Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A most amazing and unique evening. Michael Gerson (former Bush speech-writer and advisor) and current Washington Post columnist (see other discussions above) invited Chris and me to his house for a private dinner with President and Laura Bush. Other guests were Fred and Barbara Barnes (Fred is Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard , Bill and Hara Haley (Bill is pastor of a DC Church and is interested in AIDS in Africa), and Mike and his wife Dawn. Dinner was at Mike’s home at 2412 Crest Street, Alexandria. It was somewhat surreal, but incredibly enjoyable. The occasion was just that Mike is good friends with the POTUS and when he had breakfast with the POTUS a few weeks ago he asked the POTUS if he would like to have dinner over his house some time with a few friends. The POTUS gladly accepted and said that he almost never goes out to private dinners at people’s homes because no one ever asks him, likely because they would reasonably assume that he would not accept. Evening started at 7:00 PM. We had to get their earlier (^:45 PM) since the secret service closed the roads (395) to make way for the motorcade. We had about 45 minutes of cocktail hour (POTUS had non-alcoholic beer). Very friendly chatting about a variety of subjects. My long-time impressions of the POTUS held true that he is a very warm, funny and considerate, self-effacing person. Laura was great also. Laura and the POTUS specifically thanked me for saying such nice things about him and Laura at Jenna Bush’s event at the State Department (see Mar. 3 above). POTUS said that Jenna saw him and Laura that night and told them how kind I was to them in explaining the POTUS role in PEPFAR. He sounded very sincere in thanking me for “making my daughter proud of me”. Dinner was terrific with nice wines, tomato soup, steak/potatoes, salad with bacon, and fruit dessert. At dinner we discussed frankly a wide variety of topics including: War in Iraq; his recent trip to Africa; his dealing with various Heads of State; the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing and why he really must attend despite the current misbehavior of China in brutally suppressing the Tibetan call for freedom. He told a great story of when former Prince and now King of Saudi Arabia visited him at his ranch in Crawford and negotiations about the Israel/Palestine problem came up. They reached an impasse since the POTUS thought that the Prince was being frankly anti-Semitic and the discussions stalled. The POTUS would not yield on one point and the Prince announced that he was leaving. POTUS sent in Colin Powell to convince him not to but Colin cane back and told POTUS “Boss, I am getting nowhere with him; you have to step in”. The POTUS visited the Prince, perceived the “chilly” atmosphere in the room and said before we discuss anything, let me tell you what my religion has done for me. The prince agreed and then the POTUS asked the Prince to talk about what the Prince’s religion means to him. This warmed up the chill and POTUS took him out on his pickup truck to tour the ranch alone. As they were talking about the problem, a turkey hen jumped up in front of the truck and just stayed in the road. The POTUS said that he had never seen a turkey on the road before. POTUS explained what a turkey was and how Ben Franklin almost got the turkey to be the National bird, but the bald eagle won out. The Prince said that in his country god often speaks to people through birds and this is clearly a sign from god. After that, the negotiations flourished and POTUS and the king have been the best of friends. The conversation also included discussions about us and our families. The POTUS and Laura were very interested in Jenny’s thesis on women in the criminal justice system. I explained what she was doing and how she decided on this topic. He seemed very connected and empathetic to the problems of young girls getting caught up in the system. He also expressed concern that black leaders are not speaking up more about black men abandoning their children after they have them leading to the incredible statistics of outof-wedlock pregnancies among blacks. POTUS also thinks that the Dems will go into the convention with Obama ahead and that it will be a behind closed doors brokered convention. He said, “if it is a behind closed doors convention, there is no chance that Obama will out-maneuver the Clinton machine. She will be the nominee, split the party and McCain will win. After dinner we all went over an Photo album of the POTUS and First Lady’s recent visit to Africa. The President left at about 9:25 PM in a 6 to 8 car motorcade. All in all it was an incredibly memorable evening. Earlier in the day I briefed Ms. Sandra Roelofs, the First Lady of Georgia. She is Dutch and a nursing student. She was interested is speaking to me because she had heard about my AIDS work. We spoke of TB, AIDS and other IDs. She had earlier in the day had lunch with Laura and Jenna Bush. Actually, Laura mentioned this to me at Gerson’s house.