The Improbable President

"This is the kitchen entrance," Jake said with a laugh. "Front door's around the other side. Always looks like this when the president has called a high-level meeting at ten o'clock at night."

Passing through more doors, we arrived at a quiet quarter where the hallway ended before a closed doorway. "That's the Oval Office,” Jake said. Then he indicated a small adjacent room. “The president will meet you here.” The room was furnished with an elegant sofa, a small desk and chair in front of a window at the end of the room, and several wooden chairs with upholstered seats facing the sofa. Jake told me the room was created for Eisenhower for naps after his heart attack. Kennedy called it his "prayer room" and used it mostly for private telephone calls. (Thirty years later William Jefferson Clinton employed the area for purposes that would earn him impeachment.)

The door on the opposite side of the hallway was slightly ajar and I could see it was a bathroom. By leaving its door open, as well as the door to the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson was able to carry on conversations with male visitors while he sat enthroned. He was not a man to waste time or one who was constrained by niceties.

The door to the Oval Office opened and I heard the president's voice speaking to someone in the room. I barely had time to rise before his large frame appeared in the doorway. Hand extended, he greeted me. "How you, Mr. O'Larry?"

"Fine, Mr. President. It's very good to see you again, sir."

He was serious-faced and on a tight schedule. Gesturing for me to sit down on the sofa, he drew up a chair, moved close to me, and bent forward. His face was not much more than eighteen inches from mine. When he wanted something from someone, his trademark was to try to physically dominate his prey.

The hound dog countenance was intense; the brown eyes squinted at me. "The treatment" was about to delivered by a renowned persuader.

“I've got some people waiting, so let me get right down to business. Ramsey tells me you've been offered the chairmanship of the U.S. Parole Board. I wanted to see you to say, personally, I want you in that job. It's an important one and you're the most qualified person for it."

Suddenly, the distance between his face and mine had shrunk to twelve inches and his eyes narrowed further as they continued to peer directly into my own. I needed time to think but he was not about to give it to me. The heat was on and I was being engulfed by it.

In desperation, I reached for a responsive yet noncommittal answer. It turned out to be one that could have been used by the head of any government agency. With as much self-possession as I could muster, I said, "Mr. President, that job requires money and backing."

"Mr. O'Larry, you've got it," the president replied instantly and emphatically. Our noses were now separated by no more than six inches. I was looking deeply into the presidential pupils.

Smiling weakly, I made a vague reference about writing to him. To my great relief, he relented. I guess he considered the matter settled. Shaking my hand and already beginning to focus on his next meeting, he rose. Far be it for me to press the point that I had not actually agreed to take the job. The ambiguity suited me fine.

I was disconcerted, however, when, after turning me over to Jacobsen, who had been waiting at the doorway, the president called over his shoulder as he headed towards the door to the Oval Office: "Send his name up to the Senate, Jake."

I had to slow that down. As Jacobsen and I began to retrace our steps to the West Wing entrance, I quickly asked, "Would you mind holding up that referral a bit until I get a chance to write a letter to the president, as I promised him??

"Sure," he replied.

The last time I saw Jake was in the same room where he had first greeted me. Eventually, he would be accused of accepting a bribe from a representative of the milk industry for which he subsequently was convicted.