All the Presidents' Pets by Mo Rocca Page A

Agence France-Presse, wasn’t sure what was happening but he put his arm around Kate to comfort her. A tear came to the eye of the
NASCAR Dads Daily
correspondent. (He had a permanent seat in the Briefing Room.) The news must have been killing Laurie, but she kept her cool.
    Scott continued. “I can now announce that Barney is, after a brief scare”—and a big grin came over his face—“back to normal.”
    The pressroom broke into applause. Kate threw her arms around Gil, who bellowed
“Vive le chien!”
Everyone laughed, overjoyed. Laurie, a consummate pro, kept back the tears but couldn’t hold back her thousand-watt smile.
    â€œThank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you very much.”
    â€œMy pleasure, Laurie. Thank
you
for restoring dignity to today’s gaggle. As for everyone else, please remember that everything I said today, have said in the past, or will say in the future is, of course, off the record. Now if there are no further questions, let’s adjourn this—”
    â€œNo, I have a question.” Everyone had begun packing up, so I had to speak up loudly enough to be heard over the din. I was surprised that a poop should warrant so much attention from America’s top reporters, but right now I had to focus on making a good first impression. I needed to ask something, if only to register my presence. Scott gave me an impatient look. I froze.
    Candy nudged me. “Come on, big boy. Time to get it up.”
    I swallowed hard and dove right in. “Well,” I began. “It seems to me, I mean, it seems to many that the President’s strategy—or should I say, several leading historians—that’s right, several historians have recently suggested that the President’s initial congressionalist approach to economic policy, strikingly similar to President McKinley’s, has been largely re-formed due to the lingering economic troubles, so that what we see now is something much more activist, even Rooseveltian—fitting perhaps”—and here’s where I tied it all together—“when you consider that both this President and FDR had Scotties.”
    The silence was almost soothing, meditative. If it had gone on forever it might have seemed like the nirvana Buddhists pray for, an emancipation from worldly evils, a final absorption into the divine. But it was a state of nothing, a vacuum that needed to be filled. And ridicule and contempt poured in from every corner. First Scott’s laugh, then Terry Moran’s, then John Roberts’s. Kate Snow just pointed at me, laughing so hard her knees buckled.
    Scott wiped the tears from his eyes, that’s how hard he was laughing. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you the guy who wears the mustache on . . . MSNBC?!”
    â€œIt’s Traficant’s bitch!” yelled the
NewsHour
’s Elizabeth Farnsworth.
    Candy put her arm around me. “You poor knucklehead.”
    Scott calmed everyone down and managed to stop smiling. “To answer your question,
Maurice,
” he chuckled, “let me say, for the record, that the President had no intention of ever adopting McKinley’s economic model.” And then the demonic grin crept back. “He’s always been more of a John Tyler type of guy!”
    The pressroom was roaring now.
    â€œBut that’s not possible,” shouted David Gregory, always the comedian. “Unless Tyler had a Scottie, too, right?”
    â€œTyler had two canaries and an Italian greyhound,” I calmly responded, unintentionally setting off another explosion of derisive laughter. The only one not laughing was Gephardt the Albino. He just fixed me with a cold stare.
    â€œHave a great weekend, everyone,” said a laughed-out McClellan. And he was out the door followed by his aides. Everyone got up and still giggling regrouped into their respective cliques and started out the front entrance. A large group followed