Editorials

White House Invitation Creates Moral Dilemma

By DAVID SUNDELSON Special to the Planet
Tuesday May 27, 2003

It was the kind of mail I usually throw away without opening: a form letter with the return address “Yale Class of 1968 Thirty-Fifth Reunion.” No thanks, I thought. “Bright College Years” (“for God, for country and for Yale”) hasn’t been my song for a long time.  

Besides, reunions terrify me, Yale reunions most of all. It’s not just that I don’t want to replace the fresh faces in my memories with wrinkled ones. Even less do I want to swap stories with the diplomats and deans, the corporate and medical chieftains, who parade in triumph through the Class Notes section of the Alumni Magazine every month. Those notes make me feel puny. A weekend with the chieftains themselves might do me in.  

This time, however, curiosity (or masochism) made me open the envelope and glance at the letter. “Dear Classmates and Friends,” it began — ah yes — and then came the kicker. “I am thrilled to announce that as part of our 35th Reunion, President and Mrs. George W. Bush have offered to host a picnic dinner on the White House lawn on Thursday evening, May 29, 2003.”  

“We’ve been invited to the White House,” I said to Lisa, my wife. “Bushie is inviting all his classmates to a reunion party. Cocktails at six, dinner at seven.” 

“Are you kidding?” she said, and then, after a pause, “Should we go?” 

“Are you out of your mind? We both think the guy is repulsive. Besides, I’ll have to see all my other famous classmates, too. It’ll make me depressed for a year.”  

And that, I thought, was that. A few days later, she brought up the subject again.  

“Maybe we really ought to go.”  

“Think about those poets who turned down Laura Bush’s invitation just before the war started. You said they did the right thing.” 

“This is different — it’s just a class reunion. Anyway, aren’t you curious?” 

I argued back, but I was thinking. Maybe she was right. 

A few days later, at the Claremont — home of progressives and their BMWs — I ran into our feisty, political friend Betty. 

“I hate the son-of-a-bitch, but I think you should go. Go, see what he’s really like and write something about it.” 

The light dawned. I could be like John Hershey at Hiroshima, like Mailer on the steps of the Pentagon. I could be an embedded reporter, writing from the belly of the beast.  

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop telling people where we were going — not just relatives and friends, but everyone: our children’s teachers, waiters, people in stores. 

Scratch a progressive — this one, anyway — and you find a groupie. Is that the right conclusion? It seems true, at least, that a visit to the halls of power and, even more, a chance to touch the hand that touches the button, is something of an aphrodisiac. Perhaps one is more susceptible in middle age, with its load of disappointments and diminished prospects. 

Lisa and I became obsessed with two questions. First, assuming that there was a reception line and we got our 15 seconds with George and Laura, what on earth would we say to them? Second, and possibly more urgent, what should we wear? For me, the answer to that one was easy: the old Yale standby, a jacket and tie. For Lisa, it was not. A dress or a pants suit? Plain or fancy? Dark or light?  

“What should Lisa wear to the White House,” I asked Shelley, who cuts my hair. 

“Something to make a statement and get some attention. How about a bourka?” 

“But it’s a picnic dinner.” 

“How about a picnic bourka — maybe something with little strawberries, kind of Laura Ashley.”  

The question of what to say was just as vexing. First of all, how do you address the First Classmate? Could I call him George? Could I bring myself to call him “Mr. President?” 

And where do we go from there? Should we play Michael Moore: “Mr. President, just where are those famous weapons of mass destruction?” That would require more nerve than I usually possess, and would certainly get a frozen smile and a “Move along now” from the Secret Service.  

Besides, it seems like bad manners to attack someone who invites you to dinner at his house. “Invites” may be the wrong word, since the evening costs $150 per head (the reunion letter carefully says “hosts”). So do we fall back on “Nice to meet you, thank you for having us, nice house you’ve got here, do you own it or rent it, ha ha?” How about something personal? He has twin daughters, and so do we. Should we pull out our pictures and offer to compare notes? 

The other questions are personal. How will it be to face the fact that I am not going to grow up and become president (since I’m coming to visit the boy who did)? How will it be to recognize, as Lisa put it, that this will be our last invitation to the White House — that in middle age, we do many things not just for the first but also for the last time?  

Perhaps we’ll know the answers after the party.