A: "You'll need to ask her that."
Q: "Why are you ducking the question?"
A: "I am not ducking the question. I am giving it the attention it deserves. The Buckmans have been married 30 years. Mrs. Buckman is certainly capable of telling her own husband whether she likes his mustache and beard. He had it for ten years before he got into politics, and he's had it almost two weeks now. I would think that if she objected to it, she'd have divorced him back in the Eighties! Next question!"
I was dying of laughter watching that, and I made sure we replayed it for Marilyn that afternoon. Everybody wanted to know our divorce plans.
On the plus side, various mustache fanciers and beard lovers groups promptly named me their Man of the Year. It wasn't quite Time's Man of the Year, but it was a nice touch. Besides, I had gotten Time's nod in 2004, after being re-elected. Cosmopolitan had a special list of celebrities with beards and mustaches, and I placed in their Top 10. In the same issue was a list of tricks to use in the bedroom if you had a beard or mustache. I made sure to show Marilyn that article, and she turned beet red! Will simply refused to comment when questioned, and turned beet red himself.
The nation muddled on through the end of November and into December. Nobody was doing anything legislation wise, not with a new administration coming into power, and the Christmas recess beginning shortly. Assuming nobody attacked us between now and January 20, my responsibilities were relatively limited. Congress and the Senate would be sworn in on January 6th, and John would be inaugurated January 20th.
The week before Christmas, I had what would probably be my final press interview. I did a one-on-one talk with Tom Brokaw from the Oval Office. Tom was semi-retired from NBC News, having given up his regular anchor spot to Brian Williams several years ago, but he still did occasional stories for them. I never quite figured out how Ari and Will picked out who got to do interviews with me. Maybe it was whoever pissed them off the least lately.
We started off actually in the Map Room, with both Marilyn and me on a love seat facing Tom in a wingback chair. The plan was that he would ask us some personal questions, and then when we were in the Oval Office would segue into some policy questions.
Tom: "Thank you for speaking to me, Mister President, Mrs. Buckman."
Me: "You're welcome."
Marilyn: "Yes, thank you for coming."
Tom: "Mrs. Buckman, your time here in the White House is shrinking rapidly. Are you going to be glad to leave?"
Marilyn: (Smiling and glancing at me.) "Yes, I really am. Oh, don't get me wrong. It is an absolute privilege to live here, and the staff is simply amazing. It's just, well, when we first moved in, we told the kids that living here would be like living in a museum, and that's really true. It's amazing, but it's not home."
Me: "I think that's true. The staff here are simply unbelievable, and we can't thank them enough. Still, it will be nice to just go back to Hereford and be able to have some friends and neighbors over for a barbecue. You just can't do that as the President."
Tom: "Is that where you plan to live? Hereford in Maryland? You also have a vacation resort in the Bahamas and a mansion in Georgetown."
Me: "Home is Hereford. We love our vacation home in the Bahamas, and we'll definitely spend more time there. The home in Georgetown is not so much a mansion as it is a really big house, and was always more of a residence for when I needed to be in Washington. We haven't lived there since I was elected as Vice President. We use it for friends and relatives, and Charlie and his fiancé are using it currently, though that's probably only going to be until they get married and get a place of their own. We'll keep it, but only for when or if I have business here in town in the future."
Tom: "You mentioned your children. Mrs. Buckman, when you first moved into the White House, you were still a stay-at-home mom to your daughters and living back in Maryland. Now your children are grown up and moved out. Big change since then, isn't it?"
Marilyn: "My babies are all grown up! I miss them, but they're doing fine on their own."
Tom: "What are they doing? It almost seems like the nation has watched them grow up as well. Your son was in the Marines and your daughters were high school cheerleaders."
Marilyn: "Well, Charlie can't race anymore, but he seems to be doing well broadcasting for ESPN. This spring he started with them, and they've signed him to be an announcer and commentator. He's engaged, of course, to a lovely girl and they plan to get married sometime next summer or fall. Holly is still at Princeton and is working on her doctorate, and is with a very nice young man who also is a doctoral student, and Molly is living in Maryland with her husband, and they're starting to talk about children of their own. That would be very exciting!"
Me: (Laughing.) "I hope they have lots of daughters, so I can get a little of my own back!" (Marilyn laughed and swatted at me.)
Tom: (Smiling) "Looking forward to being a grandfather?"
Me: "I intend to be the grandfather who buys the grandkids the drum set, the guy the parents are always worried about. Then, I'll load them up with sugar and give them back to the owners."
Marilyn: "You would, too!"
Tom: "Take it from me, Mister President, you have it figured out already. Mrs. Buckman, let me ask you about what had the entire nation stunned a few weeks ago. What do you think of the President's new look?"
Marilyn: "I think that's the silliest thing to worry about, isn't it? Of course the kids tease him that he's actually using it to grow hair for a hair transplant."
Me: "They are out of the will for sure, now!"
Marilyn: "Maybe you can go for the full shaved head look next."
Tom: "Does kissing your husband tickle now?"
At that Marilyn giggled and I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she giggled some more and swatted me again without answering. After that she retired. They reset the cameras in the Oval Office and we switched to there for discussions of my Presidency.
Tom: "It's been a tumultuous seven years for you, Mister President, starting with your accession to office."
Me: "Very true. It's certainly not how anybody would ever want to get a job."
Tom: "Would you have ever run for President on your own?"
Me: "Very doubtful. The idea of spending two years traveling all over the country, and spending weekends, if I'm lucky, at home getting ready to repeat the process? No, I don't think I could ever have subjected myself or my family to that."
Tom: "You didn't have the so-called 'fire in the belly' for the job?"
Me: "Not for that kind of abuse. I've told John more than once I didn't understand how he had gone through with it, and he did it twice, first in 2000, and then again this year."
Tom: "Yet you did it in 2004."
Me: "It's a whole different game when you only have to fight the other side, and not your own at the same time. Again, I'll thank John McCain for the help he gave me in 2004. He secured that victory for me. Great guy, and he'll be a great President."
Tom: "Do you think President McCain will do better or worse than President Buckman?"
Me: "No idea. I think the question is whether President McCain will be a third term of President Buckman, and the answer to that will be no. John is going to be his own man and, I think, a competent and thoughtful President. Back in 2001, when I asked John to join me and take the job as Vice President, I told him that every once in awhile this country gets an object lesson in selecting their leaders. There have been 44 Presidents, and 9 of us got the job when our boss met his Maker ahead of schedule. That's a one in five chance, a 20% mortality rate. You'd never get an insurance company to sell you a policy for that! All too often in this nation's history, the Vice President gets picked not because he would be qualified to take over, but because it was politically expedient to pick him. Not every one of us has been qualified to take over in case we landed in the jackpot. I told John that if something happened to me, I would be comfortable knowing he would be the next President. I didn't expect him to do the things I had done, but I did feel confident knowing he would do the right things as he saw them, and not the politically expedient thing."