at an hour of the morning at which I’m usually barely capable of speech. Although I must say that after my recent American book tour, 9:00 A.M. feels like child’s play. On one January day in Chicago I found myself sitting up in President Reagan’s hotel bed—I should say not at the same time as President Reagan—and giving, by telephone, no fewer than eleven radio interviews before eight o’clock: a personal best. When I came to Washington four years ago to participate in a free-speech conference, an aide of President Bush, explaining why no member of that administration was willing to meet me, remarked that, after all, I was “just an author on a book tour.” It is hard to put into words how sweetly satisfying it felt this January, what a sense of overcoming it gave me, in spite of all those early starts, finally to be, indeed, just an author on a book tour. An author on a book tour sleeping in the president’s bed.Speaking of presidents, it may interest you to know that when I was finally able to visit the White House, the meeting was arranged for the day before Thanksgiving, and scheduled to take place immediately before President Clinton’s unbreakable appointment on the White House lawn with a certain Tom the Turkey, whom he was to “pardon”
What do You think about Step Across This Line (2002)?
