8:00 am, Oval Office, Monday, June 1:
Prez O enters through side door. Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary and Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff sit on sofa waiting. They rise to greet the President. O bumps fists with both, slaps palms, then bumps elbows. The two white guys, still getting familiar with routine, consume about 30 seconds of meeting with ritual.
O (sitting down): What up, Bobby?
Gibbs: General Motors is going under today.
O: Bummer. On my watch. How does this play, Rahm?
Rahm: We've positioned it well. It's a penny stock now, everyone expected it. Getting Soto nominated late last week was a stroke. We've had 24/7 cycle on that one while the Republican nut jobs went nuclear on her, so no one will notice when a couple hundred thousand more guys are thrown out of work.
O: Cool. The timing worked.
Gibbs: Sure did. High five!
O: We don't do that one anymore, Bobby.
Gibbs: Right. Yeah, it was Sonia from the jump, but holding off till you needed her played well. 90% of the questions have been about Sotomayor's racism. Who gives a shit about General Motors or Kim's A-bomb?
(chuckles all around)
Rahm: It's almost too easy sometimes. I'm starting to see how even Bush could pull this off.
Gibbs: Candy from a baby.
Rahm: Weird, though. Where we're taking on water is this date night thing, the trip to New York.
O: I was worried about that.
Rahm: It's not playing.
O: I promised Michelle during the campaign.
Rahm: Big whoop, is how Peoria sees that one.
Gibbs: I'll need my catcher's mask this morning.
O: You know how many times Bush took that 747 to Crawford? How much that cost?
Rahm: Right. It's a talking point.
Gibbs: Where we're vulnerable is we used to talk about "change."
O: We saw an ethnic play, man.
Rahm: Which is good. Bush would have gone in for a remount of "My Fair Lady."
Gibbs: The Gulfstream is better than Air Force One, but it's got that odor of Wall Street around it.
O: Were we supposed to drive to New York?
Rahm: Thing is, you're supposed to be big on global warming.
O: And?
Gibbs: It's discretionary flying. Of kind of the most self-indulgent type. Entourage, special trip instead of when you're going to the U.N. or something.
O: Shit. Where we were these comments on Friday?
Rahm: Plus, you know - the country's kind of out of work. Your man Geithner is fighting tooth and nail to defend the Wall Street exec lifestyle, and then you join in.
Gibbs: The optics are off.
O: One frigging date night...
Rahm: We need a flak-catching strategy.
O: I"m not giving a Rev Jeremiah speech. Forget it.
Rahm: Doesn't call for that.
Gibbs: I'm going to get a lot of Q&A on the cost of this thing.
O: What's the play on that?
Gibbs: Better not to say. That's our line so far.
Rahm: Of course, there's the transparency thing.
Gibbs: They're starting to say we're transparent about being opaque.
O: Do I apologize?
Gibbs: That looks weak, especially because it will make it look like you're apologizing for fulfilling a promise.
O: Well, hell...
Rahm: It's a box canyon. You'd be apologizing for poor judgment.
O: The idea was the date night thing was good PR. Where'd we go wrong?
Gibbs: I think we got cross-ways on our images, that's all. Self-indulgent power broker versus family man in love with his wife. We played into a trap.
O: Just soldier through, Bobby. Get on their case about not asking about the A-bomb. Or GM.
Rahm: That's the stuff, Barry. You're getting the hang of this now.
(meeting concludes)
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