IT'S GOOD TO BE THE POTUS:

Trip to Iraq was shrouded in secrecy (Joseph Curl, June 14, 2006, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

"The POTUS is on board!" yelled a man of nearly 60 wearing a Navy baseball cap, dark pants and no tie, who had just climbed the drop-down backstairs of Air Force One in the dark and slipped into the rearmost cabin, crammed full with reporters and photographers.

It was, in fact, not just the customary announcement made when the president of the United States (POTUS) boards his plane. This was, in fact, the POTUS himself, minutes before Monday night's secret trip to Baghdad, one so elaborately planned that it included the president lying to his closest aides and the White House duping reporters.

At 7:45 p.m. Monday, Mr. Bush, nearing the end of the first of two days of meetings on Iraq at Camp David, sought his leave from his top military and intelligence advisers, including National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, CIA Director Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I'm losing altitude -- I'm going to read," Mr. Bush told the group, ostensibly heading to bed. But he did not. Instead, he slipped out of the fortified presidential retreat and into an unmarked helicopter, not his normal Marine One chopper, for a quick ride to Andrews Air Force Base and an 11-hour flight to Baghdad.

Vice President Dick Cheney was about the only one at the nighttime Camp David gathering who knew that the president was headed to Iraq.

Those of us of a certain age recall the spate of stories in the '70s about how the presidency had become too big a job for one man, when the real problem was the string of men we'd made president who were just too small for the job. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Heorge W.. Bush have taken real joy in the office and even George H. W. Bush at least liked the governing part, if not the dealing with voters bit.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2006 9:48 AM