“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 you had Presidents going on Oprah and Ellen and Leno and Letterman, and candidates announcing 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 also 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.