Thursday, October 26, when I wheeled my five-year-old Honda Accord into a space between a hunter green Jaguar and a Lexus. Before I could even pop the key into my trunk, a rather becoming woman flashed a Secret Service badge at me, spoke my name, and asked apologetically if I would raise my arms while she scanned my body with a handheld metal detector.
A couple of older members happened by, glanced at my car and at the agent frisking me, and shot me a look as if I must be some horrible criminal-or perhaps worse, a trespasser.
But their expressions changed abruptly when a man in golf cleats came clicking across the parking lot, looking all loosey-goosey with a putter in one hand and a can of Coca-Cola in the other. 'Jack,' he called out to me from about ten feet away in a voice as familiar as Sinatra. 'Jack, Clay Hutchins. It's a pleasure to meet you.'
The introduction was hardly necessary, but I wondered what else you do if you're him: Clayton Hutchins is the president of the United States.
He was taking a break from the rigors of a heated election campaign to play an early-morning round of golf. Me? I'm a Washington-based reporter for the Boston Record, and if you ask my editors, a pretty damn good one. If you ask me, a very damn good one, but I'm trying to get that problem in check. And what was I doing playing golf with the president at his private club in one of the wealthiest towns in Maryland? Good question. One day I called his press secretary on a story about presidential pardons, a few days later I'm summoned off the campaign trail and onto a golf course with the president himself. I suspected I'd find out the reason soon enough.
'Mr. President, the pleasure is certainly mine,' I said, somewhat flustered, reciting words I had rehearsed in the car on the way. 'I'm quite honored by the invitation.'
'What do you say we hit a few putts before we head out, Jack,' the president said.
Some sort of valet in a jumpsuit came running up and grabbed my golf bag. An advance man spoke into a walkie-talkie, and in the distance a caravan of golf carts moved around the practice green. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the female Secret Service agent politely shooing away the two members who had given me the evil look, and I turned and graced them with a sizable smile.
As I walked toward the putting green with the president, past the ancient, graceful clubhouse, a man in a pair of knickers, a brightly colored argyle sweater, and a golf beret happened out the front door.
The president leaned in toward me and whispered, 'What a complete horse's ass, but he's the best the pro tour could do for me this week.'
Louder, in that booming voice of his: 'Jack, I want you to meet Skeeter Davis. Skeeter, this is Jack Flynn. He's the young man I told you about earlier. Skeeter's going to give us a few tips today, turn us into pros. Right, Skeeter?'
We all made proper introductions and swapped small talk and a few one-liners, though I fear mine weren't all that funny, tempered by some loose butterflies floating uncharacteristically about in my stomach.
On the practice green, I retreated to my own little corner to take measure of the situation. Here was the president of the United States, in a pair of rumpled khakis with a navy blue polo shirt and a drooping yellow V-neck sweater, treating me like his new best friend. And Skeeter Davis, one of the country's foremost golf champions, ready to give me lessons. There were a dozen golf carts lining the green, some with burly Secret Service agents talking into their wrists and listening through clear plastic earpieces. Two other carts carried four agents dressed in full black Ninja jumpsuits, armed with what appeared to be surface-to-air missile launchers and laser-trained automatic rifles. Over in the distance, on the other side of the caravan, were a few members of the White House press corps, mostly photographers with zoom lenses. There was a lot to think about here, but most of all, what I was thinking was this: Please don't duck hook my first drive into the woods.
'You boys ready?' the president boomed. His voice was like steel, meant to last, maybe even at times make history. He held his hand up toward the brilliant blue sky and briefly looked around at the pageant of colors that made up this fall morning. 'It's going to be a memorable day.'
On the tenth hole, Hutchins cut to the point. By then, he had already sliced six, maybe seven balls deep into the woods, in places where no federal employee had ever gone before. I started to wonder if the Secret Service agents were wearing their considerable gear to protect themselves against an assassin or Hutchins's errant golf shots. And after each ball floated aimlessly over the tree line and into the woods, I'll be damned if Skeeter Davis wasn't right there saying,
'Excellent swing, Mr. President. Let me just make one small suggestion.' I swear to God, Hutchins could have sliced a ball through the windshield of a school bus and caused forty third-graders to careen off a cliff. The air would soon be filled with the sounds of ambulance sirens, and later, mothers wailing over the greatest misery they would ever know. And Davis would have said, 'Nice swing, Mr. President. If you'd allow me to make one small suggestion.'
Well, for what it was worth, my game was on, not that anyone really noticed. The Secret Service were looking for trouble. Davis was looking at Hutchins. Hutchins was looking at God knows what, but it wasn't me. Not until the tenth tee, when he asked Davis in a polite but imploring tone, 'Skeeter, could you grab us all some lemonade out of that cart over there?'
As Skeeter made his way off, Hutchins turned to me with a businesslike look on his face and asked in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically timid, 'How would you feel about coming over to the White House after the election, taking over as my press secretary?'
Jesus Christ. I was about to open my mouth, but to say what, I didn't know. Luckily, Hutchins cut me off just as I began to stammer.
'Look, you know my situation. I have no doubt I'm going to win this election. I'm two points up in our internal polls right now. That's off the record, I hope. But I haven't had the chance to actually govern yet. I have a staff I inherited, and they have no loyalty. Me to you, I don't think most of them are all that good. Not my type, anyways. Pointy-heads. Intellectuals. Wingnut conservatives. Think they know everything, when all's they know is what they read in those far right journals of theirs or get from all that hot air on the Sunday morning gabfests. I've got to get my own people around me. People I respect.'
He paused, checking, I think, to see if his sales pitch was having any impact. I was still in shock, not sure myself if it was or not.
Skeeter came back, carrying three cups of lemonade over ice. After the brief talk of politics and such real- world considerations as career moves, he suddenly looked ridiculous in his knickers, knee socks, and sweater, like he was the host at some golf theme restaurant on the Grand Strand in South Carolina.
'Ah, you're a real man of the people, Skeeter,' Hutchins said, grabbing his lemonade. Skeeter beamed, missing the irony. To me: 'We'll finish this conversation later.'
Hutchins then pushed a tee into the moist turf, took one of those funny half practice swings that some golfers do, then stroked his best drive of the day, the ball soaring a good 220 straight down the fairway before gently bouncing along the tight grass like a little lamb trotting across a dewy meadow. Davis seemed to be about to have an orgasm, shouting, 'Perfect, Mr. President. Perfect.'
I got up and duck hooked my drive hard against a tree ninety yards out, and from the sounds of it, the ball hit about four more pines as it zigzagged deeper into the woods.
'Would have made that offer earlier if I had known it would help me this much,' Hutchins said, a twinkle in his eye. And as I made my way down the fairway, disgusted with my drive and bewildered over where this day was taking me, I couldn't help but begin to like the guy, or at least respect his ability to look for good staff.
'You're starting to suck, Jack.'
That was the president, on the fourteenth tee, after I hit my fourth consecutive drive into the woods. He nurtured a reputation as a guy who liked to speak his mind, a no-nonsense businessman who had inexplicably flourished in the house of mirrors known as national politics, all the while remaining as blunt as he had when he started out a political neophyte in the state capital of Iowa a mere ten years before. He wasn't much different out here, and these words were spoken with a lopsided grin and a dose of self-satisfaction.
Golf is like a political campaign, and a good political campaign is like life. You can devise great strategies and practice until you can't even see straight, but the game is long, and hazards will arise that you can never predict. There will be twists and turns that will torture the soul, ups and downs to test every cell of your very being, some of them absurdly unfair. And in the end, simple perseverance is often the key to who wins and who loses, who sits in the White House and who appears on Visa commercials in the Super Bowl, the lovable, powerless failure.
