Holly: "Yeah, Upperco is really our home. Once school is out, I know Mom plans to move down here full time. We'll both be in college next year, anyway."
Bob: (Looking at Marilyn.) "Is that the plan? You are going to move to Washington full time once your daughters have left home?"
Marilyn: "Yes. When Carl was in Congress we lived close enough that he could commute, sort of. Carl was able to come home at least every other night and almost every weekend."
Bob: "By helicopter."
Marilyn: "It was a little unusual, but we were able to make it work. We like where we live and like having the kids in school there, and we didn't want to change things too much for them. Things got more complicated when he became the Vice President, but he was still able to get home every few nights. We always had the idea that when the girls left home I would be able to move down here full time."
Bob: (To the twins.) "Where do you plan to go to college?"
Holly: "The University of Maryland, in College Park."
Bob: "Why there? I would think you could go to any college in the country. Why not Harvard?"
Molly: "College Park is just outside of Washington, and has a much better reputation for engineering and science than Harvard. I want to study engineering."
Holly: "Physics."
Bob: "Engineering and physics! Why those fields?"
Molly: (A bit of a perplexed look on her face.) "I don't know why, exactly. Dad was a mathematician and could program a computer, and Charlie was always taking apart his motorcycles and we got to watch him do that. I don't know, but I always wanted to see how things worked. That's what engineers do."
Holly: "Same here, but with a slightly different focus, I guess. I like the science part of it."
Bob: "Somehow I never pictured you two as, I guess you would be called nerds. Somehow it didn't fit the cheerleader image, I suppose. How do you see yourselves?"
Holly: "You can call us nerds, I suppose. Why is that such a bad thing? Mister Gates is a nerd and he invented Microsoft and is the world's richest man, right? Dad's a nerd, and he ended up as the President!"
Molly: "If you think you can live without nerds, just turn off your television and your computer and your lights and your furnace, because without us nerds you are going to be sitting in the dark and being cold! Who do you think invented that stuff?"
Bob: (To me and Marilyn.) "Your daughters are real true believers, aren't they? Did you push them towards the sciences because of your backgrounds?"
Marilyn: "Oh no, absolutely not. That's really not my interest at all."
Me: "No, not really. I'm happy they are interested in science and engineering. I think they are important fields, and I did well with them, but it's really their lives, not mine. I just want them to pick something and do well at it, whatever it is. Charlie, for instance, didn't want anything to do with going to college. We just wanted him to pick something and settle down and do the best he could at it. Marilyn and I can't live their lives for them."
Some of the questions were just for me, and Marilyn and the twins took off for a bit, with Stormy following.
Bob: "We are coming up on your first hundred days in office. For most Presidents that is when you start getting graded on how well you are doing. Is that going to be a good way to gauge the Buckman Presidency?"
Me: "I don't think I've ever thought about it in that regard. I would have to say that most Presidents, when they get sworn in, they have an agenda and legislation already planned, and have been planning the transition for over two months. They can hit the ground running. When I got sworn in, I had none of that. I had a missing President, a nation under attack, a burning Pentagon, and a gigantic hole in lower Manhattan. My agenda has simply been to get things back up and running properly, and to prevent what happened from ever happening again. Do I have an agenda of my own? Yes, I would say that I do, and I've been working on it. I plan on laying out some of it next month during the State of the Union Address. Maybe you should count the hundred days from there."
Bob: "What is that agenda?"
Me: (Smiling.) "Ask me in January."
Bob: "Do you plan to run for reelection in 2004?"
Me: "Ask me next summer."
At that point we took a break while I returned some phone calls. When I returned, Schieffer asked if I would lead him around with a camera on what would be a typical day. That was nothing but puff, so Ari happily agreed to it.
Bob: "So how does your day typically start?"
Me: "Well, I'm normally up sometime around 6:00 or 6:30. I don't think you want to show pictures of me in my bathrobe brushing my teeth. It's not a pretty sight."
Bob: (Laughing.) "I think we can skip that."
Me: "Good idea. Anyway, at that point I usually put on some workout clothes and head down to the basement." (We headed over to an elevator and rode it down to the basement, where I showed the gym.) "I usually do a workout here every other day, and on the days in between I do some martial arts training with some of the Secret Service agents."
Bob: "Do you ever beat them?"
Me: (Laughing.) "Only when they let me. Seriously, I'm good, but these guys are really hard core. I would not want to meet them in a dark alley." (Off to the side I saw a couple of agents smiling at that.) "Some days I head outside and use the pool and swim some laps. That's good exercise for my leg."
Bob: "So you work out every day? What about the First Lady?"
Me: "I certainly try. If I'm on the road, it can be difficult. Marilyn often joins me but she's not quite as serious as I am. She'll play hooky if she can get away with it." (We left and I took him up to the Oval Office.) "After the workout I'll go back upstairs and shower and shave and get dressed. Sorry, no filming that, either. Afterwards, I am down here in the office, and my schedule is pretty much whatever the secretaries and staff tell me I'm doing that day. Plus whatever comes up I need to work on. It never seems to work out quite the way the schedule says it will."
Bob: (Pointing to my desk, where a large metal box with a big red button on it was sitting in the center.) "Is that the button to launch the missiles?" (Laughing!)
Me: (Looking innocent.) "Push it and find out."
Bob: "Seriously?"
I just looked innocent and waved him forward. He pushed the button and suddenly it lit up, flashing bright red, while the sound of a klaxon horn came from the bottom. Bob jumped backwards! I laughed and reached over and hit the button a second time, and the ruckus stopped.
Me: "Right after I got here, a buddy of mine, Marty Adrianopolis, sent me that to lighten things up a bit. The first time I showed it to Frank Stouffer I told him it was a direct line to NORAD and he almost had a heart attack!"
Bob: "You're a cruel man, Mister President." (We both laughed for a moment.) "So, you spend most of your time working in here?"
Me: "A lot of time. If I don't have a lunch meeting, I'll grab a quick sandwich from the kitchen or the Mess. I try to meet with Congressional leaders and members at least once a week, but that's a tough thing to do at times. It's very easy to get caught up in things. I might also be meeting with Cabinet members or my staff. After lunch I'll keep going until dinner. If Marilyn and the girls are here, I'll knock off around six or so, but if I'm a bachelor, which is often, I usually come back here after dinner for an hour or two. After that, I go back up to the Residence."
Bob: "You make it sound rather mundane."
Me: "It is anything but mundane. Things can change, quickly. There's always a problem somewhere. By the time you land in this job, you had better have learned how to prioritize and manage your time."