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The things he has to do! Crawford or BustBy Rick Horowitz At the White House, the lights were burning through the night. The switchboard was a hive of activity, while diplomats scurried back and forth -- to the Oval Office, to the residence -- carrying the latest revision of the latest proposal. The State Department weighed in. So did the Pentagon. Negotiations advanced at an excruciating pace when they advanced at all. No one was surprised that reaching an agreement was proving to be so difficult; the matter at hand was too important to expect anything else. The president still wanted to take his vacation. "You promised! You promised! You promised!" He was in a foul mood, the president was -- up well past his bedtime, and for what? To be told again and again that he shouldn't do -- couldn't do -- what he'd had his heart set on doing? Taking August off?
"This isn't really the best time for it, sir," one of his aides suggested. "It's August, isn't it?" the president shot back. "I always take a vacation in August!" One more time, they walked the president through the list of current crises. With the world in such an agitated state, they pointed out, taking the whole month off might not be the best response. But the president was adamant: August had 31 days, and the president intended to be in Crawford for all 31 of them. "You made me come back early last year!" "Sir, New Orleans was drowning last year." "And a fat lot of good it did, flying over and looking down!" They couldn't argue with that: A fat lot of good it did -- for those poor people down there in the water, or for the president himself. But that's why it was so important that he get it right this time. Katrina was where the slide started, last August. This August is where it had to stop, or there'd be nothing left. Maybe he could take a different month off, they suggested, once things calmed down a bit. He wasn't interested. Tony Blair had delayed his vacation, they reminded him. It didn't matter. "Let Cheney run things for a while," he said. "Cheney's already -- " an aide began, but the First Lady's stare froze the remaining words right on his tongue. "George," she finally said, "I don't think a shorter vacation would be such a terrible idea, just this once." It was the breakthrough the negotiators had been hoping for. With the First Lady on board, the president would have to back down at least a little bit; now it would be just a question of sorting out the details. But how many details there were! How long was a "shorter vacation"? Two weeks, the advisers said. Three, said the president. A week would be plenty, said the First Lady. They settled on 10 days. Would the president go into Crawford with a robust force -- business clothes and presidential biographies -- or just a bicycle and a briefing book? The bike was non-negotiable, he said. He'd bring a suit along if they absolutely insisted. (They did.) But if he had to do any press conferences while he was down there, Condi had to promise she'd stand right next to him. (She promised.) And what about a guaranteed timetable for withdrawal? If this was going to be a 10-day vacation, the president insisted, he didn't want anyone coming to him on Day 6 or Day 8 or even Day 9 saying he has to go back early. They wrote it down just that way, and the rest of it as well. Then they signed their names to the document, the president and all the others in the room, and it was done. The packing of the presidential suitcase could begin. "I still don't see why Cheney couldn't run things," the president said. "What's the worst that could happen?" Posted 8/8/06. Don't
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Rick Horowitz
