Going Back

The West Wing in 1934, via Library of Congress and the White House Historical Association

Beholding the West Wing from Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought, for the first time since 1983, not that “I used to work there” but that “I’m going back.”

Ross Starek joined me in the West Lobby, after which we were escorted up to Bob Tuttle’s office on the second floor. On Bob’s coffee table were three thick loose-leaf binders containing profiles on all presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation, the most critical ones marked with large red circular stickers. The books will give the next Presidential Personnel shop a tool unprecedented in history.

Tonight I joined George and Laura Bush, Mary Jane Shackelford, and his Yale classmate Don Ensenat for dinner at the Tortilla Coast restaurant. George asked how “the old man” responded to my offer to handle Presidential Personnel. When I replied that GB was “neutral to positive,” George said he will speak to him about it. When I cautioned that I don’t want to be seen as campaigning for the job, George said. “You should campaign for it. You’d be damned good. We ought to see that the Bush people are taken care of.”


Read more about my time in the 1988 Bush Administration and the VOA in Zenith.

Comments are closed.