot; he released it.

That Saturday night, on Saturday Night Live, Drew Carey was on as the host. In the first third of the show, Darrell Hammond did a skit as the President - me! - with Drew Carey in a dog suit. They were both in the Oval Office, and Hammond would be giving orders to people, and then the office would empty out. At that time, ‘I’ would ask ‘Stormy’ what to do next! Carey would tell me what I was doing, and I would ask some really moronic questions, and be told off by my dog, and then I would follow my orders. It lasted about seven or eight minutes.

I didn’t watch it, but the next morning I found it cued up on the VCR by Will Brucis, and Marilyn and I watched it together. Clips from the show also were featured during breaks on the Sunday morning news shows. Marilyn found it funny, me not so much. I had already told her about the girls dumping the dog on me, and she promised to keep them under control a bit more. To what extent either of us could do that was questionable. Regardless, Stormy giving me instructions became a recurring gag on Saturday Night Live.

Ari’s humanizing efforts could only go so far, however. I refused to do talk shows or meet with pundits and commentators. Since when did the Presidency become daytime talk TV? I told Ari and Frank and Mindy that it was about time somebody reminded people that this was an august institution and not reality television. It was bad enough when Bill Clinton had played saxophone on Arsenio Hall and had been asked boxers versus briefs. That was just the start! Over the years Presidents had gone on Oprah and Ellen and Leno and Letterman, and candidates announced their plans on Stewart and Colbert. I’m sorry, but I was the President, not a game show host!

A younger generation in the White House disagreed with me and gave me an argument. Mindy said, “If you are trying to reach out to younger voters and sway them, you need to be on the channels they are watching. You can ask Ari and Bruce about this, but a certain percentage of viewers get their news now not from regular news channels but from the comedy news and late-night talk shows, and that number is growing.”

I glanced at Ari, who shrugged and nodded. “It’s a small number, but it’s growing. The media is fragmenting, and this is just part of it.”

“Let me know when you plan to give Jon Stewart a White House press pass,” I replied.

“We’re not there yet, Mister President.”

Frank stepped in at that point. “Nobody is saying to go on the Late Show, boss. What about Bill O’Reilly or Oprah? They are fairly mainstream.”

I shook my head. “It’s one thing to do a press conference, even a small one, with real reporters, for real newspapers and networks. There is a certain level of integrity expected there. O’Reilly and Oprah are not journalists, they are commentators. They aren’t asking for information; they are hoping for fireworks! I don’t care what the topic is, at this level they are all grey areas. They don’t want subtle and sophisticated and thoughtful; they want sound bites. Sorry, not doing it.” The subject was dropped, but I knew it would arise again.

The twins settled in enough at the White House that they held a sleepover there with some of the cheerleading squad at Hereford. Thankfully they did it on a weekend. If I thought two squealing and giggling teenage girls was bad, I was assaulted by eleven of them! They bunked all over the Residence, and Saturday morning was bad. I came out of the bedroom in khakis and a polo shirt, intent on grabbing some breakfast and heading down to the Oval Office for some paperwork and barged into a flock of nubile teenagers barely in their unmentionables! It sounds like a real delight, and it’s not! I don’t swing that way, and I scampered out of there and ran downstairs, where I grabbed a bagel and cream cheese in the Mess.

Marilyn was a very popular figure, and at the end of April she did a one-on-one show with Oprah Winfrey. Oprah ran things out of Chicago, but Marilyn didn’t want to travel, so the mountain came to Mohammed. To snag an hour or two with the First Lady, Oprah and her team flew to Westminster, and shot in our living room in Hereford. Her crew flew out one day and set things up, and then Oprah flew in the next day for taping. Unlike some First Ladies, Marilyn was much more of a homebody, and she didn’t have her own staff scurrying around to do her bidding. If she needed something done, or somebody wanted her to do something, she might get some part time help from my staff. In this case, somebody from the Communications Office was there to answer questions. Marilyn was quite excited, amusingly so. This was Oprah!

They taped the last week of April and ran two shows the first week of May. I wasn’t there with her in Hereford during the taping, but Marilyn seemed happy with it. I did make time the next week to watch it. Some of it was quite amusing, and some quite emotional. Fortunately, Stormy listened to Marilyn better than me, and slept in her corner throughout the show.

Oprah: “Thank you for having me here to your lovely home.”

Marilyn: “Oh, you’re quite welcome. It’s actually rather exciting.”

Oprah: “Really?”

Marilyn: “Yes. You’re Oprah!”

They both had a good laugh over that. Since the focus was on Marilyn, Oprah asked her about her background and upbringing, and Marilyn pulled out some scrapbooks and photo albums. She had some baby pictures and a few as a little girl at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Utica, dressed in her blue plaid jumper. Eventually they worked their way up through her teen years and got to college. I was surprised by some of the photos Marilyn had in the albums, and that she showed them. There was one of her in a slinky blue dress with a long slit up one leg that I had bought her for a fancy evening in Vegas, and some of the shots of her when she sent me some morale boosters when I was at boot camp. That was going to get Marilyn some very positive publicity among any straight male watchers of the show, if there were any.

Oprah: “Oooh! Hot stuff! When did you take these shots?”

Marilyn: “Oh, these are some old photos! Carl bought me a Polaroid camera as a present when we were in college and asked me to send him some shots as ‘morale boosters’ when he went off to basic training. One of my girlfriends and I took photos of each other, and we sent them to our boyfriends.”

Oprah: “They look like they would definitely raise a soldier’s morale, and probably his blood pressure as well!”

They both laughed at that. Then Marilyn opened a different photo album and a different conversation started.

Marilyn: “Oops, this one isn’t mine. This is an album of Carl’s.”

Oprah: “Well, let’s see what’s in it.”

Marilyn: “Well, I can tell you there won’t be any photos from when he was a child. His sister told me that their mother destroyed all his photos from when he lived at home. Hmmm, let’s see ... these are from a road trip he and a few friends took when they were in college. They drove across the country, to California and back.”

Several photos showed up in order from the trip that Ricky, Marty, and I took that first summer at Rensselaer. That was my last free summer, before I ended up in the Army.

Marilyn: “I always liked this one. My idiot boyfriend, who’s now my idiot husband, decided to try riding a mechanical bull! This shot is of him flying upside down after being tossed off! And he wonders why our son is an adrenaline junkie.”

Oprah: “Who are these other guys?”

Marilyn: “Well, this one has to be Marty Adrianopolis. He’s a really good friend of ours. He became Carl’s Chief of Staff in Congress and now he’s a lobbyist in Washington. The other guy ... I’m not sure ... Dicky, Ricky, something like that. Haven’t seen him in years.” (Flip to a different photo.) “This one is of him playing blackjack. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was already a multimillionaire, and yet here he is playing high stakes blackjack and making a profit! I hated it when he gambled!” (New photo) “Oh, Carl is going to hate this one! This is when he and the guys were arrested in Florida.”

Oprah: “The President was arrested!”

Marilyn: “They fell asleep on the beach, and that seemed to be a deadly crime wherever they were. They spent the night in jail, paid the fine, and got their picture taken by the cops. Not exactly hard-core criminals. More like a bunch of nitwits if you ask me!”

Thank you, Marilyn Buckman!

Marilyn showed Oprah, trailed by a cameraman, around the house. She stayed out of the bedrooms, and it isn’t all that large, at least compared to the White House. They went out onto the back deck and shot some footage of the back yard and the pool and pool house. Stormy joined them so she could take care of her own business. No, that wasn’t recorded for posterity. The Secret Service wouldn’t allow any other exterior shots, like the landing pad or any of the bunkers on their slabs.

Oprah: “So this is the workout room.” (The camera panned over a Nautilus machine of mine, and a treadmill of Marilyn’s, and the large foam mat to the side where I occasionally did some katas. The room isn’t big enough to do any real aikido or tae kwan do.) “You look to be in excellent shape. What kind of workout do you do?”

Marilyn: “Thank you. I mostly walk on the treadmill. If Carl’s home, he sometimes gets me on the Nautilus, but that’s more his thing than mine. Mostly I watch what I eat. It helps that I have enough time to stay in shape. Otherwise, it would be tough. Stormy likes long walks, too.”

Oprah: “Does the President walk with you?”

Marilyn: (Shaking head) “He can’t, not really. His knee won’t take it. If he walks more than about a mile it really bothers him. I know he tried to play golf one time with John Boehner and some of the other Congressmen, and he barely made it through the first few holes.”

That was true. I had often worked out with some of the other ‘gym rats’ in the House gym, but golf was completely out for me. The best I could offer was to drive the golf cart and pay at the 19^th Hole. They went back to the living room and resumed taping.

Oprah: “Well, whatever you are doing, it’s working. You look to be in great shape.”

Marilyn: “Thank you. I appreciate that. Carl and I try to stay healthy, and we’ve tried to make sure the kids do the same.”

Oprah: “There have been some commentators who have reported that you maintain your figure through plastic surgery. Any comment on that?”

Marilyn: “It’s a lie, plain and simple. We watch our diets and work out. It’s just that it’s a whole lot easier to keep the weight off initially than it is to try and lose it afterwards. That’s all there is to it.”

Oprah: “So you’ve never had any work done.”

Marilyn: “Not really. Not like what you’re talking about, anyway. I did have some reconstructive work done after the accident in ‘89. I had lost the baby and needed a bunch of other work and had a lot of scarring.” (She waved her hands over her abdomen.) “At that time Carl sent me to a surgeon for reconstruction, but that was all.”

Oprah: “So, nothing else.”

Marilyn: (Laughing.) “No! Carl laughed and offered to pay for some work up top...” (She brought her hands up to her chest.) “ ... but I told him no and slugged him.”

Oprah: “You punched the President? What did he say to that?”

Marilyn: (Laughing.) “Well, he wasn’t the President then. He told me two things, that I punched like a girl - I slugged him again for that! - and that he had been a bottle baby and had issues! I told him tough luck, and to get over it!”