◼ Great story on former President George W. Bush. - Joseph Curl/Washington Times
Every year, in the week between Christmas and New Year‘s, I think about George W. Bush.
It was in that week each year for the eight that I covered him as a reporter that he gave me a spectacular gift — and he knew it.
I started covering the newly elected president in 2000, when I was in my late 30s. Back then, as a reporter for The Washington Times, we went everywhere the president went. If he went to Charlotte, N.C., to give a 30-minute speech on an airport tarmac, we went. Up at 4 a.m., an hourlong commute to Andrews Air Force Base, in place on the ground hours before POTUS landed, and there for hours and hours after he left — sometimes right through the evening news so network reporters could file live from the site.
We also went with the president to Texas every summer — often for a month — and every winter, too, over the holidays.
But here’s the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never. Mr. Bush and his wife Laura would always depart the White House a few days before the holiday and hunker down at the presidential retreat in Maryland, Camp David. After a few years, I asked a low-level White House staffer why.
I still remember what she said: “So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.”
Who was “us”? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, a hundred Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those cops required whenever the president’s on the move in D.C.
For me, that one-day delay was huge. My kids were 6 and 8 when Bush took office. When he went home to Prairie Chapel that last time in 2009, my girl was driving, the boy was 6 foot 1. But in the meantime, I was home for eight Christmas mornings, playing Santa, stoking the fire, mixing up hot chocolates.
That was President Bush. And every year for the last five, I’ve thought about what that meant to me....
