Washington, DC
Monday, June 25th

Pete at the White House

Today was just another day in DC. Lazy morning, reviewing case studies, then an evening at the White House with Josh Bolton, White House Chief of Staff, in the Roosevelt Room. Honestly, I can not believe I’m actually getting paid to do this stuff. I first got to meet with Josh Bolton last year during our White House visit. This year I came away from the visit with the same impression, he is a very sharp guy. I can honestly tell you that he is in the top 5 of impressive people of the numerous impressive people that our group has heard from. We met in the Roosevelt Room due to the continuing renovations in the Press Room.

The Roosevelt Room

A small note, as we were waiting for Bolton to arrive Karl Rove stuck his head in and said, “Hello!” The odd thing for me is that in the last two months I have met arguably the most ingenious and devious political puppeteers of the last twenty years. I had met, and spoke with, James Carville at speaking engagement he had at Rhodes earlier in late spring. Karl Rove was the architect of the carefully placed referendum issues aimed at whipping voters in the far right of the Republican Party into a frenzy in key states in the last Presidential election. I believe him to be a genius and pure evil.

Bolton spoke with the group for about an hour. The substance of the talk was him walking us through a typical day with the President and his related duties. The students got to sit in the cabinet and sub-cabinet chairs and he related how the daily 7:30am morning went. He then answered questions about policy, social security and the approval ratings of the present administration.

After the discussion we went on a tour of the White House. Here is a treat for you dog lovers. We got to see the Bush family’s two dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley. If you were wondering the links are to each dog’s biography. That’s right I said biography. The two were frolicking in the Rose Garden. The tour guides were all low level aides who kind of get volunteered for the duty by higher up s on the staff. I think the guides we had were particularly good because the favor was called in from a high placed source. It was a great discussion, tour, and visit.

Barney in the Rose Garden

The Rose Garden

The tour group in the Rose Garden

We have been taking the DC Metro a lot this summer which has worked out well. It helps us beat the traffic and gets the kids better acquainted with the DC layout. It is a smaller group than last year which makes it really easy.