Petrelis Files

C-SPAN: Card's Wife Asks if He's Married to Bush, Who Skims Newspapers

C-SPAN's Brian Lamb interviewed White House chief of staff Andrew Card last Thursday and the interview aired on Sunday. I didn't catch the broadcast, but C-SPAN has posted a transcript of their talk.

Two things caught my eye: Card's wife jokingly asking him if he's married to Dubya or her and Card saying the president skims newspapers. Let's hope it's more than the comics page that he skims and that someone informs Mrs. Card that Condi Rice once thought she was married to Bush.

From New York magazine: "At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, 'As I was telling my husb—' and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, 'As I was telling President Bush.'"

Excerpts from the C-SPAN transcript:

[...]
LAMB: Your wife, who is a minister, was quoted as saying, "I'm sure who you're married to, George Bush or me."

(LAUGHTER)

CARD: Well, there's an interesting story that is around that quote. It came during the 2000 election and I had just completed work on helping with the presidential debates. And I had been gone for quite some time and hadn't been around.

And I was anxious to come home. I arrived home much later than I had planned because my flight was delayed and I had hoped to get home in time to take Kathy out for dinner. And got home, we just went to bed, got up the next morning, made a nice breakfast and proceeded to spurt out all of the excitement around the presidential debates and how much I respect then-Governor Bush and the effort he was making to be president.

And she said, are you married to me or to George Bush? And the phone rang, and Kathy answered the phone, and she said, it's George W. Bush, and handed me the phone.

(LAUGHTER)

CARD: And -- no, I'm very committed to the president and how he does his job, but I love my wife and I am grateful that she married me. We've been married for 38 years and I'm very, very blessed that she has had her life with me. And I will tell you, she's giving a lot more than I give. And I'm grateful for it.

[...]

LAMB: The president has said almost from the beginning that he doesn't read the newspapers, watch the television shows, but he relies on you and others to provide him with the news. Is that true?

CARD: Well, I think -- he skims the newspapers. And remember, he wakes up every morning with a wonderful wife and she reads the newspapers and is frequently reading to him. And so he gets an awful lot of information. In fact, I'm generally amazed at the amount of peripheral information that the president gets.

He has got a great network of friends who make sure that he understands what's happening in the real world. You know, the White House is a bubble and the president is always trying to get out of that bubble. And he has great access to people who aren't bound by the Beltway and Washington, D.C., and he gets a good deal of information.

But no, he skims the newspapers, but he does not dwell on them, and he certainly doesn't get wrapped around the action with regard to an editorial page or two.

[...]